Six Benefits Ogilvy Offers to Its Clients

The Ogilvy Japan Group breaks through the conventions and stereotypes of Japanese advertising to provide innovative services that go beyond typical media and communication techniques.

We offer our clients the following six benefits

  1. [1] High-quality creative work
  2. [2] Communication strategies that are media- and channel-neutral
  3. [3] A transparent reward system
  4. [4] A matrix organization for flexible team formation
  5. [5] A unique management operating system
  6. [6] Fast and reasonably priced production services

What we value the most is high-quality creative work that has the power to convey a client’s message to the core of consumers’ hearts and minds. The types of creative work that can do this differ from one market to another. Thus, we must often develop original expressions instead of adapting global advertisements, sometimes even for clients with global brands.

Since Japanese advertising agencies tend to earn much of their profit through buying and selling time and space in various media, they tend to put more emphasis on the choice of media than on the quality of the creative work. Ogilvy maintains a media-neutral point of view. We consider all types of media, including TV, newspapers, digital channels, as well as in-store and out-of-home panels, without bias, and combine the best media to deal with client issues and meet client objectives. Media-neutrality is a truly unique standpoint that only a business model that does not rely on generating profit from media buying can possess.

Media-neutrality brings changes in the relationship between a client and an advertising agency. Advertising agencies need to think about clients, including the situations they face as well as their issues of concern, targets, and future objectives, and then proactively propose a selection of media and creative work that will promote client business development instead of simply responding to assignments on a one-off basis. Media-neutrality is an advantage that helps to form a true relationship between clients and advertising agencies.

Because of its media-neutrality, Ogilvy must earn profits from fees received for generating ideas and high-quality creative work instead of commissions associated with media buying. Fees are set depending on the scope of work, number of staff involved, and working hours and then all related details are clarified. This system allows clients to adjust their budget scale and allocation since they can see how much they are going to spend on each part of the assignment.

From time to time, Ogilvy concludes incentive agreements, or contingent fee agreements, with clients. By adopting the approach of “we are paid only when you succeed”, the agency is motivated by the same factors as its clients. This is also another way of building a true partnership.

Ogilvy calls on the best talents among its staff across disciplines to form a team that can best address a client’s issues. All staff are professionals in specialized fields with brand leaders at the core. Since a team is not bound to specific communication areas or organizations, we are able to form the best team in a flexible manner for all assignments. That is also a major strength of Ogilvy.

When we at Ogilvy work with a client for the very first time, we use our exclusive management operating system, OS-RED, for detailed scheduling, working jointly with the client. We receive briefings from the client company on the nature of its business as well as its brand, organizational structure, internal procedures, client personnel in charge, and financial condition, and we then develop the first three-month plan. Thereafter, we hold regular strategy meetings to fix concrete business plans. For clients that have newly entered the market, we may conduct a market survey to clarify the positioning of the brand. In some cases, we develop unique management operating systems tailored specifically to client needs.

REDWORK Most of the major domestic advertising agencies outsource their creative work to outside production companies. This practice makes work flow complicated, slows down the handling of the project, and boosts costs.

The Ogilvy Group, however, has a group production company, Redworks Japan. This in-house production company allows us to provide production services to clients faster and at a more reasonable price.

For simple creative work that does not involve strategic input, clients can directly go to Redworks for production services without having to go through the Ogilvy creative team. This is yet another way that our clients can reduce their costs further.