As part of a wider Group and agency review, Chris Cashen, formerly managing partner of Mindshare, has been promoted to Group Head of Strategy at GroupM Ireland, responsible for strategic delivery and leadership across all the agency brands; Mindshare, Wavemaker, EssenceMediacom and Invention. As Group Head of Strategy, he sits as part of the GroupM Ireland Management team.
Cashen began his GroupM career when he joined Mindshare in 2019, having previously worked for Javelin, dentsu and AFA O’Meara/McConnells.
He is the current Vice President of IAPI, while also sitting on the AdNetZero council, and is a senior voice within the Irish media marketplace.
GroupM have been building the structure around their strategy team since it’s specific CMO research in August 2023. 100 senior Irish marketers outlined the number one priority skill set they want to include to increase performance is strategy, followed closely by marketing effectiveness and measurement. The newly expanded strategy team will be leveraging the best tools, technology, and proprietary products from each agency brand within one GroupM identity, ensuring a best-in-class delivery. It will also closely align with other WPP specific offerings to ensure a clear proposition for GroupM’s current and future clients.
As part of this restructure has seen the expansion of the Strategy team, with the appointment of Zoe Chandler from Wavemaker into the GroupM strategy team as Strategy Manager. Commenting on this addition to the team Cashen observed; "Bringing Zoe into our strategy team makes perfect sense. Too often, we have waited for someone to grow into prominence in client leadership before considering them for strategic positions. That increasingly made less sense to us, and we want to work with Zoe to sharpen the obvious strategic skillset as part of the group offering."
Commenting on the move, Bill Kinlay, CEO of GroupM said ‘ Further investment into strategic talent is a no brainer for us. Increasingly, this area is making a key difference for our clients business and making a massive contribution to client growth. The team is now in great shape to increase their impact across a greater portfolio of our clients’
Chandler has been an award-winning Account Manager for almost four years within Wavemaker and was recently accepted into IAPI and Marketing Society's STEPS mentoring program.
Chandler joins Ciara O'Connor, Strategy Director (IAPI Future Female alumna, Rising Star 2023) and Lina Meshael, Strategy Director, who joined from Dentsu earlier in 2024.
