Omnicom Launches sparks & honey, a Next Generation Agency in NYC That Ignites Cultural Energy to Amplify Brands in Real-Time

NEW YORK, March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- sparks & honey, based in New York City, opened its doors on March 1, 2012 and is being led by industry veteran Terry Young, who heads up the agency as Founder and CEO.

sparks & honey disrupts the traditional models by which market research, creative development and media distribution are executed.  Through its Wave Branding platform, sparks & honey identifies and maps emerging cultural waves through the use of machine learning systems, algorithms and human insights. As cultural waves are identified, sparks & honey constructs customized cultural portfolios for its clients and leverages a proprietary next generation, real-time engagement engine to distribute culturally relevant brand content.

sparks & honey is fueled by a Content Lab that mirrors the pace and nimbleness of a newsroom rather than an agency creative department and leverages a modern marketing team of cultural strategists, futurists, behavioral scientists, creative technologists, content specialists and client service pilots to service clients. This team works in a modern data visualization hub that is at the heart of the new agency.

In essence, sparks & honey is a reinvention of the agency model across all of the core disciplines.

sparks & honey launched with its inaugural client, Clinique.  When asked why the brand chose to partner with the new agency, Lynne Greene, Global Brand President of Clinique, Origins and Ojon said, "Clinique is a brand that is all about innovation – in our products, our service and even in the way that we connect with our customers. After we heard the idea for the business, we knew that this could be the next wave of marketing and wanted to co-create the model with sparks & honey from the ground up. We're very excited about our partnership with them and look forward to leveraging the new model for Clinique."

When asked about the mission for the agency, Young said, "I architected the idea for sparks & honey because I believe there is a new way to build brands for the 21st century. I wanted to build an organization that works at the speed of culture in our socially-connected world and leverages the vast amounts of data, the oil of the information age, and uses that information to create real-time, culturally relevant creative experiences for brands.  At sparks & honey, we believe that for modern brands to succeed, they must accelerate culture, not imitate or borrow from it.  In today's dynamic landscape, brands will be built by connecting to emerging cultural waves and being part of authentic, meaningful cultural conversations."

Prior to founding sparks & honey, Young was the Managing Director of the New York office of RAPP, a digital and direct marketing agency. In addition to his role at RAPP, Young worked as a Consultant at McKinsey & Co, was President of Purple@Epsilon, served in the US Peace Corps in Kazakhstan and launched and managed the IPG digital agency SixtyFootSpider.

sparks & honey will be an operating unit of Omnicom's Diversified Agency Services (DAS) division and will function as an independent business. 

Press Contact:
Jane Chong
[email protected]
212.894.5102

About sparks & honey

sparks & honey (www.sparksandhoney.com) is based in New York City. The agency's mission is to ignite cultural energy to amplify brands to a new level of hyper-relevance and authenticity. sparks & honey uses a disruptive marketing platform and model called Wave Branding.  Combined with its modern marketing team, sparks & honey uses proprietary tools, algorithms and human insights to identify emerging cultural trends and engage brands in authentic and meaningful conversations. sparks & honey's model is one part prediction, one part Wall Street and one part modern branding.

About Omnicom

Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company.  Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotion marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries. 

SOURCE sparks & honey