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Earlier this year, Ford announced its first-ever global car, the all-new Focus (available now in showrooms across the UK).

Tonight the UK ad campaign for the acclaimed vehicle breaks with a 60-second TV commercial (see above) on most major terrestrial and multi-channel stations.

The ad concentrates on the high-tech that make the new Focus so special – Active Grill Shutter, Active Park Assist, Blind Spot Information System, ECOBoost, Low Speed Safety System, Powershift Transmission, Traffic Sign Recognition, Torque Vectoring Control and TDCi Start Stop.

The campaign encompasses press, outdoor, digital, direct mail and social media – come back to ogilvy.co.uk regularly to find out more, or go to the the Ford UKTV You Tube Channel from today to see other executions. And don’t forget to visit the Ford Focus Facebook page

For those interested in the thinking behind the launch of the global Ford Focus and the global marketing masterplan, watch the video below, featuring Ford’s global chief marketer, Jim Farley, and WPP (owner of Ogilvy) boss Sir Martin Sorrell…

Ogilvy & Mather’s acclaimed ad for football diversity charity Kick It out – a hard-hitting anti-homophobia film entitled “Unacceptable” – picked up another accolade this week when it won Silver for best Public Service Advertising at the British Arrows (formerly the British Television Advertising Association) awards.

The film’s creatives were Andy Bird and Sue Higgs.

You can watch the film by clicking on the window above (warning: contains scenes and language some viewers may find offensive or distressing).

Ogilvy & Mather is today delighted to announce that it has appointed Sian Brigg (above) as New Business Director.

Brigg has been at O&M for 14 years, joining the account handling department straight from university. In her early years at the agency she had a stint as a new business manager before returning to account management. She was promoted to a Business Director in 2007 and has worked on a number of key brands including Huggies, Kraft and Nestle.

She will report into Judy Mitchem, Chief Marketing Officer of Ogilvy Group UK and work closely with Hugh Baillie, O&M’s CEO.

Judy comments: “Sian is a dynamic individual with strong strategic skills and a bias to action. She will be a great ambassador for Ogilvy & Mather.”

Ford of Britain this week, at selected shopping centres nationwide, launched an augmented reality campaign featuring the new 7 seat Grand C-MAX car on JCDecaux Innovate’s mall six-sheet screens. The campaign allows people to handle and explore miniaturised 3D ‘virtual’ models of the cars on screen and in the palm of their hand.

The campaign, created by Ogilvy & Mather in London and digital production company Grand Visual, allows users to interact with the car simply by holding their hands up to the screen. Virtual buttons allow the user to choose the colour of the car, open doors, fold the seats flat, turn the car 360 degrees and select demos of the car’s key features such as Active Park Assist.

This is the first outdoor augmented reality campaign to use 3D depth imaging technology in the UK. Rather than using a printed marker or symbol as a point of reference for interaction, the user interface is based on natural movement and hand gestures allowing any passerby to immediately start interacting with the screen content. A Panasonic D-Imager camera accurately measures the users real-time spatial depth output and Inition’s augmented reality software merges this real life footage with the 3D photo-real Grand C-MAX on screen.

The campaign was planned and booked by Mindshare and Kinetic and will run for two weeks at Bluewater, Greenhithe; Bullring, Birmingham; Metrocentre, Gateshead; St David’s, Cardiff; Princess, East Kilbride and in Westfield, Derby. This highly innovative campaign from Ford follows on from the SMAX ‘Ice Climber’ activity last year which also eschewed traditional billboards in favour of more immersive technologies which allow consumers to interact more intimately with the brand.

Mark Simpson at Ford says: “Using live interactive outdoor campaigns is a great way to really engage with the audience in a way that is not possible with static posters. This has enabled us to create a targeted and tactical campaign that is relevant and fun to use.”

Andy Dibb, Associate Creative Partner at O&M adds: “It’s eye catching, intrusive, groundbreaking and brings to life the idea of ‘Innovation in your hands’. And it’s a great way to get hold of a new C-MAX”.

Dan Dawson, Digital Director at Grand Visual concludes: “Digital outdoor enables advertisers to get closer to consumers. Ford’s clever use of the latest technology is a great fit for the next-generation C-MAX cars. Customers can get a real feel for the cars before stepping foot in a showroom”.

