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OgilvyAction won last night ’s IPM Bowling tournament, beating The Marketing Store and A Little Bird in the final.

The event was at All Star Lanes in Brick Lane and was sponsored by prize incentive supplier Unmissable.

Ogilvy Group’s brand activation division OgilvyAction is delighted to announce the appointment of  Matt Gierhart (above) to the new role of head of social.

Gierhart joins from his own social media agency, The New Celebrity, run from London and New York handling global briefs with brands including Panasonic, Ford and Harcourt.

At OgilvyAction,  Matt will be responsible for exploring how social media fits within customer activation, understanding social shoppers and how they make purchasing decisions.

Matt started his career working in the US as a creative consultant at The Texas Department of Transportation, working on an initiative named “Don’t mess with Texas”. His role focused on trend monitoring and forecasting, and advising the department’s roster of ad agencies.

He has also worked in association with the Texas Board of Education to help rethink the way school districts and local communities communicate through digital channels.

Steve Harding, OgilvyAction global chief executive, says: “Matt has an extraordinary range of experience and has developed truly transferable skills in his eclectic career thus far. He has a great and well-deserved reputation as a fantastic strategic thinker and as someone who knows how to use the connections derived from social media to generate fantastic insights.”

Matt adds: “My experience with customer activation has always coincided with OgilvyAction’s founding principle – that knowing consumers are the key to engaging with them and therefore to any brand’s success.”



Ford Ka is launching a nationwide integrated campaign through OgilvyAction that uses hair salon Toni & Guy to reach its target audience of young women.

The four-pronged initiative, called Discover a Style You’ll Love, kicks off in mid October for a month through activity in shopping centres (London, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle) and all Toni & Guy salons amplified via a social media programme and supporting PR activity targeting women’s media.

Building on the proposition ‘Look deeper, you’ll discover more’, the push encourages shoppers and Toni & Guy customers to enter a competition – uploading a stylish photograph or video of themselves – to win a Ka for two months and the opportunity to take part in style adventures created for them by a team of influential bloggers.

The initiative resides online at Ford’s Ka Facebook site and there will also be a facility for consumers to enter online at each shopping centre location. Shopping centre activity concentrates on a convoy of ‘Style Kas’ that drive round local areas to encourage people into the Discover a Style You’ll Love experience at their nearby participating centre.

Their dazzling designs will stop passers-by and traffic in their tracks, allowing ambassadors with hip hairstyles and branded apparel to dispense flyers with further campaign information.

The flyers also flag up the free hair consultation on offer with expert Toni & Guy stylists at the Discover a Style You’ll Love experience and incentivise consumers to visit salons to have their image realised. Every hour, a crowd-pulling ‘Super Style’ performance will take place at the chosen shopping centre, with a resident stylist creating two fashion different looks and the audience asked to vote on their favourite.

For a month, Toni & Guy salons nationwide will display a range of collateral at key moments in the in-salon customer journey echoing campaign messages and encouraging clients to enter the online competition to win a Ford Ka of their own for two months.

The social media element of the campaign builds further interaction with Ford Ka’s target audience. It asks them to submit videos or pictures describing their look along with their social media profile links. Winners of a Ford Ka for two months will be chosen based on their style, on and offline.

They will also receive a special Toni & Guy ‘pass’ (good for unlimited use for two months) and the chance to participate in style adventures. These 12 adventures – one for each month’s ownership of the Ford Ka by six winners – will be designed by a carefully selected group of major social media influencers and tailored to each recipient. Adventures will be captured on video and seeded.

Harry Bailey, senior account manager at OgilvyAction says: “This stylish and playful national campaign will bring out the best in Ford Ka, reinforcing its stylish nature. It’s a great chance for consumers to check it out for themselves both on and offline, get involved, be rewarded for doing so and ultimately have a great experience thanks to Ford Ka.”

Howard Kee, events manager, Ford of Britain, adds: “This campaign takes the Ford Ka straight to its target audience of young women who may not normally visit or feel comfortable in the traditional dealership environment. We believe this will bring a funky and positive touch to the Ford Ka’s already mischievous image. Moreover, the integration of experiential with a powerful social media initiative amplifies the reach of our campaign like never before. ”

The Ogilvy Group UK is a proud member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association(WOMMA) UK which runs popular thought leadership events all year round, which – as well as being interesting – are a great opportunity to meet WOM and social marketing practitioners (client and agency side).

Our very own vice-chairman, Rory Sutherland (above), is speaking at the next thought leadership event on Thursday, 16th September at OgilvyAction HQ for what is bound to be an engaging and inspirational evening. He will be talking about understanding the new forces in behavioural economics (BE).

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.