Ogilvy & Mather must hate advertising. This year it created a cereal campaign that makes fun of cereal campaigns (and those who buy it), a coffee campaign that gave away its ad budget, and a viral spot that slaughtered fashion and beauty advertising. It doesn’t matter, because after the run the agency’s had, clients trust it completely. Each of these campaigns (for Post’s Shreddies cereal, Kraft’s Maxwell House coffee and Unilever’s Dove soap, respectively) have driven sales and caught consumers’ eyes.
Geoff Craig, vice-president and general manager, brand building at Unilever, has praised Ogilvy since “Evolution” exploded in late 2006. He is no less generous now that the Dove Film “Onslaught” has emerged as its worthy descendent, artfully illustrating advertising’s broken view of beauty.
“Ogilvy has a roster of incredibly talented people,” Craig says. “Everyone says ‘It’s easy because it’s Dove.’ Well, four years ago Dove was just a bar of soap.”
Soap sales are up thanks to Ogilvy, though Craig won’t give exact figures. But more important is that Dove showed the ad industry what O&M, and advertising itself, was capable of.
“So many clients became open to unconventional solutions after Evolution,” says Janet Kestin, the agency’s co-creative director. “Once there was some success and precedent, other clients wanted in on it.”
Kraft’s Maxwell House coffee certainly put its trust in Ogilvy. The Brew Some Good campaign—which slashed a typical TV budget to give the difference to small charities—was a last-minute idea that replaced a ready-to-roll U.S. campaign that focused on the product’s new arabica bean formulation.
Eric Yeung, senior product manager for Maxwell House, and Nancy Vonk, co-creative director at Ogilvy, didn’t think the U.S. campaign would work in this country. So five weeks before the scheduled launch of the ads in Canada, Yeung, Kestin and Vonk decided to produce something homegrown.
The product focus of the American ads gave way to the stripped-down TV spots that showed only a coffee mug and the words “The average TV ad costs $245,000. This one costs $19,000. Where should we spend the difference?” It was followed by an invitation to nominate charitable recipients, and a final word on the new formulation.
Yeung says both he and his U.S. counterparts are happier with the arrangement, as are the recipients of the program’s donations.
Shreddies cereal is perhaps the biggest Ogilvy story this year. The 68-year-old brand needed to be refreshed, and Ogilvy obliged with a tongue-in-cheek take on product innovation—“new” Diamond Shreddies, a literal twist on the old design.
Consumers responded with everything from chuckles to disbelief—the more incredulous letters were read in the ads themselves by a straight faced “president of Shreddies.” The campaign won the Interactive Grand Clio in the spring, but more importantly baseline sales jumped 18%, and company testing revealed Shreddies’ brand recognition scored 52% higher than competitors. Post has since significantly loosened its vetting process to give the agency a freer hand to steer the brand.
“There is less focus on structure and process and more focus on idea sharing and getting to a strong end result,” says Jennifer Hutchinson, Post Cereals’ director of marketing.
If Ogilvy actually does hate advertising, it’s too bad. It’s producing some really great ads.
