Omnicom Marshals Eight Units for New Integrated Agency
Star Marketing, which combines the services of eight Omnicom agencies, aims to bring an integrated approach to clients.
Star Marketing, which combines the services of eight Omnicom agencies, aims to bring an integrated approach to clients.
Marketing services holding company Omnicom Group has launched Star Marketing, a new unit with a “super-agency” service model that aims to combat media fragmentation and optimize advertiser ROI by looking at clients’ ad budgets as a whole.
Star Marketing is made up of eight Omnicom agencies: Critical Mass, The Daggerwing Group, Innovyx, Javelin, SigmaWorks Group, Optima Direct, OMD Digital and OMD Direct. All of these agencies were previously under the umbrella of Omnicom-owned direct marketing agency Rapp Collins. They have been taken out to remove any potential conflicts of interest, and to give each agency the resources it deserves, Eileen Heywood, Star Marketing’s VP of marketing, told ClickZ.
“Clients increasingly want a highly integrated approach to their solutions, and we’re able to give them that,” Heywood said. “There’s a strategic advantage in bringing these specialists together. These are individual technologies, which will benefit from individual attention.”
Services offered by the various agencies fall under the categories of customer relationship management (CRM) and customer experience management, Heywood said. Specialties include online and offline media planning and buying; direct marketing; digital and search media; e-mail marketing; strategic and business process consulting; marketing communications; teleservices; and analytics.
The agencies will retain their autonomy, but work together to identify potential synergies and introduce clients to other agencies in the network. Daggerwind and Javelin just won the Levitra account from Schering-Plough and GlaxoSmithKline, and the two agencies will service the account, bringing in other Star Marketing agencies if necessary.
By coordinating the work of a whole roster of agencies, Star Marketing promises to create and implement a wholly-integrated media plan designed around each client’s needs, according to Ed McNally, STAR Marketing’s president and CEO. McNally, formerly agency president of diversified services for Rapp Collins, said Star Marketing answers John Wanamaker’s oft-repeated marketer’s lament: “I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”
“Consumers don’t want their time wasted with ads that are irrelevant any more than marketers want to waste money reaching an audience that doesn’t care about their product,” McNally said. “STAR Marketing’s purpose is to help streamline the engagement process and make it more relevant. We want consumers to receive the sort of advertising that interests them. And we want advertisers know that their message is reaching their desired and receptive targets.”