VML is promoting Jeff Geheb to global executive lead for VML Enterprise Solutions. This position will be in addition to his current role as global chief experience officer. As global executive lead, Enterprise Solutions, Geheb will be responsible for the growth and leadership of VML’s full Enterprise Solutions offering, which includes global consulting, data, technology, innovation services, companies and products. Enterprise Solutions is a newly constructed offering for VML created by Geheb and Neil Stewart, who takes on a new leadership role within WPP as CEO, WPP Open.
Jon Cook, global CEO at VML, said, “I’m thrilled that our organization has a talent like Jeff leading these critical offerings for the new VML. It’s a major undertaking and Jeff is the perfect person to bring continuity and integration to all that we have to offer to our client partners. The depth of VML Enterprise Solutions is a great differentiator for VML, especially after all Jeff and Neil brought together from legacy VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson as a new offering. When you combine Jeff’s leadership across Enterprise Solutions and our Customer Experience practice, it deepens the connectivity of VML even further.”
Geheb and Stewart built a strong partnership since the Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R merger announced late last year. They will continue to work closely together as they transition into their new roles and build VML’s Enterprise Solutions global management structure. In addition, they will synchronize integration with WPP Open, WPP’s AI-driven marketing operating system used by almost 30,000 people across WPP and a growing number of the company’s clients.
Mel Edwards, global president of VML, said, “Neil has been a phenomenal leader for our business, driving the growth of our technology, data, and platform expertise for over 13 years. His continued close partnership with Jeff in growing and strengthening our Enterprise Solutions offering will be paramount to VML’s evolution.”
VML Enterprise Solutions brings together the legacy agencies’ technology and data groups to form a single operating unit that services complex business challenges using the agency’s combined consulting, data, technology, and innovation capabilities. Over 7,000 employees across VML’s key offices and local markets around the world contribute to the Enterprise Solutions offering to deliver on the increasing market demand for applications of AI, technology-driven transformation, and operational efficiencies brought to life via robust technology solutions.
VML Enterprise Solutions will integrate deep technology services capability into VML’s core practices of Brand Experience, Commerce and Customer Experience. The offering will also be direct to clients with best-in-class global scale in consulting, engineering, data, scaled automation and platform delivery. The comprehensive solution includes VML platform service brands such as MAP, Diff, and Satalia, a leading AI company acquired by WPP in 2021. The group also brings together tenured global partnerships with Adobe, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Braze and MACH Alliance, among others.
Geheb has been an instrumental leader at VML, architecting the Customer Experience (CX) practice at a global scale. Today, the practice has grown to include more than 700 experts and specialists in CX consulting, product and service innovation, digital ecosystems, data and personalization, technology modernization, CRM, and loyalty program design.
VML’s global CX practice is recognized by Forrester as one of the world’s top CX strategy consulting practices, with deep expertise in data, strategy, content and technology.
Geheb said, “The potential of the unparalleled mix of technology and creative talent that is coming together under VML will be transformative for our clients and our industry. VML Enterprise Solutions gives us a flexible model to both power VML’s Brand Experience, Commerce, and Customer Experience practices and work directly with technology and digital leaders to find solutions for their most complex business challenges–that potential is exciting for me. Neil has been a tremendous thought partner and friend, and we will continue to work closely together.”
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More