Dimitri Maex, who has served as president of Ogilvy & Mather’s customer engagement unit OgilvyOne, announced his plans to step down this week after more than 17 years with the Ogilvy network. Global chief strategy officer Jimmy Schougaard will take his place in the role of president, effective immediately.
An agency spokesperson writes: “Ogilvy & Mather wishes Dimitri Maex the very best on the next chapter of his career. Jimmy Schougaard is a fantastic leader of our clients and our talent and we are confident he will continue to build upon the great success of OgilvyOne New York.”
Schougaard, who previously served as CEO of Ogilvy Denmark and managing director of OgilvyOne’s global operations following Maex’s 2013 promotion to president, had planned to return to his native country with his family but has delayed that move for at least the remainder of the year. He has been with the Ogilvy organization for more than 13 years after working in accounts at BBDO.
According to an all-staff internal memo, Maex is leaving to embark on the next phase of his career as an entrepreneur. The memo does not clarify what he will be doing post-Ogilvy, exactly, but he has worked as a consultant in the past, and his top skills (according to his LinkedIn contacts) are analytics, data mining and statistics.
The departing leader, who joined the Ogilvy organization in its Brussels office in 1998, previously worked in the financial department of Kraft Foods. As noted above, he is seen as something of a data genius, and in 2012 he published a book titled “Sexy Little Numbers: How to Grow Your Business Using the Data You Already Have.”
“Dimitri was all about data before everyone was all about data,” the internal memo reads. “Dimitri built, led and made our global data practice the envy of the industry. … Simply put, he personifies David Ogilvy’s ‘Gentlemen with Brains’ and ‘We Sell. Or Else.'”
It concludes: “The entire Ogilvy leadership team could not be more proud of Dimitri, and feel more confident in the future with Jimmy leading the way.”