| 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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Ogilvy & Mather was founded in 1948 by David Ogilvy, as "Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather." The company became a leading worldwide agency by the 1960s. Central to its growth was its strategy of building brands like American Express, BP, Ford, Barbie, Maxwell House, IBM, Kodak, Nestlé and Unilever brands Pond's & Dove. [3]
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.'
Ogilvy & Mather board has produced work for a wide range of leading brands (see client list below). [2]
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In 1975, David Ogilvy developed the "Don't Leave Home Without It" ad campaign for American Express Traveler's Cheques, featuring Oscar Award-winning actor Karl Malden. Malden was the public face of American Express Travelers Cheques for twenty-five years, acting as television cop who advised travelers to carry the cheques. These ads ended with a call to action: "Don't let a thief spoil your vacation. Get American Express Travelers Cheques. Don't leave home without them." The "Don't Leave Home Without It" slogan was revived in 2005 for the prepaid American Express Travelers Cheque Card.
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. [9]
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." [10]
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.[11]. 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.[12] 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.
There are Ogilvy PR offices in nine cities in the United States — Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, 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.”
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.[13][14]
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'.[15]
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.
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.[16][17][18][19]
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.[20]
Obituary of David Ogilvy in The New York Times
Profile of Shelly Lazarus in The Economist
   | Ogilvy and Mather UK - Ogilvy Group UK |
| | Ogilvy Public Relations - Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide | Global Communications & PR Agency |
| | Watch on YouTube. - YouTube - Chinese Backstreet Boys - That Way |
| | OgilvyAction - Home - OgilvyAction | The brand activation arm of the Ogilvy Group |
| | Campaign for Real Beauty - Campaign For Real Beauty |
| | These ads - YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. |
| | Dove Evolution video - YouTube - dove evolution |
| | Anderson for AmEx - YouTube - Wes Anderson American Express Ad |
| | Scorsese for AmEx - YouTube - Martin Scorsese American Express |
| | Obituary of David Ogilvy in The New York Times - David Ogilvy, 88, Father of Soft Sell In Advertising, Dies - The New York Times |
| | DeNiro for AmEx - YouTube - American Express - My Life. My Card. (Deniro) |
| | Profile of Shelly Lazarus in The Economist - Face value | Queen of Madison Avenue | Economist.com |
| | Back Dorm Boyz for Motorola - YouTube - Backdorm Boys (Motorola Ad) |
| | Ogilvy Middle East - Memac Ogilvy, Advertising Agency Middle East - North Africa, Lebanon, Dubai, Kuwait, Cairo, UAE, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Tunis, Morocco. |
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