History
Ogilvy & Mather was founded in 1948 by David Ogilvy, as "Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson, & Mather" in Manhattan with a staff of two and no clients. The company became a leading worldwide agency by the 1960s. Central to its growth was its strategy of building brands such as American Express, BP, Ford, Barbie, Maxwell House, IBM, Kodak, Nestlé, Cadbury and Unilever brands Pond's and Dove.
Ogilvy & Mather was built on Ogilvy's principles, in particular, that the function of advertising is to sell and that successful advertising for any product is based on information about its consumer.
His entry into the company of giants started with several iconic campaigns:
"The man in the Hathaway shirt" with his aristocratic eye patch; "The man from Schweppes is here" introduced Commander Whitehead, the elegant, bearded Brit, bringing Schweppes (and "Schweppervesence") to the United States.; "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"; and "Pablo Casals is coming home – to Puerto Rico", a campaign that Ogilvy said helped change the image of a country and was his proudest achievement. "Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream". This campaign helped Dove become the top selling soap in the U.S.
In 1989, The Ogilvy Group was purchased by WPP Group.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)