Inside Ogilvy’s new consultancy to help major tech brands advertise like traditional marketers

Last year, when Verizon needed help advertising 5G—a technology that few consumers fully grasp—it took an approach well-known to traditional brands: meet consumers where they are So, naturally, Verizon turned to Taylor Swift, whose popularity had become astronomical and whose Era’s Tour was stopping at numerous stadiums powered by Verizon’s 5G network. The telecom giant seized an opportunity to level up its brand presence inside the stadium and before the concerts, so as to remind people that Verizon was responsible for the high-speed connection available at the densely populated shows, as well as other events such as football games. A similar approach underpinned Verizon’s ad from Ogilvy for the Super Bowl this year, which starred Beyoncé trying—and failing—to break the company’s network. Meeting consumers where they are is just one lesson that David Webster, who worked on the Verizon account when McCann was its lead agency and has now joined WPP’s Ogilvy, (which took over the telecom company’s account in September), is borrowing from traditional brand marketing in order to develop effective advertising strategies for tech companies. Ogilvy’s consulting arm today launched a new practice with this focus in mind, to help tech firms advertise their products and build their brands. Webster will lead the practice as consulting principal. (Verizon declined to comment for this story.) See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here Whereas some non-tech brands are adopting artificial chatbots and new innovations to boost their technical proficiency in the eyes of consumers, “tech brands have to go in the opposite direction,” said Webster. What this requires is an effort to humanize the company through methods such as expanding in-person retail experiences, emphasizing storytelling and placing a stronger emphasis on responsibility. Big tech companies may already have millions of customers, but their unique problem is that many have worn out their welcome as brands, said Webster. Also read: Ogilvy is Ad Age’s 2024 Global Agency Network of the Year The race for AI is a case in point. Giants such as Google and Microsoft are competing for public favor by rolling out new tools to the public, yet doing so has come at a cost. Last month, Google’s Gemini conversational bot went off the rails, igniting criticism from everyday users on social media as well as advertisers fearing the potential erosion of trust that could follow the incident. Microsoft found itself in similar hot water last year when its Bing chatbot quarreled with users. Also read: Avoiding the biggest AI marketing mistakes System-level mistakes do not provide comfort for a public that is already skeptical of bigger AI risks, such as the potential for excessive job replacement. And the development of AI is expected to further consolidate power in the hands of Big Tech, according to a 2023 report from research institute AI Now. Even before the current AI craze, unrestrained power was a leading reason why nearly half (45%) of U.S. adults held a negative view of Big Tech firms, according to a 2021 Gallup survey. Ogilvy, whose tech clients include Google, IBM, Verizon and Samsung, is holding advisory workshops to help companies improve their brands by delivering AI tools in a responsible way. Key to this effort is emphasizing storytelling, Webster said, a concept that may be a no-brainer for traditional brands but one that has mostly eluded the tech category, which tends to focus on implementation. Ogilvy has already emphasized humorous storytelling through its work with Samsung. A recent ad for the company’s AI-powered health app hinged on comedy to relay the importance of doubting archaic instincts and self-tracking one’s health data to stay grounded in reality. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ogilvy (@ogilvy) In 2022, the agency created a spot for Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold4 phone that pretended Leonardo da Vinci used the product to develop his “Vitruvian Man” drawing. For other tech brands, a hyper-focus on deployment is one reason why “no one has yet cracked the code” on marketing consumer-facing AI tools, Webster said. Through its new tech practice, Ogilvy hopes to start moving the needle. Retail experiences and customer service Many in the advertising industry have rung the death knell on brick-and-mortar stores, but Webster doesn’t see things that way. Rather, the opportunities afforded by in-person retail experiences are “key necessities that have re-emerged for the tech space,” he said. Retail has long been known as an effective way for traditional brands to get face time with consumers and provide meaningful customer service, said Webster, adding that this touch point is especially important for tech clients given the complexity of their products. A quintessential example is Apple, he said, whose in-store Genius Bar routinely educates consumers and helps them make more informed purchasing decisions. The tech company’s product launches, including its most recent debuts of the Vision Pro headset, have become frenzied moments reminiscent of Black Friday. Opinion: How brands can succeed in spacial computing Another model, according to Webster, is Peloton, which has worked with hotels across the country to deploy its equipment in their gyms. The strategy “exposes new prospects to [Peloton’s] products and technology, creating an effective trial and test drive program that would be difficult to replicate at home,” he said. Verizon officially shifted its consumer account to Ogilvy earlier this year. Being familiar with the account, Webster plans to help Verizon continue to make its in-store experiences feel more like consultative environments, he said, as well as apply the strategy to other tech firms. “The notion that we just have a lower bar for the customer experience that we get from a digital brand—I think those days are ending,” he said. “The best experiences that people have in one category [are expected from] those in another.”

Inside Ogilvy’s new consultancy to help major tech brands advertise like traditional marketers

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