Ogilvy offers recession marketing advice: Go mobile

By Dan Butcher

March 6, 2009

Encourage innovation

Ogilvy North America is helping clients to do more with their marketing and spend less in today's recessionary marketplace.

This new offering brings together Ogilvy's marketing strategy, analytics, measurement, email, technology and media services to provide its clients with suggestions regarding the challenges that most companies are facing in this recession. Ogilvy has specifically designed "21 Ogilvy Solutions" to give clients strategies and methods for maximizing the value and performance of their marketing budgets.

"Last autumn, we actually developed this based upon feedback we got starting in the midst of the economic explosion, volcano, or downturn, and we started monitoring the most pressing questions our customers were asking," said Marc Fleishhacker, managing director for Ogilvy, New York.

The demand for the practice surfaced early in the autumn of 2008 as Ogilvy's leadership began meeting with clients who were anxiously looking for smart, measurable and cost effective marketing mediums that would support their businesses and brands in this difficult economy.

"Clients were asking how to redefine their marketing budget, which is the Holy Grail of marketing questions," Mr. Fleishhacker said. "The key driver of all the questions clients were asking with increasing urgency was really all about speed and how to cut their budget intelligently.

"We came up with 21 solutions, many of which include what I will call a channel-agnostic approach, and mobile is big a part of it," he said. "Brands should ask themselves ‘Am I sufficiently leveraging mobile?' and ‘How do I get more value out of SMS programming?'

"The need to more rapidly and effectively analyze what competitors are doing and where competitors are leveraging mobile, we help our clients do that as well."

Ogilvy North America is the largest unit of the Ogilvy Group agency network, a subsidiary of WPP Group plc. It has offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Durham, Minneapolis, Denver and throughout Canada.

The impact of today's severe recession is far greater than those of the past.

However, if there is a silver lining, it is the powerful measurement, analytics and digital services that are more efficient than the approaches that were available in past downturns, according to Ogilvy.

The 21 Ogilvy Solutions are all customizable based on specific client needs and offer strategies that focus on various topics, including extracting more value from customer databases, further leveraging social and free media, email and mobile optimization, reengineering loyalty programs and stringent channel planning.

The strategies are all focused on rapid assessment and quick delivery of services meant to ameliorate the impact of the current economic crisis.

"Brands want to know ‘How do we increase customer engagement with our SMS programs?'" Mr. Fleishhacker said. "Our email and mobile optimization solution is specific to mobile channel.

"Most of our U.S. customers are anywhere from children to adolescents when it comes to mobile," he said. "Clients are finally seeing the huge opportunities that mobile can bring them, with 57 percent of the U.S. population using text messaging on a regular basis and 100 to 110 year on year growth in the SMS channel."

Downturns have always proven to be opportunities to build brands and capture market share, according to Ogilvy.

Brands need to monitor what their customers are doing, what they are thinking and how the competition is reacting. More and more brands are using mobile to reach out to those customers.

Ogilvy's tips draw on the expertise of the more than 100 professionals in its North American consulting and planning practices.

The new practice follows the launch, in November 2008, of a global Web site at http://www.ogilvyonrecession.com that provides a series of downloadable "Ogilvy Perspectives" that draw upon the agency's experience across all marketing disciplines.

"We have clients in the retail sector and the CPG sector such as Kraft, as well as the travel sector, alert-based businesses, and mobile is a value-add channel to their business," Mr. Fleishhacker said. "We offer consulting and research, letting brands know what opportunities mobile can offer to their customers and analyzing whether companies are set up from a database perspective to leverage the highly measurable nature of mobile channel itself.

"We help with mobile search planning and buying, and we have a messaging platform for both SMS and MMS, we can set up short codes and SMS alerts, as well as promotions contests and sweeps, voting, polling and text-to-screen," he said. "Mobile is a huge part of everything we do, and all of our clients are clamoring for the measurement and analysis piece.

"Everyone is cutting budgets and wants to spend smarter, and as painful as the recession is, it's actually a very good thing for marketers and a great thing for Ogilvy, because we've always been focused on measuring and properly allocating clients' investment."

The recession focuses people's attention on measurement and accountability, and prioritization is what marketers should be doing, regardless of the recession. More and more brands are making mobile priority No. 1.

"2009 is the year that mobile becomes a mass channel, and the recession will help that along," Mr. Fleishhacker said. "The level of saturation in the marketplace in terms of handset distribution, with the younger generation who are ready adopters of mobile getting older every year, is driving up the food chain.

"The mobile phone not just a phone but the phone in the household," he said. "Mobile behavior is very distinct, and to find the best way to interact with consumers, look what they've done in mobile."

Comments on "Ogilvy offers recession marketing advice: Go mobile"

1. Tracy Hill says:

   March 17, 2009 at 12:58pm

   I agree that companies will be able to do this for themselves once they get managers that are capable of understanding technology. Product mangers need to be versed in advertising, promotions, and new media to be able to integrate all areas into a successful product strategy and guide their agencies effectively. Everyone sends texts and understands how they work. So it doesn’t take an agency to figure out a new way to promote using the technology, it only requires an innovative thinker.
   
   

2. G B-Bey says:

   March 16, 2009 at 8:48pm

   Ogilvy and the rest of the advertising world has no idea what they are doing. They are focusing on the wrong models. Not one place did they mention social networks which are the new email and sms. These guys think they can hop on something and rebrand already existing technologies with their fancy advertising and marketing lingo..
   
   “Our email and mobile optimization solution is specific to mobile channel. "
   
   “We help with mobile search planning and buying, and we have a messaging platform for both SMS and MMS, we can set up short codes and SMS alerts, as well as promotions contests and sweeps, voting, polling and text-to-screen,”
   
   Advertising gibberish... Companies have been doing this in Europe and Asia for years.
   
   If brands were smart they would see that they don't need these advertising agencies and can do this for themselves. The people are what dictate what works or not. You can't sit in a bubble and try to think for the consumers. These guys are missing the whole point. But I guess they need to create fancy lingo to prove their worth to these brands. I can provide a solution to brands that will work effectively 100% of the times. I have done it because I listen to the consumers.
   Copywriters and ad guys like Ogilvy are all Fughazy at best.
   
   Can someone please read the IBM study that details the end of advertising as we know it. These companies are trying to hijack a market, dictate what's happening and make brands think they know what's going on. If you ask them directly. How do you reach the consumer and they can't tell you clearly without all the jargon then they are full of you know what.
   
   The first answer needs to be we listen to the consumer. Then they need to tell you how they listen and what the consumer tells them that helps them push your products or services.