Adweek reports that Chicago-based Arc Worldwide, the shopper marketing division of Leo Burnett Group, has announced plans to expand its presence by opening new offices in New York and Northwest Arkansas and adding new names to its leadership team.
According to the article, this expansion as an attempt to make the most of recent new business wins and to promote the network’s newly unveiled positioning, “Irresistible Commerce.”
Late last year, Arc won the entire MillerCoors U.S. retail business, taking it away from Omnicom in what future Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun called “a proactive initiative from the Arc teams, leveraging the work and expertise they previously dedicated to McDonald’s U.S.”
The MillerCoors win helped facilitate this new expansion.
In addition to the aforementioned offices, U.S. president Karuna Rawal named seven new executives:
• Debbie Myszynski, evp, business leadership and director of commerce
• Elizabeth Harris, evp, director of strategy
• Jenny Cacioppo, evp, business leadership
• Karl Wenzel, svp and director of operations
• John Lowell, evp, chief intelligence officer
• Billie Smith, evp, talent management and HR operations
• Anna Gomez, chief financial officer
Almost all of these new leaders are longtime employees of the Burnett organization. Lowell joins Arc from predictive analytics company Uptake while Myszynski comes from The Abundancy, a business consultancy and incubator that became part of Leo Burnett when the agency hired its founder Andrew Swinand as North American CEO in January and brought 60 of his own employees aboard.
Arc went through its last round of executive-level changes just over one year ago, when it brought on VSA Partners’ Chris Cancilla to serve as U.S. chief creative officer and promoted both Raidt and Rawal to their current positions.
The article adds that the newly promoted executives will look to reinforce the agency’s existing capabilities, which include data-driven shopper insights, mobile tracking and analytics services, and experiential planning work.
“As we grow, we are continuing to increase our distribution of Arc operations around the world for the benefit of our clients,” said global CEO Bob Raidt in a statement, adding, “We’re also investing in expertise that will help Arc stay close to consumers in a way that’s unique to the industry.”
“Today’s shoppers are more empowered than ever,” said Rawal. “To prosper, brands must continually adapt and find ways to become irresistible to consumers. That means using data to uncover meaningful value … Which is why we’re enhancing our offering and realigning the agency to better create those connections.”
Beyond MillerCoors, Arc Worldwide currently counts P&G, Kraft-Heinz, Coca-Cola and Walmart among its clients.
LA-Based Colin Costello writes for film, TV, advertising and of course, Reel Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @colincostello10.
