Ogilvy & Mather, Network of the Year at Cannes for the 5th year running, is one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world. Through its specialty units, the company provides a comprehensive range of marketing services including: advertising; public relations and public affairs; branding and identity; shopper and retail marketing; healthcare communications; direct, digital, promotion, relationship marketing. Ogilvy & Mather services Fortune Global 500 companies as well as local businesses through its network of more than 450 offices in 120 countries.
In 1948, David Ogilvy founded the agency that would become Ogilvy & Mather. Starting with no clients and a staff of two, he built his company into one of the eight largest advertising networks in the world. Today it has more than 450 offices in 169 cities.
Their history is the evolution of one man's thoughts, talents, and work ethic translated into a company culture, a defining business strategy, a destiny.
From the very beginning, David Ogilvy intended to have a different kind of company. He knew that if he was going to be successful as an expatriate running an under-capitalized offshoot of an old British firm in the country that invented modern advertising (in the city that was its epicenter), he would need to build a strong agency brand. The first two fundamental components of that brand would be the quality and diversity of the people, and the quality and class of the operation. "Only first class business, and that in a first class way."
The third component was his belief in brands. "Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand."
David worked relentlessly to instill the belief that their job is to make advertising that sells, and the advertising that sells best is advertising that builds brands. They practice what he preached. Over the past 60 years, Ogilvy has helped to build some of the most recognizable brands in the world: American Express, Sears, Ford, Shell, Barbie, Pond's, Dove, and Maxwell House among them, and more recently, IBM and Kodak.
