« Ogilvy Group UK Home

Congratulations to all at OgilvyOne for winning a Silver Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Awards for last year’s IBM Seer mobile app.

The award was in the Cyber Lions section which had the most number of entrants per category this year. This was a fantastic team effort involving many people, so the short list below doesn’t include everyone who helped make this happen. To see them all, click here. But thanks to…

Colin Nimick, Emma De La Fosse, Charlie Wilson, Pavlos Themistocleous, Jamie Romain, Richard Barker, Nina Mynk and Nick Bennett.

And for those that haven’t yet seen the evolution of the IBM Seer to this year’s brilliant mobile app, click here to see how IBM Seer 2010 is even better!

If you’ve missed all the fuss about OgilvyOne’s IBM Seer app over the last week then we suggest you have a quick catch up by clicking here.

And as the crowds continue to gather for the business end of the tournament, the IBM Seer app is making a little stir of its own! Click on the link below to watch our very own Mark Sweatman and IBM’s Alan Flack discuss the app on the BBC Click feature (the beeb’s flagship technology programme) on BBC London News.

BBC Click – Gadgets Embraced by Wimbledon Championships.

In response to the question posed above, the answer is: either Y. Lee Abbas from Hokkaido, Japan; Todd Herman from Edmonton, Canada; or Eric Polins from Tampa, USA.

These are the three talented finalists who have beaten off competition from over 230 entrants in 12 countries to have a chance to win the coveted title of ‘The World’s Greatest Salesperson’ when they travel to Cannes on Monday 2nd June.

Their three winning video submissions can be viewed athttp://www.youtube.com/ogilvy.

They will appear at a special seminar at the International Advertising Festival, where the audience will vote in real-time for the ultimate winner who will receive a three month fellowship with OgilvyOne to help craft the sales guide to the 21st century.

“We’re excited by the overwhelming interest in salesmanship and the caliber of talent that the contest has attracted. We look forward to working with the ultimate winner to redefine and reinvent selling for the 21st century,” said Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide.

Because the standard of entries was so high, another eight contestants from countries including India, Germany, the USA and our very own UK, have had their highly commended videos included on an ‘Honour Roll” which can also be viewed at Ogilvy’s youtube channel.

To read more about the competition, click here. And if you want to keep right up to date with the rest of the competition, click on these facebook and twitter links. For further details, go to the Linkedin page.

Colin Nimick, executive creative director of OgilvyOne, London, will chair the Loerie Awards 2010 experiential panel. As veteran at Ogilvy since 1987, he has scooped numerous awards for his work for blue-chip brands such as American Express, Cancer Research UK and IBM.

His “Smoke is Poison” campaign for Cancer Research received the accolade of “DM Campaign of the Decade” from Campaign magazine.

Colin, who is visiting South Africa for the first time, says he is particularly looking forward to seeing the diversity demonstrated in work entered into the Loeries.

“The challenges agencies face in Africa and the Middle East are quite often different from those we face in Europe, which can lead to a totally diverse, more vibrant, approach to developing creative,” he says.

Judging Week takes place from 17 – 25 August and a Judges Seminar will be held on 20 August, where Nimick will talk on his work.

“I was really impressed with Colin’s professional attitude towards judging,” says Loeries board member Nici Stathacopoulos, who first met Nimick in 2005 as a fellow judge in the Direct Category at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. “His insights and ability to cut through much of the dialogue was refreshing. I am thrilled to have him on board, following the high standards set by our previous Jury Chairs.”

The Loeries are South Africa’s most prestigious advertising awards and will be held in Cape Town from 1st to 3rd of October.

Further to the last post about the Amex “Perceptions of Coverage” campaign, here’s a story from Media Week that makes for fascinating reading.

According to Media Week, outdoor media owner Clear Channel and out-of-home (ie poster and billboard) agency Kinetic tested digital ads from the washing detergent brand Surf by BBH, American Express by Ogilvy, Lloyds TSB by RKCR/Y&R and a fourth unnamed advertiser to determine which ads consumers engaged with most.

The research used new face-tracking technology which can not only determine whether someone walking past the digital ad is looking at the poster but also the person’s gender, an estimate of their age and what mood they are in.

The study found that consumers were 1.42 times more likely to be happy when looking at the ‘It’s not just for posh nosh’ American Express ad than the average ad. Reading this, of course, made us quite happy too!

We’ve included another couple of executions from the campaign – just click on the thumbnails to make them bigger!