Ogilvy and Geometry move to a single P&L in Japan

Ogilvy and Geometry have come together to operate as a single legal entity in the Japanese market. The new company is called Geometry Ogilvy Japan.

Under the new arrangement, a single management team will oversee the operations of Ogilvy and Geometry, which will retain their individual brands.

A notification to clients seen by Campaign says the combined firm will “provide a comprehensive network of integrated services that will better serve our customers’ marketing communications needs”.

Geometry Ogilvy’s management team consists of Ichiro Ota as CEO and executive manager; Jack Mickle and Mike Busby as co-presidents; Leo Shiina as CFO; Doug Schiff as chief creative officer; and Gareth Ellen as chief strategy officer.

Ota has served as managing director of Geometry Japan since 2014, while Busby has been the agency’s managing director of North Asia since 2013; Mickle replaced Todd Krugman as CEO of Ogilvy Japan in 2017, and Schiff replaced Ajab Samrai as chief creative officer last year.

Ogilvy’s regional spokesperson Greg Carton said the new structure had not resulted in any redundancies. He said it made sense to streamline operations where possible.

Campaign understands that Japan is the only market where the two agencies operate under this model. WPP created Geometry Global as a standalone network in 2013 by merging Ogilvy Action, G2 and JWT Action. Its main client in Japan is British American Tobacco (BAT).

Carton was not able to clarify why Japan specifically had been selected to take on the new structure. He said he did not expect the model to be implemented in other markets.