The Marketing Arm

The Marketing Arm is a marketing and promotions agency owned by Omnicom Group. The agency includes several specialty brands, including Millsport (sports), Usmp (retail and events), Davie Brown Entertainment (entertainment), Wave (multicultural), and Ipsh (wireless). Based in Dallas, Texas, The Marketing Arm has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, San Francisco, and Bentonville, Arkansas.

Founded in 1992 by former ProServ and Talent Sports International executive Ray Clark, The Marketing Arm was created as the event and corporate sports marketing division of Athletic Resource Management Inc. (ARM), a successful Memphis-based sports agency headed by Kyle Rote, Jr., a former professional soccer player in the NASL whose father, Kyle Rote Sr., starred in the NFL during the 1950s before serving as the first president of the NFL Players Association.

Omnicom Group acquired The Marketing Arm in June 1999. In 2003, The Marketing Arm joined event operations with Usmp, an Omnicom sister agency based in Torrance, Calif. Usmp now serves as The Marketing Arm's event unit, specializing in field sales, experiential, engagement marketing, and “retailtainment,” a promotional technique that combines retail and entertainment to create an entertaining shopping experience.

In 2004, The Marketing Arm merged its sports consulting division with Millsport, a leading sports marketing firm owned by Omnicom, to form an agency retaining the Millsport brand name. Founded in 1975 by Jim Millman, Millsport was a pioneer in using sports sponsorship as a branding tool.

Los Angeles-based agency Davie Brown Entertainment, which was founded in 1985 and acquired by Omnicom in 2001, joined The Marketing Arm next. In 2006, Davie Brown's talent division created the Davie Brown Index (DBI), a celebrity index that determines a celebrity’s ability to influence brand affinity and consumer purchase intent.

Ipsh, is a Mobile Marketing agency based in San Francisco. Founded in June 2001 by Nihal Mehta and Mike Jelley, Ipsh joined The Marketing Arm in October 2005 as its wireless marketing consulting brand. Ipsh creates and manages mobile marketing campaigns on a global scale including SMS, MMS, Mobile Advergaming, Application Development, Bluetooth (Bluecasting), WAP sites and WAP media planning and buying.

In June 2006, the company was recognized by the editors of PROMO magazine as the No. 1 marketing agency in the U.S. in its rankings of the top 100 agencies. The PROMO 100 annually recognizes the nation’s top marketing firms on the basis of net revenues, two-year growth, and the quality and results of campaign work.

In addition to its No. 1 overall ranking, The Marketing Arm was the top-ranked agency in terms of two-year growth (729.6%), and earned a top 10 ranking for its campaign work (strategy, execution, creativity, scope, and results). In 2010, the agency topped PROMO magazine's list of "most creative" agencies.

The agency is credited with creating the Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" promotion, which has earned a number of industry accolades, including a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.