Score: 7
Last year: 6
How the agency rates itself: 7
It is impossible to look back on Ogilvy & Mather London’s 2016 without starting with the fruits of the efforts made in the final months.
The £50m Vodafone and £68m Boots accounts, won by the shop with a little help from WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell in January 2017, will be agame-changer for O&M.
After years of school report write-ups lamenting O&M’s inability to make a real mark on the UK ad market beyond its global client fiefdoms, change has finally arrived. Yes, both moves were WPP plays, but Charlie
Rudd and his team will have control over them as proper UK accounts.
Following years at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Rudd couldn’t have hoped for a better introduction to the advantages of working at WPP. His management gang of Mick Mahoney, Kevin Chesters and Clare Donald appear to be getting along nicely too. Well before Sorrell did his magic, the team had shown that they could bring in business on their own. Success included some decent government accounts, including the campaign to promote home-buying schemes, the well-regarded Time to Change mental-health awareness push and the expanded National Citizen Service, as well as a place on the new Crown Commercial Service roster.
Among last year’s reel, a charming digital ad for Philips about an Elvis impersonator and a Dove film challenging the way women are judged on their looks show Mahoney is settling into the creative department. Replicating the scale of O&M’s recent new-business success might be difficult. But the meaty new pieces of business and work such as the new Time to Change spot, which was released in February, suggests 2016 set a very solid foundation for this year.
How the agency describes its year in a tweet
#WeAreJustGettingStarted
Score key: 9 Outstanding 8 Excellent 7 Good 6 Satisfactory 5 Adequate 4 Below average 3 Poor 2 A year to forget 1 Survival in question