As part of a large multi-national holding company (WPP plc), O&M gets a bit of an unfair press sometimes, particularly when it comes to speed, or lack thereof. Unfairly or not, small boutique ad shops are always seen as more fleet of foot than lumbering old giants like O&M.

But here’s an advert for Dove which shatters that tired old preconception. It’s an ad which appeard on p38 of the Metro newspaper this morning (14th February), but which didn’t even exist 60 hours previously!

That old romantic Gerry Human (executive creative director at O&M) came up with an idea for Valentine’s Day on Friday lunchtime. By 3 o’clock that afternoon it had been sold to the global client. By 5 o’clock, when the media agency had been pretty clear that there was no way to find space for Monday, Kevin Noble in account management called Metro and booked a page using his own credit card. By 5:30pm the team had received the necessary legal blessing to run the ad without having to face the wrath of the Beatles’ lawyers.

The visual was shot on Saturday under creative director Ivan Pols’ supervision; the global client, Fernando Machado, managed to reach the UK brand team for their approval on Saturday, via the European client team; the final artwork was approved Saturday evening and delivered by Redworks on Sunday…

And today, you will see a copy of the ad on page 38 of Metro London.

Gerry says: “It’s a nice tactical piece of work that will make millions of people smile and make them feel good about Dove. I like that.”

And Hugh Baillie, CEO of O&M adds simply: “We can move fast when necessary!”

Following on from the very successful ‘Boxing Day Feet Up Feast’ over the Christmas period, the second TV instalment of O&M’s Hellmann’s “Inspire” campaign ‘Loved Up Mash’ breaks today.

The campaign opens consumers to new and exciting ways of using Hellmann’s in cooking, ways they will not have previously considered or been aware of.

After all, everybody knows Hellmann’s can serve to elevate a sandwich from the mediocre to the superior, but how many know that it also makes delicious chocolate brownies!? (at 55% less saturated fat than if substituted for butter – try it, it’s not that weird, people use salted butter after all). The campaign also includes four print executions (pop back tomorrow to see those), “Loved Up Mash”, “Fishy Delishy”, “Paradise Pasta” and, of course, “Posh Brownies” while from April the third TV ad, ‘Fishy Delishy’ will be on air.

O&M’s ‘Loved Up Mash’ uses the same cute stop-frame animation technique as the ‘Boxing Day’ commercial, contributing to a warm, homely and joyful feel that has become synonymous with the brand and will be airing on a wide range of channels through February and March.

The ads were written and art directed by Alun Howell and Guilherme Nobrega respectively, produced by Matthew Ellingham and directed by Danny Cohen.

During its first trip to MIDEM (the music industry’s annual global conference-cum-get-together at Cannes),  Ogilvy & Mather hopes to cause quite a stir with a provocative pitch session that challenges the very purpose of MIDEM’s Monday ‘Synch Day’.

Ogilvy’s presentation in Auditorium K at 12.00 on Monday 24th will suggest that  music professionals need to ‘look beyond the cheque’ and contribute more than just a piece of audio to an advertising campaign if they truly want to provide added value both to advertisers and their own artists.

“Synch is a necessary part of what we do as advertisers but our point is, licensing shouldn’t be the end of the conversation”, says Ogilvy’s Music Manager Tara Austin (below), daughter of Beggars Banquet co-founder Nick Austin.

“The music industry is changing and just at the same time we, and our clients, are being squeezed. Publishers should no longer be looking at just how much they can get for a synch deal, but rather how can they collaborate with the agency to get the most out of the media spend our clients put into a campaign – should they be selling downloads alongside the advertised product in online supermarkets? Giving the track away or allowing it to be remixed in branded apps?

“We all need to stop being so lazy about the deals we’re doing and recognise the greater opportunities out there to create added value: value for our brands and, ultimately, value for the artist whose music our campaigns promote.”

Ogilvy cites the example of the phenomenal success  Guillemots’ leader Fyfe Dangerfield enjoyed after his cover of Billy Joel’s ‘Always a Woman’ featured in the 2010 John Lewis ad campaign. Not only did Dangerfield subsequently release the single, due to popular demand (130,000 youtube views in 6 days), but both his cover and the Billy Joel original entered the UK singles chart for a number of weeks.

“”It’s a great song’ says Tara, “but the beautiful thing is, not only was its release a success for the music industry it was also a great success for John Lewis – and repeatedly, when their target audience hear that track on the radio or from the download they purchased they’re filled with love for the brand.”

