The buy comes after an 18-month search in Korea, said OgilvyOne vice-president of digital, Ken Mandel.
While search and display advertising budgets have risen substantially in the market, Mandel said that the time is ripe for clients to “revitalise their entire web presence with higher quality websites”.
“We wanted a specialist web services consulting business and Lee & Jang is a digital marketer which understands how to build good sites,” he said.
“We see a lot of growth in terms of companies now realising that their websites need to be revamped. At present, companies are spending on display and search — my prediction is we will now see a revival of website design and development.”
Founders Jjuna Lee and Eric Jang, who started the agency in 2001, will remain in charge of Lee & Jang, with Mandel noting that integration into OgilvyOne would follow in the “longer term”.
“We won’t change the status quo initially,” explained Mandel.
Lee & Jang’s clients include a number of financial services brands, including Daewoo Securities, Samsung Securities and Citibank. The value of the acquisition was undisclosed.
“This agreement will certainly allow us to provide more valuable services to our clients by integrating digital media with different parts of marketing communication,” said Lee.
“We also believe that the strong global brand will contribute to sales and market share increase .”