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by John Heredea 

London. It’s an inspirational city. Chalked full of museums and theatres, all within a stone’s throw of each other. However, Canary Wharf can often seem far removed from the inspirational surroundings tourists to the city are greeted with.

Given the global remits and international scope of the FM Global account, it thus made sense to hold our European PR Summit in a city where one can’t help but be inspired by their surroundings. Hence, the UK OPR FM Global team crossed the channel and journeyed to Paris in early July to meet with both our French and German OPR colleagues and FM Global’s European communications team for brainstorming sessions and to share ideas with our continental colleagues across the water.

Given the international make-up of the group (the UK team alone comprised of two Americans, a Canadian and a German, and one lonely Brit) we relished in the opportunity to liaise with our international colleagues on a day out of Canary Wharf. After a productive and collaborative half-day meeting, the teams decided to soak in some French culture, with a stroll along the Champs Elysees, brief tours of the Eiffel Tower and Arc De Triomphe and a brilliant dinner at a local brasserie prior to heading back to London.

All in all, a successful day out. We must have become inspired by our Parisien surroundings, as we’re currently implementing many of the strategies and initiatives outlined during the brainstorm.

by Tim Whirledge 

Good news- here at Ogilvy PR in London, we’ve been selected as Agency of Record for Embratur, the Brazilian Tourism Board.

We’ve been chosen to showcase the diversity and affordability of Brazil as a holiday destination to Blighty holiday makers. The team will support Embratur’s consumer marketing and trade activities at key industry events including World Travel Market in November.

Chris Fuzinatto, Director of the Brazilian Tourist Office in London said, “Ogilvy PR London was a natural choice to implement and coordinate our UK activities because of their understanding of and passion for the travel sector as well as their proven experience in delivering results.  We look forward to sharing our story so that people can discover the many hidden wonders of Brazil.” 

Our very own Rosie Robbins added, “Embratur’s sponsorship of the London Bossa Nova Festival in early July will be a swinging start to our campaign”.

Rosie, (for those of you who aren’t travel and tourism journos!) is our travel and tourism specialist here in the Wharf and claims to be able to speak fluent Spanish and Portugese. She qualifies this having had “a bit of banter” during an earlier campaign for Embratur, with none other than Brazilian World Cup winning legend Carlos Alberto, listening to him talk through his 1970 ‘wonder goal‘! It’s a terrible existence hey Rosie; all that South American travel and fire-side chats with living football legends?!

The aforementioned Bossa Nova festival will celebrate fifty years of the chilled-out Bossa Nova sound this year and will play host to acclaimed international musicians bringing a little bit of Rio to the South Bank. Well, nearly.

Our MD Kerrin said; “Adding such an important and beautiful country to our growing travel portfolio strengthens our reputation for providing journalists with creative and interesting ideas for travel and lifestyle stories. Furthermore, our broadcast and digital specialists will bring the sights and sounds of Brazil directly to holidaymakers surfing the ‘net looking for exciting and adventurous new destinations.” 

by Laurence Cook 

Choice is hell.  If you don’t believe me, just try to make a quick decision on what to buy on any supermarket shelf you can name.  There’s just too much to take in.

Fragmentation is the defining trait of modern life, not surprising when we are told daily of technology’s explosive impact.  We have more media channels than we know what to do with.  Torrents of information make our lives more stressful.  Everything is quicker.  Faster.  Immediate.  Whatever it is, we need it now. 

It is bad enough in our daily lives, but when you look at the impact of this trait in business, it is very serious indeed.

Corporate reputations have never been so at risk as they are today seemingly held together by gossamer threads. 

Broad goals and common themes are lost in microscopic analysis.  Silos develop.  Momentum stalls.  Far from moving in one purposeful direction, businesses discover they are in an expanding universe each department pulling away in all directions from the central core.  And, as with space, this movement is invisible to the naked eye; until it is too late.

Business is aware that forces are at work, but the remedies tend to focus on the effect rather than the cause.  Employee engagement schemes work at cross-purposes to investor relations programmes.  Customer experience development is developed in isolation to marketing initiatives.  Compliance to ever-increasing regulatory requirements is at odds with internal communications programmes encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship.  The result is not dissimilar to the permanent hole in the road as each utility takes its turn to dig up the road for essential maintenance in some Sisyphean job creation scheme. 

Often the remedies bring abrupt shifts in direction and emphasis, which test and stretch stakeholder relationships.  And, erode value and reputations.

This is a considerable management and leadership challenge.  And a communication opportunity.  Ambition and perception must be backed by reality.  It involves a concerted communication effort across the silos and functions of a modern organisation.  It is communication beyond the glossy ad campaign, the internal newsletter and state-of-the art digital online platform.  It is communication intimately linked to the operational well-being and structure of the business.

