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Charlotte Beers At Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide (A)

Harvard Business School

9-495-031
Rev. October 12, 1999

Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide (A)
It was December 1993, and during the past year and a half, Charlotte Beers had found little time for reflection. Since taking over as CEO and chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in 1992, Beers had focused all her efforts on charting a new course for the world’s sixth-largest advertising agency. The process of crafting a vision with her senior management team had been—by all accounts—painful, messy, and chaotic. Beers, however, was pleased with the results. Ogilvy & Mather was now committed to becoming “the agency most valued by those who most value brands.” During the past year, the agency had regained, expanded, or won several major accounts. Confidence and energy appeared to be returning to a company the press had labeled “beleaguered” only two years earlier. Yet, Beers sensed that the change effort was still fragile. “Brand Stewardship,” the agency’s philosophy for building brands, was not well understood below the top tier of executives who had worked with Beers to develop the concept. Internal communication efforts to 272 worldwide offices were under way, as were plans to adjust O&M’s structures and systems to a new set of priorities. Not the least of the challenges before her was ensuring collaboration between offices on multinational brand campaigns. The words of Kelly O’Dea, her Worldwide Client Service president, still rang in her ears. “We can’t lose momentum. Most change efforts fail after the initial success. This could be the prologue, Charlotte . . . or it could be the whole book.”

Ogilvy & Mather
In 1948, David Ogilvy, a 38-year-old Englishman, sold his small tobacco farm in Pennsylvania and invested his entire savings to start his own advertising agency. The agency, based in New York, had financial backing from two London agencies, Mather & Crowther and S.H. Benson. “I had no clients, no credentials, and only $6,000 in the bank,”...