Ben Richards, who scored the worldwide head of strategy integration position at Ogilvy & Mather back in 2010, will now occupy the newly-created role of worldwide chief strategy officer.
Prior to joining Ogilvy’s New York office, Richards spent several years with the London-based “marketing and branding agency” Naked Communications, at which one of his primary responsibilities was (apparently) telling agencies how ineffective their campaigns turned out to be. As senior strategist, Richards told The New York Times in 2008 that he was often tasked with letting various shops know “that they have wasted tens of millions of dollars.”
In the new role, Richards will have a seat on the agency’s executive committee and work directly with CEO Miles Young to “drive transformation for the network and its clients” across all of Ogilvy’s offices around the world.
In commenting on the promotion, Young praised Richards’ experience “in developing industry-leading strategy products and leading strategy on our biggest global new business pitch wins” and categorized his new responsibilities as “change management.”
Richards himself sees room for internal improvement, writing, “our company still needs to embrace David Ogilvy’s spirit of ‘divine discontent’ and evolve if we want to continue our legacy of building the world’s most valuable brands.”
The list of such brands under Richards’ purview will not change: he will continue to work directly with Coke, Unilever, IBM and more of the agency’s “biggest clients.”
Our only question: why go with “worldwide” over “global?” Modesty?