Executive Summary

Charlotte Beers has a vision; however, she cannot convey this message personally to the whole Ogilvy & Mather organization (O&M). Appointed CEO after a hostile takeover, Beers was faced with the challenge of uniting a multinational, autonomous corporation under her concept of Brand Stewardship. David Ogilvy founded the company, that later merged with Mather & Crowther, which became one of the leading advertising agencies. O&M had offices worldwide, focusing on local as well as global advertising campaigns that used the influence of a multinational corporation with the appeal of local intricacies. The culture of O&M was such a large part of the company that any change was deemed as a personal attack on the employees.
Beers took the suggestions from the members of this meeting and concocted three main strategies for furthering O&M: client security, better work more often, and financial discipline. She had set the path for O&M to regain its position in the advertising world, now all that remained was for the process to trickle down into every crevice of the organization. This would be the major bottleneck in O&M’s comeback.
A new group within the organization emerged from this meeting. The Worldwide Client Service (WCS) group was formed to help improve the retention of clients as well as coordinate the communication between the multinational clients and the local firms. Their goal was to combine global efficiency and local sensitivity. WCS gave the people on multinational accounts the enforcement power they once lacked. This double edged sword caused more cooperation with local firms and at the same time hard feelings from local employees who thought the new line personnel were abusing their powers. Although this organization was created to improve client security, it also worsened their financial discipline. WCS could charge time to the local firms while at the same time some of the local firms’ employees were working while not being able to appropriately charge their time back to WCS.
O&M were able to regain some of the accounts they had previously lost, including American Express; however, there was still much confusion as how to attain