| Type | Subsidiary of WPP Group |
|---|---|
| Founded |  New York, New York(1948) |
| Headquarters | New York, New York, USA |
| Industry | Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations |
| Subsidiaries | OgilvyOne Worldwide OgilvyInteractive Ogilvy PR Ogilvy Healthworld OgilvyAction Neo@Ogilvy |
| Website | www.ogilvy.com |
Ogilvy & Mather is an international advertising, marketing, and public relations agency based in New York City and owned by the WPP Group. The company operates 497 offices in 125 countries around the world and employs approximately 16,000 professionals.
The chairperson of Ogilvy is Rochelle B. (Shelly) Lazarus, who has held the position since 1996.[1]. She was also CEO until the end of 2008, when she was succeeded by Miles Young.
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History
Ogilvy & Mather was founded in 1948 by
Ogilvy & Mather was built on David Ogilvy's principles, in particular, that the function of advertising is to sell, and that successful advertising for any product is based on information about its consumer.
His entry into the company of giants started with several iconic campaigns:
"The man in the Hathaway shirt" with his aristocratic eye patch.
"The man from Schweppes is here" introduced Commander Whitehead, the elegant bearded Brit, bringing Schweppes (and "Schweppervesence") to the U.S. "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"
"Pablo Casals is coming home – to Puerto Rico". Ogilvy said this campaign, which helped change the image of a country, was his proudest achievement.
One of his greatest successes was "Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream". This campaign helped Dove become the top selling soap in the US.
Ogilvy believed that the best way to get new clients was to do notable work for existing clients. Success of his early campaigns helped him to get big clients like Rolls-Royce and Shell. New clients followed, and the company grew quickly.
In 1989 The Ogilvy Group was bought by WPP Group, a British holding company, for US$864 million in a hostile takeover made possible by the fact that the company group had made an IPO as the first company in marketing to do so.
During the takeover procedures, Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP who already had a tarnished reputation in the advertising industry following a similar successful takeover of J Walter Thompson, was described by Ogilvy as an "odious little shit" and he promised to never work again.
However, two events followed simultaneously: WPP became the largest marketing communications firm in the world, and David Ogilvy was named the company's non-executive chairman (a position he held for three years) and eventually became a fan of Sorrell. A letter of apology from Ogilvy still adorns Sorrell's office, which is said to be the only apology David Ogilvy has ever offered in any form during his adult life. Only a year after his derogatory comments about Sorrell, he was quoted as saying, 'When he tried to take over our company I would liked to have killed him. But it was not legal. I wish I had known him 40 years ago. I like him enormously now.'
Clients
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Notable Campaigns
Advertising
In 1975,
After Karl Malden's departure, American Express continued to feature celebrities. A typical ad, like one with Jerry Seinfeld navigating English comedy, never mentioned the celebrity’s name, just showed it on his AmEx card. Recently, Ogilvy has been marketing the credit card with the “My Life, My Card” campaign that features celebrities like Martin Scorsese [4], Robert DeNiro [5], Wes Anderson [6], and Ken Watanabe.
In 2007, Ogilvy Stockholm developed the "Animals in the Womb" campaign for Ford Flexifuel. The print and television advertisement featured magnified CGI renditions of animal foetuses in development. The campaign was nominated for the Cannes Lion award and for the Guldägget award in 2008.
In 2009, Ogilvy launched the creative concept for the December UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The goal of the campaign is to create a global coalition of climate supporters to help persuade leaders to make effective decisions for a more environmentally bright future. Utilizing all advertising mediums, Ogilvy hopes to generate activism and support around the world. [7]
Digital
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Wikinews has related news: Dove ad viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube |
Dove Evolution In 2006, Ogilvy Toronto released a new campaign for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty entitled Evolution [7]. It has been viewed by over twelve million people. A copywriter from Ogilvy Toronto, uploaded the advertisement to video sharing website YouTube. The video won the Cyber Lion Grand Prix and the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lion Awards in 2007. The video's Cannes synopsis reads: "We created a film that exposed the manipulation of the female image in the media. The objective was to encourage discussion around the subject of real beauty and lead people to the Campaign for Real Beauty website." [8]
Motorola, 2006 Motorola, 2006 When Motorola launched a new line of youth-oriented mobile phones in China, Ogilvy didn't focus on ads for TV, newspapers or magazines. Instead, it hired a pair of Chinese college students, dubbed the Back Dorm Boyz [8], to post home videos of themselves lip synching to pop songs on the web. The students became celebrities, and the campaign sparked a craze for online do-it-yourself lip-synching videos among Chinese youth. It also attracted young buyers to the new Motorola phones, and sales increased 270%. A related lip-synching and song re-mixing competition had 14 million page views in the first month, with traffic at one point crashing the site. Visitors cast more than 1.3 million votes to determine the winner of the contest [9]. The campaign also received Gold at the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards.
Which Side Are You On? (Lenovo, 2005) Which Side Are You On? (Lenovo, 2005) To support the launch of Lenovo's first-ever widescreen ThinkPad notebook, Ogilvy developed the "Which Side Are You On?" global viral campaign. This website asked people to vote for the classic matte black finish or the newly-launched titanium finish of the notebooks. The campaign has been discussed on nearly 140 blogs worldwide and the website has been viewed by people in 129 countries. 'Persuadatron' aided participants' engagement on the site, enabling users to send customized spoken messages to sway the votes of their friends.
