Leo Burnett Launches "The Core" As Integrated Data and Analytics Offering

John Lowell, who joins from Uptake, will lead new unit as Chief Intelligence Officer

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Apr 11, 2017, 18:47 ET

CHICAGO, April 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leo Burnett North America CEO Andrew Swinand today announced the launch of The Core, an integrated data and analytics offering that will serve as an insight engine to drive competitive advantage for clients.

The new unit will bring together Leo Burnett's existing research and CRM specialties with the proprietary Ardent search technology that the agency acquired when Swinand was appointed to the CEO role in January.

"We live in a world where people are telling us what they want through their behavior," said Swinand. "We can harness this data and infuse it into our creative communications to make them more personalized, more engaging and more effective. The Core will take the best of digital insight, the best of CRM and the best of human understanding, and link it all together as one powerful offering."

The Core will be led by Chief Intelligence Officer John Lowell, who joins Leo Burnett from Uptake, a Chicago-based predictive analytics firm that was recently named the fastest U.S. startup to reach a $2 billion valuation. Lowell served as VP of product strategy at Uptake, and previously held data and analytics leadership roles at Flite and Starcom. Before joining Uptake, Lowell helped to build and launch the Ardent search technology.

"John brings a unique and broad mix of experience that makes him the perfect fit to lead this new unified venture," said Swinand. "His expertise ranges from creative optimization and programmatic media to search analytics and dynamic creative technology. Also, he brings the ability to integrate large volumes of data from Uptake that will create competitive advantage for our clients."

The Core will leverage data and analytics to deliver deep consumer insights that lead to highly targeted and personalized creative. The unified offering will allow teams at Leo Burnett, Arc and Rokkan to tap into its expertise and leverage first-, second-, and third-party data to identify business-building opportunities for clients.

"Leo Burnett has a storied reputation as a creative powerhouse, but the agency's data and analytics expertise is a hidden gem," said Lowell. "I'm excited to help build on this foundation and create real transformational change for our clients through The Core."

The new team will be home to close to 100 data and analytics professionals, including those from Leo Burnett's Personifi and HumanLab divisions, which will now become part of The Core.

Personifi is an award-winning analytics team that manages CRM and loyalty programs for clients including Altria and Kellogg's. The team includes statisticians, economists, psychologists and social scientists, and is responsible for billions of CRM-driven brand impressions each year.

The HumanLab is a quantitative research division that has developed proprietary insight tools and capabilities to support the agency's HumanKind operating system, including path-to-purchase modeling, segmentation targeting and perceptual mapping of opportunity spaces. As part of The Core, the HumanLab will now be able to connect its work to data management platforms (DMPs) in order to directly link ethnographic segmentation research to clients' propensity models.

The name of the new offering, The Core, is intended to reflect that the understanding of human behavior is now at the core of all modern marketing communications. It's also a nod to Leo Burnett's heritage of the apple, and that a human insight is the seed of every great idea.

Leo Burnett continues to invest in data and analytics throughout the organization, including leveraging the agency's existing 100 professionals certified in the Adobe Experience Cloud platform.

About Leo Burnett
Leo Burnett is a communications agency powered by its HumanKind operating system, with the belief that creativity, data and technology work together to transform human behavior and drive prosperity for clients. Part of Publicis Communications, the agency works with some of the world's most valued brands including Allstate, Brooks, Esurance, Firestone, Jim Beam, Kellogg's, Kraft, Marshalls, MillerCoors, Nintendo, P&G, Samsung and UnitedHealthcare among others. Leo Burnett was named Clio Awards' "2016 Agency of the Year." To learn more about Leo Burnett and its rich, 81-year history of creating iconic brands, visit our site, Facebook page and follow us via @leoburnettchi.

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SOURCE Leo Burnett