Ogilvy Action 2010

Who We Are
Close the Sale
As the Activation arm of the Ogilvy Network we exist to Close The Sale. It is this single-minded proposition that has helped to define us in three key ways:

1. Conceptually, we start every assignment at the register and work our way backwards to develop our business solutions.
2. Functionally, it organizes us around four key disciplines that help us deliver on that goal.
3. It focuses us to create truly remarkable work that revolves around the creation of powerful, measurable ideas.

Where We Excel
For our client’s brands, we bring our strategic and creative excellence to life in an area we call, “The Last Mile.” It is the distance a person travels (both physically and mentally) as they move along the path to purchase – from Consumer, to Shopper, to Buyer.

To truly understand this, we have to know how, why, when and where a consumer becomes a shopper. It is this focus on human behavior that drives everything from our strategic insights to our creative work.

Why It Matters
We sit in the middle of a very interesting three-way intersection. It’s a dynamic, fluid space that connects the brands we market, the retailers who sell them and the shoppers who buy them.

What makes us unique is our ability to see deeply into each of these relationships. It is our working knowledge of these complex relationships that allows us to set specific goals for each as we work to solve our client’s business objectives. For this reason, these interdependent relationships have become the focal point of our strategic efforts.

What We Do
Shopper Marketing
Every single one of us is a consumer. We all consume things. But there is a sharp distinction to be made between a Consumer and a Shopper. There is a process we all go through mentally that takes us from being a passive “consumer” to an active “shopper.”

As such, it is always our objective to discover the switch in the Consumer’s mind that triggers them to not only become a Shopper – but more importantly – a Buyer. Only through rigorous dissection of Shopper behavior as well as ongoing, proprietary research like our global SDMIS, (Shopper Decisions Made In Store) can we deliver the kind of valuable insights that allow for compelling, flawless creative execution.

The kind of creative that turns Consumers to Shoppers and Shoppers to Buyers in The Last Mile.

Trade Marketing
Once considered the back-office engine that drove the retail industry, this discipline has never been more important. As market dynamics continue to squeeze and threaten retailers it becomes incumbent upon the brands to work within their account’s parameters. As a result, brands now seek advocacy from their retailers in an attempt to better sell their products in an ever more competitive landscape.

Which is exactly where we come in. Whether it is category management, channel planning or merchandising and visibility, we help our clients understand a retailer’s point of view, which enables them to build a vision those retailers…their customers, can buy into.

Promotional Marketing
The insights derived from Shopper and Trade propel our Promotions. Picture a line graph of consumer activity around a brand. Now imagine a sharp, sudden spike erupting through the center of it. That surge is the result of a well-planned, creatively conceived and perfectly implemented Consumer Promotion.

Regardless of what form the promotion takes, it’s designed to do one thing: make a consumer act. To ‘try,’ ‘buy,’ ‘visit,’ ‘enter’ or ‘click’ – at the end of the day, if it doesn’t drive someone toward the cash register or online shopping cart, it isn’t successful.

To that end, we spend a large portion of the development time for our Consumer Promotions determining how we’re going to measure their success. Armed with behavioral, in-market analytic tools, we constantly refine and hone our Consumer Promotion programs, allowing us to deliver fresh ideas with tangible results. Once set in motion, it becomes an insight-driven engine that fuels sales.

Experiential Marketing
A brand is merely the sum of all the experiences a consumer has with it. Accordingly, it is critical we create as many positive experiences as possible. Everything – from how you’re greeted by a member of the sales team, to how easy it was to book your flight online, to how engaging a display in a supermarket can be – every single touch point with a brand has the power to be ‘an experience’ – and all of them (whether real or virtual) should leave a lasting impression. It is through this lens of the relationship between the brand and consumer that we create our experiential concepts.

With a field marketing capability that can deliver a truly global footprint, we elevate all of our best practices (Trade, Shopper and Promotions) to an emotional 3-dimensional experience whether in or out of the store. For this reason and our fastidious dedication to measuring its effectiveness, our ability to activate brands experientially is unparalleled.

How We Do It
Smartly
We’re an ideas company. Specifically, a big ideas company. And we’re not really particular about where those ideas come from either. Actually we insist they come from everywhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s an international tour or a coupon at a shelf, it must be based on a brilliant consumer insight, only then can it be considered a big idea.

We feel the key to our business is understanding the shopper even better than they know themselves. To understand what inspires them, what intrigues them and ultimately, what is going keep them moving along the path to purchase.

Accurately
With uncompromising rigor we’ve been able to bring smart digital business solutions to our clients. By giving our employees across the board the ability to track, measure and in some cases predict a wide variety of sensitive metrics for our brands, we’ve created a results based culture.

As it is baked into everything we do, and everything we create, it puts measuring our work and our brands growth front and center – exactly where it belongs. This is the cornerstone of our suite of Shopper measurement tools. Our Last Mile Analytics.

Digitally
There is constant change in the activation space as more and more touch points become digital. Once they are digital they become measurable, and this has underscored what separates us from the competition.

From in-store media to online influence to mobile applications and the convergence of them all, we are able to reach Shoppers in new and surprising ways by providing branded utility to them that goes far beyond the products we sell.

By incorporating a deep set of digital tools with the right data and analytics experts with a robust creative offering we don’t just produce big ideas, we produce big ideas that move products off shelves or into on-line shopping carts.

And because we are a global network, we can take what we discover in Singapore to Sao Paulo in a nanosecond.

Get to Know Us
We’re loath to get to know our clients through credentials meetings. Our experience has shown we create much better work (and partnerships) when we sit down and listen to you instead. With that in mind, we typically like to have a conversation about your business issues and objectives.

Once all information has been shared and we understand what the needs are, our solutions architects then draw from the pertinent skill sets we have on the floor to address the issue at hand – and that team is then responsible for developing your business solutions.

Of course, given the importance both shopper and trade marketing have in this day and age, we feel they should be weaved into the very fabric of a brand’s positioning.

To that end, we help our traditional counterparts understand the mindset of shoppers and the trade by bringing key insights to the table early in the process. By working closely with our partners and sharing our collective knowledge to the best of our ability we’ve been able to create an extremely flexible architecture which, in turn, helps drive our collaborative nature.

If you think we can be of assistance in any way, please don’t hesitate to email us or visit our website http://www.ogilvyaction.com/.

We will help you win in the last mile.

Leadership
Sheila Hartnett – North America – sheila.hartnett@ogilvy.com
Steve Harding – Europe, Africa & Middle East – steve.harding@ogilvy.com
John Goodman – Asia Pacific – john.goodman@ogilvy.com
Regis Duarte – Latin America – regis.duarte@ogilvy.com