Why ogilvy and mather

Econometrics is our friend here, but changes in other marketing variables can often be handled with comparisons. By how much did sales of our brand go up the last time it cut its price? What happened to sales of competitive brands that cut their prices?

They make the analysis more convincing. They show our knowledge of the market. Seasonality or interest rates or weight of competitive activity, etc.

If distribution increased, was it because of our campaign? Then it should be included in the payback estimate. And any serious launch will be accompanied by advertising. How, then, can we show that our campaign was unusually effective? Again, we need comparisons. Was the launch weight the same in all regions, or can we compare heavy vs. What happened to the sales of similar new products in the past? Or they may go down, but would have fallen further without our campaign.

It uses statistical techniques to analyze sales data, looking for the factors which cause sales to go up or down. Top tips for using econometrics: Because this is a technical and specialist discipline, use a qualified econometrician, ideally one familiar with marketing data. Allow 6 — 12 weeks and be prepared to supply lots of data. Brief the econometrician thoroughly, explaining the key factors that influence sales and your priorities.

Ensure the model is thoroughly tested, using all the standard statistical tests. Once you have a model, use it. Its main value is to help plan future campaigns rather than rake over old ones. Monitor how well it forecasts — the ultimate test of accuracy — and tweak it as necessary, so that forecasting accuracy improves. Update it regularly with new data. Walkers Crisps won the Grand Prix in the Cannes Creative Effectiveness Lions in part because it was the most thorough in excluding other factors.

Its entry paper discusses no fewer than 13 factors that might have increased sales. Some are obvious — such as changes in price, product and distribution — while others are obvious only in hindsight. Stella Artois IPA, , for example, used econometrics to show that higher demand for the brand, created by the campaign, led to higher distribution. How to write a winning entry These points may seem too obvious to be worth mentioning. The judges will notice, and bang goes your credibility and any chance of a prize.

Price, product or distribution may have changed. Do your homework The best way to learn how to write a winning entry is to read those of previous winners.

A lawyer has to know case law, a doctor has to know medical history, a scientist has to know previous experiments. Our job is to know what other campaigns have achieved and how their success was evaluated. Read effectiveness papers in your category from Warc, note and copy their evaluative methods, and then try to innovate.

We did some research. Then we wrote a creative brief. Make your story interesting. Then describe the desired change in consumer behavior. Only then get to the comms issue. The Walkers Crisps case described previously is a model of clarity in this respect. The business issue was that singles are more profitable than multipacks. The behavioral issue was to get more people to eat Walkers Crisps with a sandwich lunch. They are the first three questions on the DO Brief, which, like Fusion, was designed with effectiveness very much in mind.

Your effectiveness entry should use the same sequence. That will help avoid a common mistake, which is to set up one problem at the start of the entry paper and show results that are irrelevant to that problem at the end. Every objective needs its result, and every result needs its objective. Explain how the comms led to the sales A typical sequence explaining how the campaign worked might be: a The campaign had impact [use tracking research to compare our awareness score with previous or competitive campaigns].

For a direct campaign, the steps will more easily be measurable. Include all channels for which we have data, such as coupons, telephone, email, SMS and website, as well as other comms channels where relevant. Look for interaction between the channels — for instance, perhaps response rates or website traffic improved following TV bursts. Both describe the steps that link the comms with the results. Research companies like to claim that all campaigns work in the same way or in one of a small number of ways.

Your particular campaign might work in a different way from a standard model maybe the change in behavior precedes changes in awareness or image, for instance. You need to explain your model of how the campaign worked as you build the positive case linking the campaign to sales.

They actively look for faults, flaws and omissions. They will look for positives at a later stage, when deciding which papers deserve prizes. But your entry has to survive the critical stage to get that far. We must at least show that price, product and distribution could not have caused all sales growth. The more other factors we include, the more convincing the paper will be.

Get someone outside the team to read the paper critically. What else could have caused the sales growth? Where are the jumps in the logical flow? Is there technical language that is hard for outsiders to understand? Help them see it as high by making comparisons e. Was it the highest of any brand in the category that year? Dramatize the results. How many actual packs were sold? Piled end to end, would they pave the Great Wall of China, or reach the summit of Everest?

How many millions of consumers made how many in-store buying decisions? B2B cases are often tough because of the long time between getting an inquiry from a new customer and closing the sale. If we know or can calculate what each customer is worth on average and the proportion of inquiries that result in sales, we can monetize inquiries due to the campaign. AIDA was invented in the s.

Nevertheless, many research companies still use versions of it e. As well as the sales growth, add all other returns to the total payback: the decline that would have happened with no campaign, plus the increased value of the brand, and maybe even plus a share price rise.