“Music is a great place for brands to build engagement with their audience,” adds Alasdair Graham (above), creative partner at Ogilvy. “So it seems silly that we’re not all doing more, if nothing else we’ve come to MIDEM for the first time this year, to let the music industry know that if they have great innovative ideas for how we can push things further, then Ogilvy’s all ears.”

Ogilvy & Mather Advertising is today delighted to announce that it has appointed Gerry Human (above) as its new Executive Creative Director, with immediate effect.

The move completes the circle of renewed leadership at Ogilvy and emphasizes a commitment to the agency’s objective of producing outstanding creative work.

Hugh Baillie, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising’s CEO says: “Gerry was an obvious choice for the role, thanks to his experience in running a very large, successful creative department in South Africa and now 2 years in London leading one of Ogilvy’s biggest and most prestigious global accounts (Dove) – not to mention 44 Cannes Lions under his belt”.

He will be supported by creative directors Will Awdry and Dennis Lewis, and will continue to work on Dove, supported on that account by Integrated Creative Director Ivan Pols.

Gerry’s advertising career started in 1988 at Hunt Lascaris TBWA, followed by NetworkBBDO from 1995 to 1998. In 1998, he launched his own agency called HarrisonHuman, which was named Small Agency of the Year in 2002. In October 2003, Ogilvy South Africa acquired HarrisonHuman Bates, bringing Gerry on board as Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy Johannesburg. The Agency went on the have considerable success and was named Agency of the year several times during the period he worked there.

In 2009 he moved to London to take up the role of ECD Unilever Worldwide.

During his career, Gerry has worked on some of the world’s most renowned brands including Amstel, Audi, BMW, Castrol, Coca-Cola, Dove, KFC and Virgin Atlantic.

In addition to Cannes Lions, Gerry has also won four Loerie Grand Prix and over 50 Gold Loeries, South Africa’s most prestigious awards. Recent accolades have included a Gold film Lion and the 2010 Grand LIA for the Topsy foundation “Selinah”, as well as a Silver film Lion for Dove Men+Care (which debuted last year at Superbowl XLIV).

Hugh Baillie says: “We’re absolutely delighted that such an acclaimed creative as Gerry, whose track record speaks for itself, will now be the creative focus for O&M.”

Gerry adds: “I am flattered and thrilled that Hugh and Rachel have asked me to work with them at what is a very optimistic time for the agency. There’s a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I’m excited about it.”

Gerry is also a member of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Creative Council.

His work can be viewed at: www.gerryhuman.com

Ogilvy & Mather is delighted to announce that it has this promoted Jaimes Leggett (above) to Managing Director.

Leggett, who joined the agency in April as Director of Digital Acceleration, was formerly MD of digital shop Grand Union.

In his new role – effective January 2011 – Leggett will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the agency, freeing up O&M London’s CEO Hugh Baillie to concentrate on strategic matters and looking after the agency’s key accounts.

Hugh Baillie commented: “Since we appointed him earlier in the year Jaimes has made a big impact on the agency. He’s really speeded up our processes and he’s helped boost our digital credentials. His energy and enthusiasm have been infectious, his knowledge and experience invaluable.”

Leggett added: “This is an exciting time for us. Digital is playing an increasingly important role in our work and the results are starting to show. We’ve hired some great talent, won some important new business and already boosted our digital revenues.”

Described as “a digital thoroughbred”, Leggett began his career client-side at UMC in New Zealand before moving on to the digital agency DMD New Zealand in 2001. After a spell at LBi, he then joined Grand Union as an account director in 2005, becoming MD three years later.

During his career, he has worked on a number of prestigious domestic and international brands, including Sky, BT, Unilever, the COI, Eurostar, Nissan and Pfizer.

Jaimes sits on the IPA Digital Creative, Account Handling and Professional Development committees, as well as being an active member of NABS.

We’re delighted to announce today that Ogilvy & Mather London has won one of the biggest new business pitches of 2010 – the pan-European account for travel company Expedia, which is worth an estimated £40m in billings.

The agency won the account following a pitch against Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, DLKW Lowe and Saatchi & Saatchi. The process first kicked off in October, and was handled by the AAR. The appointment was made by Andrew Warner, the senior marketing director EMEA at Expedia.

The account will be run out of London, and O&M will now be responsible for handling a relaunch of Expedia across 12 European markets, including the UK.

We’ll have more details shortly – so please come back soon!