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To celebrate the art of gifting, OgilvyAction has collaborated with Scotch® Pop-Up Tape to create an interactive game of Pass the Parcel on their microsite.

Take a trip down memory lane by playing the game to see if you’re a winner. Just click on this link here: http://ptp.3muk.co.uk/. There are plenty of great prizes up for grabs, including Kodak EASYSHARE P725 Digital Frames, iPod Shuffles, Molton Brown travel sets and Milka chocolate.

After you’ve played, why not pass the parcel onto your friends & family via Facebook, Twitter or email and give them a chance to win too – they might even let you share their prize.

Good luck

Earlier this month a new Digital Lab was opened at the Ogilvy offices in Westbourne Terrace.

The Lab was inspired by the original Ogilvy Digital Lab at Canary Wharf, and has been coordinated by OgilvyAction and Ogilvy Healthworld staff based at Westbourne Terrace.

The technology has been provided by our Digital Lab partners and showcases the latest and most innovative in digital technology to our staff and clients, allowing them to get hands-on experience, and to develop, test and deploy innovative content for state-of-the-art platforms:

– Augmented reality demos (CrossPlatform)
– A 360° TV (Yershon Media Solutions)
– A gaming pod (EA Video Games)
– A wireless mobile chargebox (Scramblr)
– A Holobox (activ-8 3D)
– Interactive iPhone gaming (Velti)
– Amplifi wifi content delivery technology (The Bright Place)
– A touch table (Touch It)
– QR code clothing (QRazyStuff)
– Point-and-find technology (Nokia)
– An interactive floor projection (EyeClick).

A Labs spokeswoman says: “All of this equipment has huge potential for everyone – from self-educating in the latest technologies and digital advertising opportunities to touring the Digital Lab with our clients to get them thinking and doing.”

Find out more on the Lab Rats blog here.

Steve Harding (above), currently CEO of OgilvyAction in the EMEA region,  will assume the role of Global CEO of OgilvyAction, with immediate effect.

Steve, a British national based in London, has been part of the five-person management collective which has run the business over the past seven months.

Miles Young, Ogilvy’s worldwide CEO, says:  “Steve has been the convenor of our management team, and it is natural that he should step up.  He is truly an activation professional.  He has selling in his bones, and a real vision for how the business creates strategic advantage by affecting behaviours.  Our ambition for the business, which is showing high growth, is very substantial.  Steve and his superb team are tasked with positioning to lead this discipline as a global ‘must-have’ for clients old and new.”

Harding joined Ogilvy in May 2005 when he merged his activation company Tarantula with Ogilvy & Mather’s 141 Worldwide, becoming the CEO of the merged operations.   In 2007, when 141 Worldwide was relaunched as OgilvyAction, Harding was named CEO, OgilvyAction EAME. At the end of 2009 when the OgilvyAction Global Leadership Team was established, he became an inaugural member.

Steve comments: “I’m very excited about taking on the OgilvyAction Global role.  The activation marketplace is clearly one of the most dynamic marketing disciplines today.  I know with the help of our leadership team we will achieve our mission of becoming the world’s best brand activation network.”

OgilvyAction’s management team that Steve will lead also includes Sheila Hartnett, CEO, North America; John Goodman, President, Asia Pacific; Regis Duarte, General Manager, Latina; and David Fox, Worldwide Managing Director, BAT.

Harding started his career at Smith and Nephew, followed by Carlsberg Tetley both in sales and marketing roles.  He then moved to the agency side in the early 1990’s joining a sales promotion start-up called USP. Steve then became MD of the newly formed CSP, which he left in 1998 to start up Tarantula Activation Communications, where he oversaw the development of the company in the UK as well as its international presence in Russia, China, Uzbekistan and Japan.

Wired Magazine have published the latest Wired 100 in their May issue – the Wired 100 Digital Power Brokers.

Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy Group UK‘s Vice-chairman) is in at number 52 and Nicole Yershon (Ogilvy’s Director of innovative solutions) is in at 94.

They are the only two ‘traditional’ ad people to make the 100, and they are both from Ogilvy – we think that is a pretty big deal, well done to you both!

You can see the countdown from 51 – 100 online here http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/features/the-wired-100-positions-51-to-100.aspx or buy the May issue of Wired for the full 100.

courtesy of David Llewelyn-Jones http://zeitgeistandstuff.wordpress.com/

Increasingly, there seems to be an Orwellian slant to the machinations of the Internet. Last summer, early adopters of the Kindle and fans of George Orwell would probably have been rather frustratingly struck by the irony of waking up to find their library somewhat diminished. As one blog writes,

“In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.” On Friday, it was “1984″ and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm”, that were dropped down the memory hole – by Amazon.com.”

Another blog notes that the Kindle is “basically a device that Amazon controls that you just happen to have in your hands.” The novels were removed after being added by a company that did not have the sufficient rights to them. This may be sufficient reason to remove the product from the store; it does not, however, excuse the way in which Amazon went about systematically removing copies that were on owner’s devices, who had already paid them. The incident was noted in a more recent editorial in the FT, evincing a mounting ownership creep on behalf of major corporations. Now, more than ever, when products are not only files on your desktop but stored remotely in a cloud, a consumer’s rights to ownership have never felt less tangible.

Read the full article here.

The latest Many Ogilvy Hands expedition landed in Uganda yesterday! You can keep up with what they’re up to through the blogs, updates and latest tweets on the brand new website at http://www.manyogilvyhands.com.

And as they begin a week of digging, carrying and generally getting their hands mucky helping build a new secondary school for 450 kids – remember, it’s never too late to make a donation…

Here are the Ogilvy folk who are currently Uganda-bound:
Amanda Cragg, Jenny McGregor, Anna O’Leary, Julie Borland, Julie Flemming, Justin Cairns, Bradly Rogers, Alex Pryce, Alex Meunier and Nick Bennett.

We wish them all the very best of luck!

Thanks everybody, and don’t forget to check out their shiny new website.

3 times a year we send 10 employees from across the group out to Uganda for a week to help with building a secondary school in the village of Buikwe in Uganda.

So far, OgilvyAction has sent Adrien Raphoz, Ruth Tierney and Alice Gilsenan.  The next OgilvyAction employee to go will be Alex Meunier who files out next week!

Each employee has to raise enough funds to get their airfare and other expenses covered before they can go.  The latest fund raising venture was the Many Ogilvy Hands Masquerade Ball on February 17th.

Courtesy of Jordi Connor – http://zeitgeistandstuff.wordpress.com/

An interesting new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in the US claims that shoppers have a prepared mental budget to allow for impulse purchases.

The study, conducted in Texas involved asking shoppers what items they planned to purchase, how much they expected to spend on the planned items, and how much they expected to spend on the total trip.

Upon leaving the store the shoppers presented their receipts and answered some questions about themselves and the experience.

Over three quarters allowed themselves some ‘In-store slack‘ for unplanned purchases and the authors propose that this happens because we anticipate having ‘Unplanned wants’ and ‘Forgotten needs’ as we shop. However, such behaviour can affect household budgets for shoppers with a low temptation threshold.

The authors, Karen M. Stilley, Jeffrey Inman and Kirk L. Wakefield note that, “Less-impulsive individuals who shop most aisles tend to spend the money available from in-store slack, but don’t exceed their overall budgets. In contrast, in-store slack leads to overspending for highly impulsive individuals who shop most aisles.

“For the majority of consumers, having in-store slack appears to be a rational way to use the store to cue needs and preserve self-control. Highly impulsive individuals may want to consider planning as many purchases in advance as possible.”

Such findings demonstrate the importance of in-store communications because the study implies that shoppers actively expect brands to prompt them to make a purchase. To read a bit about our own study on shopper behaviour, click here.