Juniper Park\TBWA is doubling down on personalized marketing capabilities with the launch of a new precision practice it is calling Scalpel.

The goal of the new practice is to infuse global cultural intelligence with data-driven marketing in order to deliver highly personalized, one-to-one content for a client’s target, according to Liam Steuart, managing director of precision marketing.

One of the major sources of that data is Omni, Omincom’s centralized data platform that launched in 2018. Omni uses a proprietary, privacy-safe “agile” ID to gather demographic, psychographic and interest data to build and compare custom audience segments. Omnicom has touted how it will use Omni’s insights across healthcare, media, CRM and creative, the last of which is the area Scalpel will be zeroed in on to deliver relevant creative at the individual level.

“We like to say if you can figure out that right-brain side of things, the data-driven marketing, and marry it with the left-brain, that’s where the magic is,” says Steuart, who notes that Scalpel was conceived after the agency had found success with a smaller-scale version of the approach.

Steuart joined Juniper Park\TBWA in December to lead what would become the Scalpel practice, bringing more than 20 years of experience in similar roles, including most recently at Merge.

Demand for the tools and expertise Scalpel offers is being driven by two factors, according to Steuart.

“It really started with the consumer and their expectation for more relevant communication, regardless of the brand,” he explains. “But a lot of demand is coming from the marketers, themselves. They’re under so much pressure to prove the return on investment.”

Scalpel’s approach has already been applied to some Juniper Park/TBWA clients.

For CIBC, it created 58 localized videos highlighting 27 different locations across the country – including Etobicoke and East Vancouver – where the bank’s mortgage advisors could help consumers buy a new home, leveraging local brokers and market data.

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Scalpel also led Nissan’s campaign to introduce its redesigned 2021 Rogue, creating 156 pieces of video to target consumers with messages that were most relevant to their interests at whatever stage of the car-buying process they were at.

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To support Scalpel, Juniper Park/TBWA has made an undisclosed number of hires, including VP of data and analytics Lee Lin, who joined the agency in March and Steuart calls his “key, right-hand person as we’ve built this out.” Lin most recently worked at Vision7 as director of analytics and insights.

The agency has also hired data scientists and program managers as “the focus has really been to up the analytics expertise.” Steuart couldn’t give an exact figure for new hires, but said he expects the team to continue to grow as it wins additional business.

Scalpel joins other specialized units Juniper Park\TBWA has launched in recent years, including cultural insights unit Backslash, in-house production arm Bolt Content and design studio Le Parc.