Jem Lloyd-Williams, President of Mindshare and CSO of WPP Media, on thirty-five years of media, the universality of AI’s application, and why the answer is the easy bit.
"If you’ve got an hour to save the world, spend fifty minutes on the problem."
Thirty-five years inside UK media. Jem Lloyd-Williams on the universality of AI’s application, Mindshare’s two-phase playbook (democratise first, agentify the core second), the agentification of the 33,000-brand Brand Asset Valuator, the community-first move in brand planning, and why the real craft is problem definition, not answer delivery.
Jem Lloyd-Williams’s career runs from TV sales at Thames Television in 1990 through station management at Channel 5, a shareholding directorship at digital content agency Sticky Content, six years at MediaCom (digital strategist to Managing Partner Strategy), five years at Vizeum UK (Executive Director of Product and Innovation then CEO), and six years leading Mindshare as CEO before adding the WPP Media CSO role in November 2025.
In this conversation with host John Horsley, Lloyd-Williams explains why the AI moment feels qualitatively different to previous waves of digital change (email, mobile, social), unpacks the two-phase AI operating model at Mindshare, walks through how the Brand Asset Valuator has moved from a hand-crank tool to an intuitive client-facing system, argues mindset beats demographics as a media-planning lens in a culture-first era, and closes with a defence of empathy as the leadership superpower during sustained transformation, and of the next generation of specialists as the group that will validate whether machine output is vaguely right.
We’ve kept pace with the complexity. Now, we’re outrunning it.
Speed, compounded by fragmentation of audiences and complexity of the media ecosystem. But the industry has outrun that complexity. The intellectual challenge has shifted back to strategic emphasis: just because you can be across a thousand channels does not mean you should. Differentiation and equity matter more than breadth.
The universality of AI’s potential application is different. It can enhance pretty much any human endeavour.
Lloyd-Williams has lived through email, digital, social and mobile. His view: prior waves affected specific functions. AI’s potential applies across every endeavour, which is why leaders have to decide where enhancement creates the most value for clients and teams, rather than just where it is cheap to deploy.
Democratise first. Then agentify the core.
Mindshare has spent three years making AI safely accessible to every team member, with the ability to build personal agents for workflow hacks. That foundation makes phase two possible: enterprise-scale agentification of core planning tools. The Brand Asset Valuator example is his working one, a 33,000-brand dataset turned from hand-crank tool into intuitive client-facing system, with a human in the loop for validation.
Mindset or passion is a more useful guide than demographics to where a brand needs to show up.
Marketing is the business of persuasion. Finding people who are primed to receive a message in a community whose codes the brand respects is more productive than segmenting by age and postcode. Unilever, he says, is doing some of the clearest thinking on this, building creative ideas that live first in a specific community, then broadcast outward through other channels.
Can I still sit with my mates? Transformation anxiety is rarely strategic.
Lloyd-Williams argues empathy is the leadership superpower, because team anxiety during change is often about basic human concerns, not strategic ones. He also makes a pointed case for protecting the next generation of specialists: if organisations let agentic AI displace the early-career cohort, they lose the future experts who will validate whether machine output is vaguely right.
"Democratise first. Agentify second."
Justin Cooke When you look at media today, what has changed most fundamentally since you started out?
Jem Lloyd-Williams Speed. The speed with which we deliver for clients is the biggest difference. Compound that with the number of options, the fragmentation of audiences, the complexity of the ecosystem, and we’ve kept pace with it. Now we’re outrunning it. Brands and consumers interact faster than ever, and we’re keeping pace.
Justin Cooke And that has brought scale with it.
Jem Lloyd-Williams Yes. The operational side is complex, but that forces focus. Just because you can be across a thousand channels does not mean you should. The emphasis has come back to strategic insight, specific recommendations, and really understanding what the brand is trying to do, where its equity is, where it differentiates, and where the best opportunities are.
