• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, August 21, 2013

WPP ad shop Ogilvy & Mather has appointed Todd Cullen as its first Global Chief Data Officer. Cullen is tasked with expanding the agency's global data and analytics practice, which was established by Dimitri Maex, who was promoted to Managing Director of sister shop OgilvyOne New York last year.

Cullen, who joins the agency after a brief stint at OgilvyOne where he oversaw global data and analytics efforts, will report to Miles Young, Worldwide Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather. 

“Data and analytics are not new” for O&M, said Young. “It’s in our heritage. David Ogilvy worked for Gallup before he started his agency and we have been using data to uncover insights and optimize our campaigns for more than 20 years.”

But given the exponentially greater amounts of data that consumers and marketers are generating in the digital age it’s critical that agencies devote more resources to managing it all, Young said. Cullen’s appointment, he added “signals our intent to stay at the forefront of this area.”

Ogilvy’s global data and analytics practice consists of over 1,000 specialists worldwide, according to the agency. Cullen will focus specifically on identifying unique and emerging data sources and techniques, building scalable predictive analytics models, and applying the resulting insights across the spectrum of the agency’s marketing communications services.

In June, speaking at the MediaPost Brand Marketers summit, Cullen said that marketers can become too focused on ringing the cash register once and not building connections with consumers so that they become repeat customers. He added that he’s working on shifting focus to gathering deeper levels of intelligence about people, not consumers. "The trick there is a relationship," Cullen said. ”Building that isn't easy, but shifting some priorities can result in collecting data more useful over time.”

Cullen’s work helping global brands manage data includes ten years at Acxiom Corporation, where he served as Vice President of Global Data Products. At Acxiom, Cullen and his team launched four new data and digital marketing product lines from 2009-2012, including the industry’s first offline data products available for digital and mobile segmentation.

Cullen also served as Chief Information Officer at CognitiveData (now a Merkle company) and held the post of SVP Consumer Insight and Analytics at Bridgevine.