Ogilvy USA CEO Lou Aversano announced a restructuring at the agency around new regional leadership appointments.
“We’ve taken a client portfolio that we’ve built through our different capabilities of advertising, customer engagement, PR and media and put them together in nine groups and that requires a stronger bench of more modern leadership that has those skills to bring to bare for clients,” Aversano told Adweek.
These changes were hinted at last month through a memo from Ogilvy Worldwide Chairman and CEO John Seifert announcing a global restructuring plan as the agency moves to what it calls a more “client-centric” approach.
The restructuring splits Ogilvy’s U.S. operations into nine units which Adweek reports “represent a different mix of clients and talent in categories including enterprise branding, digital and innovation, customer engagement and commerce, influence and PR and media and distribution.”
The groups will include clients service by offices in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Leading the nine groups, per Adweek, are: former Ogilvy PR managing director Michele Anderson; former OgilvyOne Worldwide executive vice president, global brand management Nelly Anderson; North America chief strategy officer Alvaro Cabrera; former Ogilvy managing director Cathy Francque; Ogilvy president, content and social North America Mark Himmelsbach; president, IBM global brand services Todd Krugman; former Neo@Ogilvy CEO Sean Muzzy, Leopard president Stephanie Ricke and worldwide managing director Sandeep Vasudevan.
“We have a new set of diverse leaders to bring integrated solutions and specific domain solutions on behalf of our clients,” Aversano told Adweek. “We’ve taken the operation from a discipline and capability operation in terms of how we are structured and built a client-centric operation, which gives more growth and opportunity for our people and more value to our clients.”
Former Ogilvy New York president Adam Tucker will have an enterprise brand domain role across the U.S.
Sources tell us Ogilvy & Mather North America CCO Steve Simpson will continue as CCO on IBM and American Express globally, while former Ogilvy & Mather West and South CEO Michael Doback will move into a client leadership role and Ogilvy & Mather New York head of planning Colin Drummond will continue to lead brand planning.