WPP to include OCHWW, S&H, GHG and CMI/Compas under new operating company

, , ,

 

In an internal memo leaked to Adweek, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide CEO John Seifert revealed a plan that restructures the network and reaches into the healthcare agencies under WPP. Under this plan, Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide, Sudler & Hennessey, GHG, and CMI/Compas are going to be included in a new operating division called WPP Health & Wellness.

“Late last year I informed the Worldwide Executive Committee of Martin Sorrell’s decision to combine Ogilvy CommonHealth with WPP’s other specialist healthcare networks and form a new WPP-led operating company called, ‘WPP Health & Wellness,’” Seifert says in the memo. Additionally, Matt Giegerich, chairman and CEO of OCHWW, will be retiring, Seifert says. Executives say Giegerich will be focusing on other endeavors.

“Matt is working hard to ensure a seamless transition from Ogilvy management into ‘WPP Health & Wellness’ as it takes shape in the coming months,” Seifert says.

Heading WPP Health & Wellness will be Mike Hudnall, who was the CEO of Y&R’s Team Pfizer. There are few details on the new operating division, however, as WPP has not even announced its launch yet.

Med Ad News caught up with Shaun Urban and Darlene Dobry, two of the four managing partners who will be taking over for Giegerich at OCHWW, to get their perspective on the changes.

First of all, as a brand and as an agency, OCHWW will not be merged into the other healthcare agencies under WPP Health & Wellness.

“For us specifically, Ogilvy CommonHealth will report directly to Mike Hudnall and WPP Health & Wellness,” Urban says. “But we also still will have a matrixed reporting relationship, really a responsibility, to Ogilvy & Mather as well. We share many common clients with our colleagues at Ogilvy & Mather, through a variety of their various divisions and businesses, and that collaboration will continue strong. And as you saw in Ogilvy’s reorganization and restructuring, they too view health and wellness as a significant opportunity for the main agency. And we will be working very closely with them to help them realize the full potential of that health and wellness opportunity as well.”

Under WPP Health & Wellness, OCHWW, S&H, GHG, and CMI/Compas will not be acting merely as “conflict” agencies for healthcare clients, Dobry says.

“The whole purpose of doing this is to be able to tap into the talent and resources across the health and wellness team and to be able to offer this integrated service offering up to our clients,” she says. “The purpose of this coming together is not to just address conflict, but to be able to deliver the full depth and breadth of those specialized services to our clients.”

At the same time, however, “the vibrancy and the viability of the individual agencies – Ogilvy CommonHealth, GHG, and Sudler – are alive and well and will be maintained in the marketplace, because there is uniqueness to each of those individual agencies that our clients and brands have come to appreciate, respect, and love over the years,” Urban says. “And there also is as aspect of conflict and conflict management, that we absolutely need to maintain the vibrancy of the individual agencies because of how importantly we take the conflict management situation.”

Urban says the moves demonstrate the philosophy of WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, “who has talked about horizontality for a number of years now.”

“That philosophy is simply working across the breadth and depth of resources within WPP, to bring the best talent and resources and innovation for the benefit of our clients and our brands,” he says. “This is horizontality really working at its finest specifically in healthcare.”

“I think the opportunity for us through these changes, to be really able to mobilize all of these various communications services for our clients is terribly exciting,” Dobry says. “It allows us to tap into a great deal of resources and talent.”

Giegerich is expected retire at the end of the first quarter of the year or the beginning of the second quarter. “We have been working with Matt – Darlene, myself, Michael Parisi, and Marc Weiner – over the course of the last couple of months to transition his responsibilities and leading the agency accordingly,” Urban says. “And the benefit to this is we have all worked with one another for about 13 years now, so it’s a very tenured management team who has worked very closely for a long time now. We see this as being seamless in the transition.”