New York, November 5, 2007 - Ketchum announced today that Karen Strauss, Partner, has been promoted to the newly created position of Chief Innovation Officer. In this role, Strauss will shape Ketchum’s process for identifying new communications products and services and parlay the talents from within the top-10 agency’s creative culture to meet emergent client needs. Formerly Ketchum’s Director of Strategic and Creative Services, Strauss will examine global business trends and seek to capitalize on them by bringing new communications products and services to market.

Strauss, one of Ketchum’s product and service pioneers, will work with the firm’s global leadership team to guide the company’s innovation process by assessing marketplace needs, advancing ideas with the best chance of profitable returns, and then taking new services and products to market in partnership with Ketchum’s blue-chip clients.

“In more than two decades at Ketchum, Karen always has encouraged her colleagues to challenge paradigms,” said Dale Bornstein, Partner and Director, Global Practices, Ketchum. “As Chief Innovation Officer, she now has an opportunity to work with clients and colleagues to explore the implications of sweeping changes in the way we communicate globally. Karen will identify unmet needs and shape services to help keep us ahead of our competitors. Innovation fuels growth and this role emphasizes Ketchum’s dedication to building the brands of Ketchum and our clients.”

While acting as Ketchum’s Director of Strategic and Creative Services, Strauss led the team that developed the Ketchum Planning Process, a proprietary system that set an industry standard for delivering strategic and creative communications programs with measurable impact, helping Ketchum maintain its industry-leading awards track record. Strauss recently launched an updated version of the process that employs interactivity and reflects changes in the media landscape. Inn-Fusion, a program to encourage fresh thinking for long-time clients, as well as ReCreativity, which provides an inventive approach to choices in messaging, media, messengers, moments in time, and measurement on behalf of clients, are among Strauss’s previous brainchildren.

Strauss is currently focused on reinventing the firm’s brainstorm techniques by optimizing the brainpower of Ketchum’s professional network via instant messaging and online enthusiast groups.

Strauss will continue to be based out of New York and will report to Bornstein.

About Ketchum
A communications innovator, Ketchum ranks among the largest global public relations agencies, operating in more than 50 countries. With five global practices – Brand Marketing, Corporate, Healthcare, Food and Nutrition, and Technology – and specialty areas that include Concentric Communications (experiential marketing, events and meetings), Ketchum Entertainment Marketing, Ketchum Global Research, Ketchum Sports Network, Stromberg Consulting (change management and workplace communications) and The Washington Group (lobbying and government relations), Ketchum leverages its marketing and corporate communications expertise to build brands and reputations for clients. For more information on Ketchum, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE:OMC), visit www.ketchum.com.