Shelly Lazarus well remembers when she first considered taking the top spot at OgilvyOne. Her friends thought she was crazy to leave her position managing the prestigious American Express account to delve into the world of direct marketing.
“You’re doing so well in advertising,” she recalled them saying. “Why cross the line?”
Lazarus, however, saw great opportunity across the line. “Direct marketers have always been hard core marketers,” she said. “You have to provide hard results, or it doesn’t count.”
The chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide showed great enthusiasm for all things direct during a keynote address at DMA 07 in Chicago on Tuesday. Today, she noted, DM is no longer the province of just “mail mavens,” as advertisers of all stripes recognize the power and trackabilty of direct.
Advances in technology have forever altered the face of direct marketing, she said. At one time, all advertising was about intrusion. Today, consumers are in control. “They can work around us, so we have to be invited in.”
There’s a need to engage, and to get consumers to opt in, she said. “And isn’t that the heart of direct marketing?”
At Ogilvy, the barriers between direct and other forms of advertising have been broken down. There is no longer a separate division between direct and other creatives at the agency, said Lazarus.
“We don’t care where a great creative idea comes from, as long as it happens.”
One of Ogilvy’s great recent creative strokes was the Dove campaign spotlighting “real” beauty. Lazarus showed the audience clips from the campaign, including “Evolution,” a viral video showing a typical woman being remade into a supermodel via make-up and Photoshop trickery.
The spot, part of the CampaignForRealBeauty.com Web site, won an award at Cannes. There, she noted, even the judges weren’t sure whether it was direct, or advertising, or philanthropy, or online advertising.
The answer was yes to all of the above, she noted. “The lines are blurred and the walls are down.”
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