It is a focus on communications that realigns the business behind a credible, common goal, communications that recognises the importance of variety and innovation.  But, most important, communications that looks to results directly measurable in hard cash and active management of the risks to reputation inherent in operational structures.

Our goal at Ogilvy 2020 is to identify and mend the connections between the critical components or drivers of value in a business – ambition, reality and perception.  We create a planned interplay between these critical elements to help unlock hidden value in a business, reallocate resources efficiently and help make sure all pull in the same direction. 

Ogilvy PR has been shortlisted for 10 European SABRE Awards! 

Our European CEO Martin Liptrot said, “I am delighted to see us have so many great campaigns shortlisted for Sabre Awards in 2008. On behalf of the whole Ogilvy family we send our congratulations to those offices who have been selected and hope that we get to bring some more trophies home from Venice later this month.”

The SABRE winners will be announced at an award ceremony in Venice on Thursday 22 May. Good luck to everyone shortlisted from London!

A recent article on psychological research sheds interesting light on people’s behaviour in relation to price.  At its most basic, people expect more expensive things to work better, taste better and look better.  Think about it yourself.  How often have you spent more on something on the basis that the price is indicative of quality?  A bottle of wine, perhaps?  Organic food?  What this…hang on!  This is what brands have always been about.  A brand at its most basic was a marker of quality.  A guarantee of certain contents; certain processes followed; a contract with the purchaser that this was the real McCoy – it built an expectation.  And, as such, it cost a little more.

So why is this research interesting?  The researchers were perpetrating a fraud.  The wine used for the test was the same cheaper variety.  The drugs tested were in fact placebos with no medicinal value whatsoever. 

Interestingly, when the price was not shown the wine drinkers preferred the lowest priced.  When they trusted their own judgement, they went for what they liked, not a promise.  And that, to my mind, is why brands fight for their lives everyday.  If a brand fails to deliver on its promise, be it in big a way or small way, its reputation takes a knock, eroding trust and its value falls.  That’s bad for business. 

Consumer brands can focus on a dominant audience and a clearly defined set of characteristics – taste, colour, aroma – to revive their reputation.  Corporate brands (who might own a consumer brand or two) have a much wider range of people whose expectations need fulfilling such as investment performance, job security, responsible citizenship and so on.

Businesses need to manage their reputations actively on all fronts if they are to prosper and grow.  Effort here will help build up their immune system for bad times and keep them fit and healthy in good.  To be fair most businesses try to do this and devote resources to ensuring their vision, image and culture are all clearly defined though they are managed independently by different elements in the company. 

However, these three building blocks of reputation are dependent on each other and mutually reinforcing, which means we have opportunities to work across the management spectrum to make sure these connections work.  And when the connections do work, a company can live up to expectations.

Laurence Cook

Kiersten Zweibaum has joined us here in Ogilvy PR London as Managing Director and head of our Global Corporate Practice. Welcome Kiersten!As managing director, Kiersten will provide strategic leadership for corporate clients across our global network. She specializes in helping clients build and maintain their corporate reputations, from corporate brand building through issues and crisis management, and everything in between, including employer branding, CSR, influencer relationship building and strategic media relations. Kiersten comes to Ogilvy PR from GCI Group, where she was the director of its global corporate practice. With nearly 20 years of experience, she brings strong expertise in building the corporate reputations of her clients and leading multi-national teams. While at GCI Group, Kiersten was responsible for the operational and business leadership of the practice and focused on clients such as Darden Restaurants, CitiSmithBarney, Nike, British Airways and Goodman, among others. Prior to joining GCI Group, Zweibaum was at Ketchum where she served as Senior Vice President and Associate Director of its Corporate Practice. She has advised such clients as HSBC, American Express, FedEx, Delta Air Lines, First Data Corp, Borders Books & Music and more. Kiersten’s first day with us was on April 7. She will be based in our London office, but will have the opportunity to work with all of the offices across the network.

Welcome to Ogilvy Public Relations London brand new website. This is our blog section where we will be updating you with the latest news, views, things we’ve found that made us smile and insights from our London office.

To find out more about what we do, how we work, why we get out of bed in the morning and what we could potentially do for you and your business, drop one of New Biz guys Laurence or Ash a line. (You could also look at the ‘About Us’ section to your right which covers off our working philosophy).

In the meantime, here’s some stuff we like and we hope we can become a staple part of your RSS feed  too!

Our very own Rory making the front page in The Spectator with his usual wit, sharp eye and uncompromising writing style:

Mad Men are taking over the world. And that’s no bad thing

We didn’t realise you were not only one of the industry’s leading thinkers Rory, but a cycling champion too?! Arrr, the power of google…

Who could not link to the Huffington Post on a blog either, cracking stuff.

…and just finally, our very own “digital gurus” Rohit Bhargava and John Bell’s blogs, definitely worth keeping tabs on for all those wanting to make digital waves and pick up some thoughts from some digital PR experts.