Mediaboss Marketing

One of the biggest advertising agencies, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, is starting practice units that are devoted to helping clients navigate two areas that are rewarding but confusing: social media and youth marketing.

Ogilvy & Mather, which is part of WPP, the world’s largest ad-agency holding company, is to announce the formation of the social media unit, called Social@Ogilvy, on Monday morning.

The other unit, Ogilvy Youth, is in a nascent stage, or, in keeping with the vernacular of younger consumers, “in beta.”

The new units join others at Ogilvy & Mather that are devoted to areas like cross-cultural marketing (OgilvyCulture). The formation of the units is indicative of efforts by large ad agencies to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of marketer clients, who must grapple with the seemingly continuous changes in consumer behavior.

“Thinking across the disciplines is critical,” said Miles Young, global chief executive at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in New York. “You have to redesign your agency around content and domains.”

Social@Ogilvy will operate across all the specialty agencies of Ogilvy & Mather, including advertising, direct marketing, public relations and digital marketing. Clients include American Express, BP, Ford Motor and I.B.M.

The new unit, with more than 550 employees in 35 markets, is derived from what had been a specialty offering inside Ogilvy Public Relations.

“The headline here is that it’s a worldwide practice that connects all the agencies,” said John Bell, an Ogilvy executive who is being named global managing director of Social@Ogilvy.

Although “we’ve had a social media unit for seven years,” he added, “integrated social solutions matter a lot more,” particularly because, by some estimates, brands will spend 17 or 18 percent of their total marketing communications budget on social media in the next few years.

Brandon Berger, chief digital officer at Ogilvy & Mather, said: “Social has become such a huge priority. It’s core to the way consumers behave. They talk about you, and they talk about you online, and it’s measurable, and you can get involved in the conversation.”

Needless to say, social-media services like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube are an integral part of marketing to young consumers. That is underlined by the fact that Ogilvy Youth, although a fledgling, already has a presence on Tumblr.

Ogilvy Youth will be focused on teenagers and millennials, also known as Generation Y. Initial clients include the United Way.

Ogilvy Youth will be overseen by Lauren Crampsie, who is 31; she recently became global chief marketing officer at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. The day-to-day operations will be led by Felicia Zhang, 28, who is at the agency as part of her stint as a WPP fellow.

There are two reasons to start Ogilvy Youth, Ms. Crampsie said. One is “thought leadership,” citing a global youth insight study that the unit is hoping to release next month, which will offer a look at, among other things, “a day in the life of teens in 12 global markets.”

The other reason Ms. Crampsie gave is for “recruitment and retention,” in that the employees working at Ogilvy Youth are all to be young themselves.

“I see so many missed opportunities” for the ad agency industry, she said, “with kids right out of school going to work at Google or Facebook.”

“We need to make sure we don’t lose this generation to technology companies and social-media companies,” she added, and demonstrate that Generation Y “can be excited and inspired about agency life.”

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter.

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Media Decoder: Ogilvy & Mather Staffs Up in Social Media and Youth Marketing