Justin Cooke You’ve led through mobile, digital, social. Does the AI moment feel different?
Jem Lloyd-Williams From a contextual perspective, not really. The only thing that doesn’t change is change. But the universality of AI’s potential, the fact that it can enhance pretty much any human endeavour, is different. It may not replace things, but it enhances them. And the universal applicability is the piece that I think is new.
Justin Cooke Where do brands find their audience now?
Jem Lloyd-Williams If you’re clear on what you’re trying to achieve, pinpointing where an audience shows up has never been easier. You have a vast array of feedback signals, a clear understanding of data, and the ability to analyse that data is much more precise. The human part of turning information into knowledge is still a human pursuit.
Justin Cooke Mindset over demographics?
Jem Lloyd-Williams Demographics is an input. Mindset or passion is a more useful guide because marketing is the business of persuasion. Finding people primed to receive your message, in communities where you can show up in a respectful way, is where you get the higher return from a brand equity perspective. Unilever are doing really interesting work on this. They want their brands to grow by being pulled towards consumers rather than pushed at them.
Justin Cooke On scale.
Jem Lloyd-Williams WPP Media sits as a core capability of the overall WPP offering. We don’t know what a client is going to need until we sit down with them. Being able to draw on the right expertise from a scale business, and doing that flexibly, that’s the future. Flexibility and agility are just proxies for speed.
Justin Cooke AI at Mindshare.
Jem Lloyd-Williams Two phases. First, democratise AI across the business. Safe, secure access. Everyone can use it, build their own agents, improve their own workflows. That’s been two and a half, nearly three years of work, and it takes away the anxiety because everyone sees the kit as an enabler. Second, enterprise-wide agentification of key parts of the process. Brand Asset Valuator is a great example. 33,000 brands. Used to be a hand-crank tool, days or weeks to get real insight. Now with the agentic layer we’re getting to strategic answers in hours, with a human validating and augmenting.
Justin Cooke The next frontier.
Jem Lloyd-Williams Measurement and analytics. Being able to move budgets from channel to channel on the fly, in a strategic way, to derive a specific outcome, not just ROAS or ROI. That’s where this becomes genuinely exciting for planners.
Justin Cooke On creative.
Jem Lloyd-Williams I’ve yet to see an AI produce a Cannes-winning idea. The creative leaders I’ve spoken to have kicked the tyres and worked out how AI enriches their thinking. Media becomes a signals lab for them. Most of them are excited by it.
Justin Cooke Lessons from leading through previous waves.
Jem Lloyd-Williams Empathy. Put yourself in people’s shoes. Team anxiety during transformation is often about the basics. Can I still sit with my mates? What does this mean for my career path? Sometimes the change is seismic. Sometimes it feels seismic and isn’t. Empathy helps you separate the two and speak to the team at both the macro and the individual level.
Justin Cooke Commercial models.
Jem Lloyd-Williams Marketing hasn’t changed. The four Ps still hold. But there is an opportunity in some categories to explore outcomes-based remuneration, because the agentic flow lets us see end-to-end contribution more clearly than before. I’m not saying that’s the WPP strategy, but it’s a conversation we’re having with clients.
Justin Cooke What excites you right now?
Jem Lloyd-Williams A new generation inventing a new way of doing things. Energy and a "yes, and" mindset are the qualities I look for. I was always taught by my mentor that inquisitiveness is the best way to succeed. It still is. Who doesn’t want to invent a new way of doing something?
Justin Cooke Final point: problem discovery.
Jem Lloyd-Williams If you’ve got an hour to save the world, spend fifty minutes thinking about the problem and a minute coming up with the solution. The agentification of datasets and processes brings focus back to problem identification, problem understanding, problem analysis. The answer is the easy bit. And if we get rid of the early-career cohort on the assumption that AI replaces them, we lose the next generation of experts who will know whether the machine’s output is even vaguely valid.
New leaders and insights. No noise.