CASE STUDY

Helping Ogilvy Advertising build a new corporate culture in its Qld office

Ogilvy is a New York City-based British advertising, marketing, and public relations agency. It was founded in 1850 by Edmund Mather in London and in 1964, the firm became known as Ogilvy & Mather after merging with a New York City agency that was founded in 1948 by David Ogilvy.

Today, the agency is part of the WPP Group global agency network and provides services in five areas: growth and innovation; advertising, brand and content; public relations and influence; experience; and health.

Our client was Ogilvy’s Queensland team based in Brisbane, who were being restructured in response to market pressure and the rise of boutique digital agencies who were challenging traditional service providers. Ogilvy partnered with Change Readiness to ensure a smooth transition across all levels of the organisation from one organisational design to the new.

Our partnership

The importance of senior and middle managers is highlighted in the management literature, including how senior managers rely on middle managers to connect group strategy with team leaders and staff (Reimer et al., 2016). While senior managers have the delegated authority to decide on and allocate resources to support change initiatives (Volberda et al., 2014), middle managers are typically responsible for undertaking activities and influencing staff (Heyden et al., 2017). When middle managers are effective, they help senior managers transform strategies into operational realities (Heyden et al., 2018); however, when they are not, middle managers can reduce the quality of, introduce delays, and even sabotage planned change (Balogun & Johnson, 2005).

To close the gap between management levels, in what was a strained cultural atmosphere, Ogilvy partnered wth Matthew Champion and the Change Readiness Australia. In the process, Matthew worked closely with Ogilvy’s Queensland Executive Team to deliver:

  • Change vision and strategies for change - at the Executive Team Growth Workshop

  • As assessment of the organisations readiness and capacity for change - working the CEO

  • Shared understanding of key challenges and support strategies - at All Staff Growth Workshop

  • Localised training and group coaching - with the CEO and Executive Team

Building on Ogilvy Queensland’s rich history, Matthew was able to help the Executive Team define their change vision and a set of tailored strategies to help them get there. With regular iterations, a communication and training plan was developed which was used to build a new level of culture change in line with head office requirements.