Creative Circle? Tick. One Show? Tick. D&AD? Tick again. It seems there's no limit to Ogilvy's success at award shows - local or global. That's why Tony Koenderman went so far as to call Ogilvy Cape Town and Ogilvy Johannesburg the 'Ogilvy giants', as both have held a top-10 spot for the second straight year on his detailed AdReview ranking system, which factors in local and global advertising award show wins.
Despite all this, the agency with a very long history, having started out as Rightford, Searle-Tripp & Makin many moons ago, remains humble and excited. Even Gallarelli doesn't blow off these wins, particularly across the specialist discipline award shows like Apex, Assegais, Bookmarks and Prisms. These are in fact a big deal to the agency, as he says, "To be honest, it's something we didn't expect and we felt that 2014 was a maybe few percent shy of a vintage creative year for us, but we're delighted that the significant and sustained effort from everyone paid off. To take this title three years running rules out any chance of a lucky break or a single campaign being responsible; it demonstrates that we have an embedded culture of creative excellence."
He adds: "We do put a great deal of pressure on ourselves to 'do better tomorrow than we did yesterday' and I need to give credit to everyone in our building for delivering on this - they're all heroes in my eyes."
Perhaps it's this motivational mindset that's truly behind the agency's winning streak - Gallarelli shares more behind-the-scenes insights into what's happening at Ogilvy below...
1. What's the basic creative process in the agency? Gallarelli: Completely collaborative, discipline agnostic, somewhat chaotic, never ever boring. We try and approach each challenge in an integrated manner. The fact that no two briefs are ever the same keeps things interesting. The key to our relative success around integration has been to put the right people in a room, have them galvanise around a problem, being clear about the goals and then working tirelessly within each discipline to deliver the smartest and most effective solutions possible.
We don't pretend this is easy or that it can be perfectly systemised. Collaboration and integration are as much about attitude as they are about process.
Our strategy is to bring the very best specialist skills available to bear in solving our clients' problems in a creative, fully integrated, collaborative manner. We're about idea generation and flawless execution in every relevant channel.
2. Tell us about some of the most exciting new developments in the team that have enhanced Ogilvy's overall skillset. Gallarelli: The welcoming of Gloo into the Group fold was exciting news. O&M SA and Gloo joined forces in early November and is now a fully merged operation in Johannesburg, with OgilvyOne and Gloo remaining separate in Cape Town for the foreseeable future.
I believe this is the year that we must stop talking about content and its role and start delivering on it with a broad based approach to curating, creating and delivering it across the full communications mix.
We've made some key hires in this regard, including Mel Attree as our Director of Content Strategy. Mel understands the interplay between campaign-based interventions and ongoing, real-time engagement irrespective of channel. Her impact has been marked and has complemented the resident skills in our building even better than I anticipated.
Dan Nash is another important addition in this space. He has joined OgilvyPR Cape Town as Creative Director and the energy, smarts and perspective he brings has been incredible.
3. Let's get to the nitty-gritty - share your thoughts on the state of the local advertising awards industry. Gallarelli: The South African advertising industry has evolved rapidly and the standard of the awards industry has grown in synch with this. Locally, I absolutely consider the Loeries and Apex awards (to name just two) to be truly world class.
Looking at the general quality of work delivered consistently over a number of years, it's clear that as a relatively small industry, we punch well above our weight globally. The Cannes Radio Grand Prix awarded to O&M Johannesburg last year was the first Radio Grand Prix ever awarded to an Ogilvy & Mather agency from anywhere in the world and O&M has been voted network of the year at Cannes for three years running so that is some achievement. Our impact is no doubt disproportionate to our size.
4. That's for sure. Tell us about key account wins this year that have made an impact on your portfolio... Gallarelli: The new business success we enjoyed last year certainly instilled us with a great deal of confidence heading into 2015. We've learned to relax more, trust ourselves more, back ourselves more. And the momentum of 2014 has continued this year with the winning of the Hansa Pilsner account after an incredibly competitive pitch process. The faith that the SAB and Hansa teams have shown in us is a real endorsement of our abilities to manage the complexity and scale they bring.
5. Here's what we all want to know - what's next for Ogilvy? Gallarelli: It's got to be staying at number one. To do this, we want to solve big bold business problems in new and interesting ways. Setting this as an ambition helps us organise all we do from the kind of relationships we want to forge with our clients and our people, to the kinds of clients and brands we want to work with, to the kind of work we want to produce, and to how we organise ourselves internally to meet the demands of the relentless change we're experiencing in the world of communication.
6. Lastly, let's look into your crystal ball... What trends do you see as the biggest to come in 2015? Gallarelli: The content challenge. Delivering across every channel in a way that holds together strategically and yet works really well in every distinctive media space.
Big (and small) data. Every client has more data about their customers than they ever had before and they're looking to us to help them use it really effectively.
Slow down and speed up. We have to deliver faster on social and yet give ourselves the time to do something really distinctive.
Seems that winning streak is set to continue for a long time yet. Click here for Gallarelli's expectations for the 2015 Loerie Awards, and here to visit the Ogilvy & Mather press office.
