Ogilvy & Mather

Ogilvy & Mather

Supriya Choudhary

Prof: Dr.Sean Gresh

CMN 6100

Introduction

A unified communication model is key to be successful in today’s industry. “Many companies take a tactical, short-term approach to communicating with key constituencies, which is not only nonstrategic but may be inconsistent with the corporate strategy” (Argentini, Howell & Beck, 2005, p.83). And this is exactly what we see in Ogilvy & Mather’s case. Everything was going well in the company. Their vision was “ just keep doing the same thing, better” (Ibarra & Sacklet, 2011, p.4). However, the company started losing major accounts to its competitors as it failed to adapt to its clients’ changing demands and became known as ‘Beleaguered Ogilvy & Mather’.

In April 1991, Charlotte Beers was hired as the new CEO and Chairman of O&M Worldwide. Her appointment as a CEO created apprehension and anxiety among the executives, as she was the first outsider to ever to run the company. However, with her influential leadership charisma and her presence, she was successful in making a positive impression with the internal people. She understood the challenges faced by O&M both internally as well as externally, realized the need for change in the organization and acted as a change strategist to bring a cultural change in the organization. She crafted out a common vision with her senior team “To be the agency most valued by those who most value brands” and embed the concept of ‘Brand Stewardship’ through the company.

The Wrongs, Strengths, Weaknesses and the ‘Why Nots’ at O&M

Her cultural change effort “was still fragile” and her new strategy for O&M “was not well understood below the top-tier of executives” (Ibarra & Sacklet, 2011,p.1). Employees below the managerial level lacked the awareness of how to use the principles of Brand Stewardship. Only a small population at O&M understood and was aware of Brand Stewardship, but not expert at it. Moreover, there were many who were still non-believers. According to Matha & Boehm (2008), “ Before employees truly commit to action, they ask why questions:

Why are we headed in this direction?

Why must we change? Or why don’t we change?

A complete understanding of “whys” helps employees set priorities and communicate knowledge they have that could help others in the organization do their jobs and connect their jobs to enterprise wide activity” (p.65). However, in this case, we see Beer and her senior team members, even though they worked persistently to spread the message of Brand Stewardship throughout the company, still failed. The biggest drawback was lack of communication. She and her team was unsuccessful to discuss ‘how’ to achieve Brand Stewardship into everyday practice at O&M. “On strategy direction not only set goals, but also explains how employees can achieve the goals in a very concrete, physical, actionable terms”(M&B, p.49). I feel that she should have taken a step further in communicating her vision to the employees so that they could be well versed with Brand Stewardship and encourage and foster this culture at O&M. Moreover, employees could not relate themselves to it, as there was neither a rulebook to show them any insights on how to get things done nor were there any benchmark set by any of the executives, as they were not committed to it. We see that she failed to “align leaders up and down the organization” (M&B, p.18).  If leaders are not aligned with their understanding of the strategic message then they cannot be strong advocates of it.