Brian Wieser has never been busier – and that includes his time as an investment banker on Wall Street.
“Every day is like learning 10 years of information,” he said.
As GroupM’s global head of intelligence, Brian absorbs massive amounts of economic and governmental data surrounding the crisis and modeling out different scenarios. He drills deeper into the economics of industry verticals to understand the impact on GroupM clients.
“You can’t have a view on how clients should be thinking about their media spending …unless you can start with a view on how the economy will evolve,” he said.
Brian’s engagement with client teams is higher than ever. He helps advertisers understand how to invest against changing consumer behaviors and think about optimizing media metrics against broader economic shifts.
“Brands have to form a view,” he said. “Assume people will mostly be sheltering in place when they can. What do you want to do if that’s how people are going to behave?”
Brian, an old hat at working from home, is sheltering in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two kids. He’s up every day at 4 am (5 am if he’s lucky) to tune into earnings calls from Europe. In the afternoon, it’s time to catch Asia.
“It’s energizing,” he said. “There’s so much information to process, so much new coming from this, that it’s hard not to try to absorb as much as possible.”
