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Iconic agency Ogilvy rebrands as part of its ‘re-founding’

David Ogilvy’s signature has been dumped as the network’s logo in a global rebrand of the 70-year-old agency he founded.

Ogilvy’s signature was adopted as the agency’s logo in 1999, a month after the legendary adman passed away at the age of 88 and a year after the company’s 50th anniversary.

The rebrand, which has been described by worldwide chief executive John Seifert as a “re-founding”, will see the launch of a consulting arm along with a simplification of its structure and a greater focus on the Ogilvy brand.

The new and old Ogilvy logos

The agency’s brands, OgilvyOne, Ogilvy & Mather advertising and Ogilvy Public Relations, plus its sub-brands, will now all be merged under the same P&L and “common identity”.

The network will now function around six units, which include brand strategy; advertising; customer engagement and commerce; earned influence and public relations; digital transformation; and partnerships.

In a bid to keep up with firms like Accenture, Deloitte and PwC, which are increasingly offering their own marketing capabilities, the network’s strategy arm OgilvyRED will now be known as Ogilvy Consulting. This division will specialise in digital transformation, growth, business design and innovation.

Meanwhile, Ogilvy staff will now have job roles based on their ‘crafts’ such as creative, data or business development and finance.

Seifert said: “This has been an 18-month journey for our brand and the largest transformation in the history of our agency.

“To meet the changing needs of our clients, we’re taking a bold step to redefine our company and build a new model for our industry, which we helped to create over 70 years ago.”

Announcing the rebrand to the Wall Street Journal last night, Seifert added: “The agency’s purpose is ‘making brands matter’.”

“In my view, if we were going to stand apart we needed to clarify what the Ogilvy brand promise was, what its purpose was and we needed to greatly simplify the organisation around what I call an integrated enterprise agenda, not a holding company of all these different piece-parts.”

In the build-up to the global restructure, Ogilvy used the Chinese market as a testing ground to unveil its unified Ogilvy brand.

Later, the agency began consolidating its operation in Malaysia, merging its creative, digital and PR arms into one team under the leadership of David Mayo

For the details of the rebrand, Ogilvy’s Twitter account explained the elements of the revamped logo, including recut fonts.

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