I am the Worldwide Planning Director, and I have been with Ogilvy since 2003. I am also a member of the Worldwide Creative Council and the Global Planning Council.
I must have spent very nearly 50,000 hours thinking about brands in some way or another. When I first calculated this scary statistic it made me think: Do I really like brands that much?
I wasn't initially drawn to brands for noble reasons. I had a vacation job in an advertising agency where I encountered some really intelligent and well-written research reports. Clearly the people involved could have made major contributions to politics or medicine, but instead they had devoted their powerful intellects to the study of gravy thickeners and cake mixes. They deployed their brilliant minds on subjects like the lettering style on a bar of chocolate or whether the Rice Krispies gnomes should talk or remain silent.
It seemed delightfully wrong, somehow. But what sustained me for all those hours is the belief that not only do brands make businesses profitable, but also that the system of branding makes it easier for good companies to defeat bad companies, in any market.
So with this belief that branding is useful as well as interesting, I'm good for a few more hours yet…
My favorite career highlight at Ogilvy is winning a big pitch against tough opposition with work I'm proud of. A couple of examples would be the launch of Hong Kong Disneyland and the Johnson & Johnson corporate campaign built around their 2008 Olympics sponsorship.
My favorite David Ogilvy quote is: "The top man has one principal responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work."