Mindshare Names Matterkind's Nancy Hall New North America CEO

GroupM's Mindshare has recruited IPG leader Nancy Hall to be its new North America CEO, effective mid-June. In the role, Hall will oversee the agency's strategy and operations, representing more than 1,700 employees across the U.S. and Canada markets. She'll report to Mindshare global CEO Adam Gerhart and GroupM North America CEO Kirk McDonald. "I’m excited by what Adam, Kirk and the other leaders have accomplished when it comes to innovation for brands as well as culture and community across Mindshare and GroupM. My goal will be to take these areas to the next level," Hall said in an email to Adweek. OAREX Named a 2023 Best Tech Company by The Tech Tribune Technology and sales credentials Hall will step down as U.S. CEO of IPG's Matterkind (formerly known as Cadreon), which is the holding company's activation intelligence unit. While at Matterkind's helm, Hall worked across verticals on addressable strategies, data and audience programs, as well as media activation capabilities. Before that, she held various leadership titles, including high-level sales roles, at Epsilon Conversant. Hall's sales and technology chops stand out at a time when agency tech stacks are becoming both more complex and more important to marketers. During pitches, agency leaders must be able to convey their tech stack's value, and differentiating details, to prospective clients. Hall's data and activation background also complements Mindshare's integration with the performance marketing agency Neo Media World, a process Mindshare began in 2020 and completed last year.The "future of identity," Hall added in the email, is one of the biggest opportunities and challenges advertisers face when it comes to tech stacks. At Mindshare, Hall's focus also extends to expanding agency's commerce and retail media expertise, which she described as already impressive. "There are tremendous opportunities with standardization, measurement, optimization, frequency management, and the usage of data clean rooms for matching and modeling," Hall said. Hall described Mindshare's relationship with GroupM as a "collaborative model," granting Mindshare and its sister agencies access to group-level divisions like GroupM Nexus and Choreograph. A time of change Hall will fill the CEO job as the agency and its parent company face heightened new business pressure. The agency's previous North America CEO, Amanda Richman, unexpectedly stepped down in March after nearly two years in the leadership role. It remains unclear why. Mindshare employees learned of Richman's departure in an email Gerhart circulated in that month, which confirmed Mindshare's search for a new NA CEO. During Richman's tenure, Mindshare rose to the top of COMvergence's new business rankings list globally. But more recently, the agency has contended with new business hurdles. Mindshare North America CEO Amanda Richman Steps Down Mindshare parent company GroupM is recovering from its own account losses and ongoing reviews. Two of these reviews are Mindshare clients General Mills and Kimberly-Clark. Adweek broke the news of Richman's departure on March 6, and by March 15, Ad Age reported the two major accounts were in review. Hall declined to directly comment on these reviews, but did confirm that in the midst of this, she has no current plans reorganize the agency or hire new leadership. Her focus instead is on building bespoke client solutions and executing more strategic work, like preparing clients to face potential disruptions to their industries. "In general, when it comes to new business, there is always an opportunity to show brands not only what you bring to the table now as a partner, but what the future looks like," she said.