In 2004 the OgilvyOne division launched a digital summit called Verge.[9]. This has become a major agency-led forum for clients and industry experts to discuss the challenges and possibilities of digital marketing. The agency has taken the conference to over 20 of the world's leading markets.[10] In documents made available to the public through the tobacco industry's 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, Ogilvy and Mather played a key role in promoting the image of the Tobacco Institute.
Public Relations
There are Ogilvy PR offices in eight cities in the United States — Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Sacramento, San Francisco and Washington, DC. The company owns three subsidiary agencies: Ogilvy Government Relations in Washington, DC; Feinstein Kean Healthcare, in Cambridge, MA, and San Francisco, CA, specializing in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and molecular medicine; and B/W/R, an agency specializing in entertainment with offices in Beverly Hills, CA and New York, NY.
Ogilvy PR had 67 offices throughout the world and 22 offices in Europe, along with six in India, nine in East Asia, 10 in the Middle East and Africa, six in Latin America and six in the Pacific/Australia region. The 2007 Agency Business Report in PRWeek said, “Ogilvy is an agency truly known for its genuine and broad global reach. . . . Ogilvy PR is one of the few agencies that has a meaningful presence in every global region.”[citation needed]
Controversies
Ogilvy caused some controversy in 2004 when a (reportedly) discarded video advertisement for the Ford SportKa hatchback began spreading virally via email. The 40-second video, which shows a lifelike computer-generated cat being decapitated by the car's sunroof was (apparently) rejected by Ford, but still 'managed' to make its way onto the internet, sparking outrage among bloggers and animal rights groups.[11][12]
Ogilvy have also been involved with the notorious Asia Pulp & Paper, a large logging company that has been convicted of illegal logging in three countries, and has recently built roads illegally into the last remaining habitats of the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger, but spent large sums on global advertising campaigns claiming 'sustainability beyond compliance'.[13] Following breaches of local law in February 2008, a group of environmental organisations have called for all businesses to cease connections with the company. Staples and Office Depot have already cut ties, though Ogilvy are thought to still be involved with the company.[citation needed]
In 2005, Shona Seifert and Thomas Early, two former directors of Ogilvy & Mather, were convicted of one count of conspiring to defraud the government and nine counts of filing false claims for Ogilvy overbilling adverstising work done for the US Office of National Drug Control Policy account. In an email, Seifert stated "I'll wring the money out of [the ONDCP], I promise". Seifert and Early were sentenced to 18 and 14 months in prison, respectively. Seifert was also ordered to pay a $125,000 fine, in addition to writing a "code of ethics" for the ad industry as part of 400 hours of community service. Ogilvy & Mather repaid $1.8 million to the government to settle a civil suit based on the same billing issues and continues to produce anti-drug spots for the government.[14][15][16][17]
The company was involved with a controversy in May 2009 when a Clio Award was given to a campaign for A&E's History Channel. One of the associated images compared the American deaths at Pearl Harbor with the Japanese deaths after the bombing of Hiroshima.[18]
References
- ^ http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8736367
- ^ THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; American Express Demotes Ogilvy
- ^ Polish Mobile Network Operator, Play, Experiences Mobile Advertising Campaigns Powered by Mobixell's Ad-It(TM) Mobile Advertising Solution - About OgilvyOne
- ^ Ogilvy’s New business Streak in Malaysia Now Lands Amway!
- ^ OgilvyOne scoops British Gas Business task
- ^ Coke consolidates with Ogilvy.
- ^ http://www.ogilvy.com/News/Press-Releases/June-2009-UN-and-Marketing-Industry-Launch-Hopenhagen.aspx
- ^ Canneslions Live 2007
- ^ http://verge.ogilvy.com/Verge
- ^ http://verge.ogilvy.com
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ FT.com / Home UK / UK - The usefulness of scholarships and tigers
- ^ McMains, Andrew (January 21, 2009). "Ogilvy Names John Seifert N.A. Chairman The appointment means new roles for execs Bill Gray and Carla Hendra". AdWeek. http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/e3ie135f8f41b7a1814728d8b57a0af7fec. Retrieved 2009-06-30.
- ^ Masters, Brooke A. (January 7, 2004). "Prosecutors Say Bills Were Inflated For Anti-Drug Ads". Washington Post. http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42592. Retrieved 2009-06-30.
- ^ Zammit, Deanna (September 1, 2005). "Seifert Submits 'Code of Ethics'". Allbusiness.com. http://www.nationaljewelernetwork.com/aw/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054237. Retrieved 2009-06-30.
- ^ "Former Ogilvy executive Early sentenced to 14 months for role in overbilling scandal". Brand Republic. 14 July 2005. http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletins/br/article/485084/former-ogilvy-executive-early-sentenced-14-months-role-overbilling-scandal/. Retrieved 2009-06-30.
- ^ http://www.redstate.com/absentee/files/2009/05/historyjapan-1.jpg
Obituary of David Ogilvy in The New York Times
Profile of Shelly Lazarus in The Economist
External links
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