• The New York Times , Wednesday, July 2, 2008 10:30 AM

The Omnicom Group, the largest advertising holding company, is starting a consultancy named G23 that will be focused on female consumers. Seven senior leaders at Omnicom agencies -- all of them women -- are the founding partners and will work for G23 while continuing in their agency posts in fields like public relations, cultural anthropology, corporate identity, and behavioral planning.

Janet Riccio, EVP at Omnicom, "took it on herself to formulate the idea and gather the people" for G23, according to John D. Wren, president and CEO of Omnicom. Riccio, who reports to Wren, says that G23 is intended to be a consultancy to provide clients "assets across all our brands, representative of all the disciplines our company offers."

G23 will also develop on its own information of value to advertisers about women, Riccio says. One example is a study, conducted for G23 by Harris Interactive and Pacific Ethnography, that examines the economic behavior of women in 16 countries. It groups the women into eight "tribes" and compares them to other women rather than men.

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