Memac Ogilvy launched Ogilvy Action in Dubai today, a regional branch of the agency’s brand activation arm that aims to provide integrated marketing solutions to clients.
 
The initiative operates in “the last mile,” where a potential consumer becomes an actual buyer of a product.
 
“Our ideas are bigger ideas,” Robin Smith, a creative director with Ogilvy Action, tells Communicate. “We have a broader skill base. We work closely with the advertising side of things, we work closely with Ogilvy, Mindshare and PR, so I think what we’re offering there for the client is really broad.”
 
With consumers becoming savvier and clients wanting to stretch every penny invested in marketing campaigns, effective spending becomes key. “It’s not how much money you’ve got, it’s how smart you are,” says Edmond Moutran, the CEO and chairman of MENA Memac Ogilvy & Mather.
 
But offering a “fully integrated 360 marketing solution,” as he dubs it, comes at a cost. Ogilvy Action is undertaking research in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that examines consumer behavior in stores, which Robert Woodward, Ogilvy Action’s business director, calls market and shopper analytics – the results of which should be available in eight weeks.
 
The Asian version of the research produced marketing gems like the fact that women make more in-store decisions than men, and the 18-21 year-old demographic makes the most purchasing decisions at a retail outlet, explains Woodward.
 
And the reason Ogilvy, according to the agency, does not have much competition in that niche of branding services, at least regionally, is that the agency has reached a “critical mass” that allows it to make such investments, says Steve Harding, the CEO of Ogilvy Action in Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Smaller agencies, focused on their day-to-day business, don’t have the time or, often, the money to make the investments we’ve had to get this off the ground,” he tells Communicate.
 
The Ogilvy Action division launched globally in Jan. 2007, and currently has 49 offices in 40 countries. The Dubai launch precedes a regional expansion, which is aiming for 10 regional offices over the next five years, says Moutran.