GroupM's New 'YCO' Announced

The agency has released the names of 15 new members for its 2014-15 Youth Committee.

GroupM has announced the names of 15 new members of the YCO - or Youth Committee - for 2014-15. This is a group of, what the agency calls the "brightest stars under 30", across GroupM's agencies and specialist units. They will work together with GroupM's senior leadership on the agency's key initiatives. According to a press note released by the agency, these initiatives will help the team "transform into a digitally centric marketing network."

The new group comprises Ashima Chetan, Chinmay Kelkar, Dany Coutinho, Divya Nair, Farah Siddiqui, Farzeen Udwadia, Manoj Kumar, Manvi Singh, Mohit Sharma, Nakul Agarwal, Parul Pandhoh, Ruth Alice Noranho, Sangeetha Mahadevan, Subhamoy Das and Vaibhav Choudhari.

This initiative, which was introduced last year, has become a yardstick for GroupM's global offices. CVL Srinivas, chief executive officer, GroupM South Asia said, "We launched several new initiatives in 2013 as part of our New Me roadmap, which is helping us transform to a digitally centric marketing communications network from just a media agency. YCO was one such initiative in the talent space. We wanted to harness the knowledge, energy and enthusiasm that exist at the junior levels of the organisation and give them a platform where they could add value to our network."

According to Srinivas, " YCO works closely with the senior leadership team (or EXCO) through the year in three areas - digital transformation, talent retention, and internal and external communication programmes. We got a lot of rich and valuable insights from YCO in all these areas and have made several changes to the way we used to operate."

Commenting on the new team, Gaurav Hirey, chief talent officer, GroupM South Asia, said, "This year, we have integrated a reverse mentoring element into the programme where YCO members will mentor an EXCO member helping them sharpen or develop new skills. We believe that this initiative just like many others in GroupM will help us to be future ready."

For the record, GroupM is a global media investment management operation. It is the parent company to WPP's media agencies Mindshare, Maxus, MEC, MediaCom and Motivator.