Jens Monsees’ first year as WPP AUNZ CEO ‘feels like a decade’, but he’s only just getting started
WPP appointed Jens Monsees to the top local job just a year ago, but very quickly he faced even more than he bargained for, thanks to a string of crises: bushfires, floods, and a pandemic. He spoke with Mumbrella’s Brittney Rigby about the first year, why WPP AUNZ has been historically bad at integration, and where he’s hoping the holding company will end up.
When Jens Monsees became CEO of WPP AUNZ just over a year ago, he faced a colossal task. The German had to quickly adapt to doing business in a new language, in a country on the other side of the world. He’d never worked in an agency before – his career had largely been spent in companies like BMW and Google – but was suddenly responsible for the local arm of the world’s biggest advertising company and a sprawling portfolio of brands.
And he wasn’t just expected to slip into the advertising behemoth and continue running it as it had been run. Nor was he afforded the luxury of time to slowly implement changes within the business. Monsees had been brought in to overhaul it, and quickly.
