Aimee Buchanan is the new CEO of the Australia & New Zealand branch of global media investment company, GroupM.
Buchanan will join GroupM in October, leading a host of agencies including Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker and Essence.
Buchanan has been CEO of Australia’s largest media and communications agency, OMD since 2016 and currently sits on both the MFA and UnLtd boards.
Under her leadership at OMD, the agency became the largest media agency in the country, shaping the Australian media landscape and driving progress around brand responsibility and diversity & inclusion.
The agency also snapped up a number of agency and culture awards, including AdNews and B&T Media Agency of the Year 2020, B&T People & Culture and Women in Media Employer 2020 and Mumbrella Agency of the Decade in 2020. OMD was also listed in the Great Places to Work Top 50 for 12 consecutive years between 2009-2020.
Buchanan, whose career has spanned more than twenty years, was named B&T Executive of the Year in 2019, as well as the B&T Women in Media – Woman of Year & Executive of the Year and Campaign Asia CEO for 2018.
In an official statement, Buchanan expressed her gratitude to her former colleagues, and says she’s looking forward to her new role at GroupM.
“It is with a heavy heart that I leave my OMD friends and family,” she wrote. “I have loved every step of the journey with this team and I am proud of what we have built and achieved together. A big thank you to all of the OMDers across the nation, our clients and partners for all their support over the last 10 years.”
“I am excited to take on the new role at GroupM and believe they are uniquely placed to influence how media drives growth for clients’ businesses and shapes society. I look forward to working alongside the GroupM leadership and the broader team to set GroupM up for a bright future.”
GroupM APAC CEO and acting CEO GroupM Australia, Ashutosh Srivastava, said Buchanan is an “exceptional agency leader with a phenomenal track record”
“[She has] intimate knowledge of what clients need, and how agencies and their people thrive,” Srivastava wrote in a statement. “She is a truly visionary leader, whose priorities and integrity align with ours. She is client obsessed and always puts her people and culture first.”
“GroupM’s purpose is to harness intelligence and imagination to create, integrate and scale breakthrough ideas that help businesses leap forward. Aimee is the perfect person to lead GroupM’s ambitious program of change, enable our agencies to succeed and enhance their capabilities to meet current and future client needs and drive faster growth in the business.”