Mindshare and MEC to Inspire Future Generation of Leaders at Oxford University

LONDON, UK, Dec. 12, 2013: Mindshare Worldwide, the global media agency network and sister global media agency MEC, will form part of a WPP-wide group of thought leaders that will be teaching a 2-day course at the newly established Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

The course, taking place this week and part of a Master Degree in Public Policy, is aimed at inspiring and equipping future government, civil service and public sector leaders to make the best use of modern communication theory and practice to drive behavioural change in the population.

Marco Rimini, CEO Mindshare Worldwide Central Team and MEC UK’s strategy director Pete Buckley, who works closely with the UK government’s communications teams, will be leading the segment that focuses on the changing landscape of media channels and how to navigate this landscape to affect behavioural change.

Other WPP colleagues taking part in the course include WPP’s Team Government lead Dr. Michelle Harrison, who is also CEO, TNS BMRB and Desiree Lopez, Head of Qualitative Research and Strategic Consulting, TNS BMRB.

In addition to the teaching modules, students will also take part in a live challenge, responding to a live brief around a road safety campaign. The results will be judged by a panel of expert judges including: Alex Aiken, Executive Director, Government Communications; Dr. Michelle Harrison CEO, TNS BMRB; Eric Salama, CEO, Kantar and Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government.

Marco Rimini said: “The Blatanvik / WPP partnership is a unique opportunity to co-create a new approach for government communications with the next generation of leaders. And as an Oxford politics graduate myself, a great chance to go back to some of my favourite pubs.”

Pete Buckley said: “It’s an honour to be working with the world’s future leaders at such an exciting time for government communications. Our deepening understanding of human behaviour and the growth of digital means the opportunities for communications are greater than ever but so are the risks. The Blatanvik / WPP partnership is a timely and important step to further understanding how government communications can effectively evolve in the future.”

WPP have many government and public sector clients around the world, including the UK government.

ABOUT MINDSHARE
Mindshare is a global media agency network with billings in excess of US$29.2 billion (source: RECMA). The network consists of 113 offices in 82 countries throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, each dedicated to forging competitive marketing advantage for businesses and their brands. Mindshare is part of GroupM, which oversees the media investment management sector for WPP, the world’s leading communications services group.

ABOUT GROUPM
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. We serve as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Mindshare. Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our stakeholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.