• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, May 2, 2016

Search agency Resolution Media, part of Omnicom Media Group, has expanded rapidly since the firm was acquired by the holding company a little more than a decade ago. Back then it was 35-person shop in Chicago. Today—thanks in part to a consolidation of Omnicom search agencies under the Resolution umbrella a few years back-- it employs 2,000 people in 50 markets around the world and manages $2 billion (and counting) in media spend.

It’s also no longer just a search agency but has branched out to offer social, mobile, email, ecommerce and other services.

Just as the company is opening its sixth U.S. office (in Dallas) it has also appointed a new president—George Manas, previously the firm’s Chief Strategy Officer. He succeeds Alan Osetek who left to become CEO of programmatic operation Digilant in March.

Manas joined Resolution Media in 2012 as Director of Services & Platforms. He was promoted to CSO a year ago. He’s credited with the driving the expansion of many of Resolution’s services beyond the search domain. He helped architect the firm’s suite of social activation services known as Current@Resolution as well as the StoryConnect@Omnicom platform which integrates data-driven strategy, creative, media, and analytic services globally.

Going forward Manas is tasked with overseeing the design and implementation of the agency’s core and emerging services and managing key partnerships across publishers, technologies and the Omnicom Network. In addition to its own set of clients, accounting for about 40% of its business, Resolution provides search and social services across the OMG client roster and also works with a number of the holding company’s creative agencies.

For clients, says Manas, job one is helping them engage audiences as the media landscape gets more complex. “Search has become the center of so much that it has changed the digital world,” he said, noting that search and social combined account for about 70% of digital ad investment.

The Dallas office opening was a pretty big deal strategically, Manas says. In the U.S., the agency has offices in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Charlotte. “We were lacking a Southwest presence,” he says. Not only does Dallas fill the gap, it does so as a fast growing city “with a great talent pool,” an entrepreneurial culture and rapidly expanding health and technology-related sectors.

According to Manas, the firm has delivered rapid and for the most part organic growth over the past five years, much of it due to the expansion of the product offering. Now, he says the challenge is to “create consistency and global scalability with our capabilities.”

More and more “clients are looking at that,” Manas adds, noting that the firm has over a dozen global clients, including Unilever, which the firm won last year in a joint pitch with sibling agency PHD.

And with the world so anchored to Google, Facebook and a handful of other tech giants, creating a global platform for all biddable media is critical to competing effectively in the agency space says Manas. He thinks Resolution is well positioned for the future. Given that its expanding product line has grown from within, driving a seamless and globally scaled offering, while challenging, will be less difficult than integrating a sack full of bolt-on acquisitions.