Make the best of the creative work Creativity accounts for a big slice of the total marks in many competitions. Talk it up. Perhaps the campaign won a creative award. Perhaps the film director or photographer has won creative awards. Perhaps the client could supply a quote. A video is crucial here. The entry convinces the judges with logic, evidence and facts. The video wins their hearts and inspires their imaginations. Think about the video from the start Good videos take several weeks to produce, so warn the production department well in advance.

Agree on a script with the creatives early. She found: Judges are stressed. They have to read many papers in a limited time. Make your case a quick read by halving the number of words and telling a bedtime-simple story. Judges are exposed.

They have to assess things they know nothing about without looking silly. Give them the background and benchmarks they need to confidently advocate for your case.

Judges are suspicious. They are on the lookout for propaganda, half-truths, salesmanship. Surprise them with disarming honesty. Judges are emotional. If you win their hearts, they will search for ways to up your score. Romance the insight and the work but never romance the results. Judges are hungry.

They yearn to learn something that could help them in their own jobs. You are the teacher, not them. They will reward the technical merits of the case, in particular how well it deals with factors other than the campaign. Get client support Getting sales data from the client can take a long time. You absolutely need the sales data first, so you can fit the story to it, not the other way around.

The very worst thing you can do is send an email with a long list of data needs and expect clients to drop everything. Being lazy never works.

Ask if a central contact person in the client company could be assigned to the project for a few weeks to coordinate responses to your data requests. If you meet resistance to sharing data, elevate the request. Get your CEO to ask the client at a more senior level. Sometimes our day-to-day contacts can only say no. Clients have legitimate concerns about revealing confidential information. Explain that they will have the right of veto and that entering effectiveness awards is standard industry practice and prove it by giving them previous entries in their category or from their own company.

Define clear roles for each channel Involve your media partner early. You will need at least a full media laydown: which activity happened when, through which channels, at what weight. You will also need competitive spends over the period. Ideally, the media partner will have a strategy for why each channel was selected; or you may have done Fusion.

Few entries cover this well, so being thorough gives us a chance to stand out. Avoid the obvious, e. Show that everything was a facet of a central plan. Campaign fame Think beyond research tracking studies. How often was the campaign or brand searched on Google, Facebook or YouTube, and did the timing of the searches coincide with bursts of activity? How did the sales force and retailers respond?

Enter in multiple categories The extra cost is trivial in comparison with the benefits of getting multiple awards. Think about what categories and competitions might be relevant for your entry — the more, the better. Build a team and share the load. The team might comprise a strategist, an account person, the media partner and a digital specialist. Meet every week to monitor progress and agree on next actions.

Offer to share the credit with partner agencies to motivate them. Total views , On Slideshare 0. From embeds 0. Number of embeds 86, Downloads 2, Shares 0. Comments 0. Likes You just clipped your first slide! Clipping is a handy way to collect important slides you want to go back to later. Diversity and inclusion.

Future of TV. Influencer marketing. Media planning and buying. Mental health. Mergers and acquisitions. New business. Social media. So You Want My Job. The future of work. The Making Of Today's Office. World Creative Rankings. By Bennett Bennett - June 5, Ogilvy formally announced the a top-down agency refresh, including organizational structure changes and new visual identity.

Share to Twitter. Share to LinkedIn. Share to Facebook. But he had no pride of authorship, and he could be quite self-critical. Ogilvy drafted with freshly sharpened pencils. Everything was scribbled out and rewritten and scribbled over again. He would go through a document and take out adjectives and adverbs, leaving only nouns and verbs, to make it clear — and readable. Short sentences, short paragraphs, no circumlocutions. People who think well, write well.

Woolly-minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters, and woolly speeches. Indeed, it may be this, more than anything else, that differentiates us from our competitors.

We do our damnedest to make it a happy experience for them. We help them when they are in trouble — with their jobs, with illnesses, with alcoholism, and so on. We help our people make the best of their talents. We invest an awful lot of time and money in training — perhaps more than any of our competitors. We abhor ruthlessness.

We admire people who work hard. Objectivity and thoroughness are admired. Superficiality is not admired. We despise and detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We are free from prejudice of any kind — religious prejudice, racial prejudice, or sexual prejudice.

We detest nepotism and every other form of favoritism. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as by anything else. A Living Legacy David Ogilvy was, and to a large extent still is, the most famous advertising man in the world.

He left a remarkable legacy, including a half-dozen campaigns, revolutionary at the time, that added an element of quality and taste to American advertising. But his legacy goes beyond the print ads and TV commercials he created. Perhaps his most enduring contribution was the concept of brand image, now mandatory in marketing discussions, and a concept that has reached beyond advertising even into politics.

He made the practice of advertising more professional, including using consumer research to guide the development of advertising. His embrace of direct marketing, the spiritual parent of the Internet, was ahead of its time. He was a consumerist before that concept had a name. Ogilvy was above all an institution builder. Reviews and mentions of publications, products, or services do not constitute endorsement or recommendation for purchase.

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