Phil Cowdell
President
GroupM m[PLATFORM] N.A.

Phil Cowdell is President of GroupM’s [m]PLATFORM in North America. In this role, Phil is tasked with uniting the holding company’s data, technology and human intelligence in order to drive better results for agency clients across the region.

Prior to assuming this position in January 2017, Phil was CEO of MediaCom North America, a role in which he helped the agency win more than $1.5 billion in new business from companies including Anheuser-Busch, Merck, Allergan and Mars. These wins, alongside Phil’s implementation blueprint for industry transformation, compelled Advertising Age to name MediaCom an Agency A-List Standout in 2016, and both AdAge and Adweek to honor the shop as 2015 US Agency of the Year.

Immediately prior to taking on this role, Phil was President of Client Services for GroupM and held additional global responsibilities for WPP. He has also been CEO and Chairman of Mindshare North America, winning much acclaim for his leadership role in winning nearly $2 billion in new business in less than two years.

Phil started his career at WPP with Mindshare in London, where he was a Worldwide Managing Director, served as the agency’s Worldwide Head of Planning and ran both the global Unilever business and the Ford account in Europe before relocating to the US where, as Global Client Leader, he worked with advertisers that included Kimberly-Clark, Kraft and Unilever and ran worldwide media for Ford. During this time, Phil helped architect Team Detroit, a joint venture between JWT, Y&R, Ogilvy, Wunderman and GroupM.

Before joining WPP, Phil ran P&G’s EMEA media planning and buying at Starcom MediaVest and previously ran P&G’s China media operation at Saatchi/Zenith.