Ogilvy comprises five key business practices - Growth & Innovation, Advertising, PR, Experience and Health - all best-in-class offerings that work seamlessly together to help support and grow client brands. In today's article, we share insights from Steve Soechtig, Global Chief Executive Officer of Ogilvy's Experience business, as he explains how our upgraded services can meet today's client needs.

WHAT OGILVY EXPERIENCE DOES

Ogilvy Experience defines, designs, builds, and operates platforms, tools, and technologies that allow and encourage individuals to more effectively engage with a brand, improving the customer experience at every stage of the engagement lifecycle.

Designing, building, and operating these products and solutions requires a strategy - a prioritized roadmap of initiatives tied to specific business objectives and outputs - built on customer insights that identify both the explicit needs and unspoken emotional needs of various segments. Ogilvy Experience has teams of specialists that work with clients to create this strategic vision.

Once the strategy is defined, our teams of designers and developers work with clients to build a range of experience solutions, including:

• Digital marketing assets that provide tailored communications at each stage of the customer journey
• CRM Data Platforms which discretely and securely capture visitor preferences and shape personalized experiences based on historical responses
• Custom web and mobile solutions that provide critical information and transactional functionality (such as appointment scheduling, online payment processing, and a range of other uses)

Those are oftentimes built on top of package technology platforms such as Commerce, Campaign, and Content Management Systems.

Great customer experiences don't stop with digital interactions and we equally focus on empowering employees and partners with tools and technologies that allow them to more effectively serve the client's customer base, be that app users, shoppers of a product provider or members of a loyalty program.

HOW OGILVY EXPERIENCE CAN HELP

In today's increasingly competitive business environments, clients are under pressure to reinforce and/or improve their brand perception. 

Our experience solutions focus on growing a brand's value through experience innovation, which drives greater awareness, greater interaction, greater commitment, and greater loyalty.

To better illustrate this, let's take a look at what our teams could do in the health sector. For a health care provider network, our web solutions can provide the content necessary to allow the patient to make the best decision as to whether the provider can service their medical need, exposing the detail that are important to patients at the time of that decision, including insight into the physicians and staff, including their backgrounds, areas of specialization, and potentially testimonials from patients who have been cared for by that provider network in the past. 

Further, awareness building can be driven from effective search optimization, link-throughs from value-added sites and apps such as approved online diagnostic tools, and dynamic ecosystem linkages with other providers and brands.  Once the patient has started to engage, additional value-based tools such as online appointment scheduling, pre-visit registration, and automated appointment reminders differentiate the provider and drive greater engagement. 

Finally, online conveniences such as bill pay, interactive communication tools, online results reporting, and post-appointment follow up content differentiate the provider and promote loyalty to the network.

HOW OGILVY'S 5-PRACTICE STRUCTURE FOSTERS BRAND GROWTH

The 5 business practices represent the various components of brand management and brand growth.  Our Growth & Innovation business identifies and shapes new avenues and models for growth, while our Advertising business define and activate the brand positioning that capture the customer growth opportunity.  Our PR business ensures that every communication is aligned with and supports the brand strategy, and our Health business drives visibility, relevance and purpose to all stakeholders across the healthcare continuum.

All of these functional businesses work in concert with our Experience business to solve the complex needs of our clients, delivering growth-based impact through our approach of Borderless Creativity.

EXPERIENCE COMES EARLY IN THE BRAND PLANNING PROCESS

When clients ask when is the best time to bring our team in, our answer is always "as early as possible". In the modern era, brand and experience are two sides of the same coin, and as such they need to be defined together. Today's brands don't separate the brand message from the experience, but instead combine them, often on digital platforms. If the brand message expresses one position and the experience expresses another, the individual is quickly confused, disillusioned, and frustrated. 

Further, emerging experience concepts can help to shape the brand identity and expression, and the Experience team can help to develop the insights and targeted personas that contribute to brand planning exercises.