Ogilvy & Mather and JWT units form North American JV

The firms – Ogilvy & Mather’s activation arm and JWT’s retail marketing unit respectively – will offer shopper marketing, retail sales programmes, direct response advertising, planning, digital activation and experiential marketing, all backed up by “deep” research, analytics and measurement.

Former Malone president Fred Bidwell will serve as executive chairman of JWT/OgilvyAction while OgilvyAction North America CEO Sheila Hartnett takes on additional responsibility as CEO of the joint venture.

The two firms decided to launch the joint venture after working together on shopper marketing duties for Kimberly-Clark over the last 12 months.

Hartnett (pictured) said: “Our killer app is the ability to impact with consumer shopping experiences every step of the way: before they shop, while they are at retail, and after they leave the store with deep measurement tools. No other single entity has that ‘before, during and after’ market capability under one roof, driving value and insight to really leverage the shopper channel for marketers.”