Ogilvy Restructures Its U.S. Team With 9 New Group Leaders

Ogilvy USA CEO Lou Aversano today named nine key appointments following the agency's earlier announcement from Ogilvy Worldwide Chairman and CEO John Seifert of a global restructuring plan that would kick off in the U.S. "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 said. The announcement is part of the network's new client-centric focus in the U.S., which splits the U.S. operation into nine groups. Each group will 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 across offices from Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New York, Los Angeles and Cambridge, Mass. The nine group leaders include Nelly Anderson, former OgilvyOne Worldwide evp, global brand management; Michele Anderson, former managing director, Ogilvy PR in Chicago; Alvaro Cabrera, North America chief strategy officer, OgilvyOne Worldwide; Cathy Francque, previously managing director, Ogilvy; Mark Himmelsbach, preisdent, content and social North America for Ogilvy; Todd Krugman, president, IBM global brand services for Ogilvy; Sean Muzzy former CEO of Neo@Ogilvy; Stephanie Ricke, president, Leopard and Sandeep Vasudevan, worldwide managing director, Ogilvy. [kickout id="1"] The team of nine will be responsible for leading Ogilvy USA in client management, talent, new business and finance. A number of the new leaders have also been named leads of specific categories. Sean Muzzy, for example, will also serve as the head of media and distribution domain, while Alvaro Cabrera will serve as the customer engagement and commerce domain lead. The goal with each of the new appointments, according to Aversano, is to take all of the Ogilvy operations in the U.S., including OgilvyOne and Ogilvy PR, and create one unified Ogilvy brand. "We have a new set of diverse leaders to bring integrated solutions and specific domain solutions on behalf of our clients," Aversano said. "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." Aversano noted that other main goals with the new model in the U.S. include improving the experience for clients "when they work with us and how this will make that a richer, more valuable experience both in terms of the speed and simplicity and the value, ideas and creativity that we bring." Another goal is to improve the working experience for Ogilvy's people. The agency wants to go back and "make sure we live up to the principles of Ogilvy in terms of being a teaching hospital and giving people the opportunity to learn in a number of different areas of expertise and not have to be labeled as an advertising person or a digital person," Aversano added. There are a number of other appointments mentioned in the release as well, including Kate Cronin, the new head of USA health & wellness. Adam Tucker, the former president of Ogilvy New York has been named as the head of the USA enterprise branding domain. Additionally, back in January, Seifert announced the creation of Ogilvy Delivery, a production and technology capability within the agency. For the time being Kathleen Ryan, former operations consultant for Ogilvy, will serve as the interim chief delivery officer alongside Worldwide chief delivery officer Günther Schumacher. One thing the release does not mention is what will happen to current creative and planning leadership, most notably the agency's chief creative officer Steve Simpson. Ogilvy plans to roll out additional updates and announcements regarding its restructuring throughout the coming months.