Hearts & Science

To service two of the largest advertisers, P&G and AT&T, Omnicom fashioned not just a dedicated unit but a whole new and different kind of media agency. 

- Gabriel Beltrone

The main problem with winning the two biggest media accounts in the U.S. is that once you do, you actually have to run them.

In December 2015, Omnicom’s Hearts & Science—at the time still unnamed—landed the lion’s share of Procter & Gamble’s multi brand planning and buying business. Then, after a breakneck race to hire 300 warm bodies in the first half of the year to staff the account, the fledgling agency hit another home run in August, picking up AT&T’s business.

Combined, the two accounts represent some $5 billion in annual billings. That has meant a rapid expansion for the agency in just about every conceivable way.

“We started with one office here,” CEO Scott Hagedorn says from his perch at the company’s headquarters on the 36th floor of 7 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, and, he adds, two more in Canada and Puerto Rico. “Within a year, now we have two offices in New York,” he goes on. “We added Mexico, the U.K., Germany, Dubai and Japan.”

But growing that global footprint was, in large part, not really about fulfilling the marquee assignments Hearts & Science had already banked. A separate pitch late last year saw Hearts & Science add a chunk of P&G’s business in Japan, in a joint venture with Hakuhodo. “We’ve been winning in those markets and have active clients in all those markets,” explains Hagedorn.

With some 800 employees now on board, it’s hard to imagine a more natural contender for Adweek’s inaugural Breakthrough Media Agency of the Year Award.