Ogilvy & Mather

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

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.

Ogilvy & Mather has seven divisions: (CRM and interactive), OgilvyInteractive (interactive; under OgilvyOne), Neo@Ogilvy (digital and direct media; under OgilvyOne), Ogilvy PR (public relations), Ogilvy Healthworld (health care communications and marketing), and OgilvyAction (consumer promotion and experiential marketing).

The chairperson of Ogilvy is Rochelle B. (Shelly) Lazarus, who has held the position since 1996. She was also CEO until the end of 2008, when she was succeeded by Miles Young.

History

Ogilvy & Mather was founded in 1948 by David Ogilvy, as "Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather." The company became a leading worldwide agency by the 1960s.[citation needed] 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. 

Integrated in the firm's corporate culture is Ogilvy's concept of "360 Degree Brand Stewardship", defined as "a willingness to use the broadest array of tools and techniques to understand, develop and enhance the relationship between a consumer and a brand." 

Shona Seifert and Thomas Early, two former directors of Ogilvy & Mather, were convicted in 2005 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.

In 2004 the OgilvyOne division launched a digital summit called Verge.[7]. 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.[8] 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.