As you may have just heard, OgilvyOne has emerged victorious in the review for Weight Watchers’ digital account. We’ve obtained the full memo from OgilvyOne managing director Dimitri Maex to staff regarding the news. As you’ll see below, said agency beat out the likes of Havas Digital, incumbent Razorfish and 360i for Weight Watcher digital AOR duties, which span everything from digital media buying/planning to social media to analytics. McCann, meanwhile, serves as lead creative agency for Weight Watchers. Anyhow, read on:
I’m incredibly excited to announce our newest addition to the client list. Weight Watchers, the market leader in weight loss, announced today that OgilvyOne has been appointed as the digital agency of record.
This news follows an extensive competitive search in which OgilvyOne won against some of the best digital agencies out there, beating the likes of R/GA, 360i, Havas Digital and incumbent Razorfish.
We’d like to share a few words from our new clients on why they chose OgilvyOne: “The scope of our engagement is broad, and includes digital media planning and buying, social media, advanced analytics, and search engine marketing,” said Sarah Kleinhandler, Director of Digital Strategy and Marketing, Weight Watchers. “Digital is a core channel for us to connect with and engage consumers, and we believe that OgilvyOne will be an important strategic partner in evolving how we fully leverage this critical marketing pillar.”
“Weight Watchers is a social business at its core, and there is a huge opportunity to continue to evolve and unlock the power of social for our brand,” said Lee Hurley, Vice President of Advertising and Social Media, Weight Watchers. “We selected OgilvyOne because of their strategic firepower, innovative creative ideas, digital media acumen, and incredibly passionate team.”
I could not be more proud of the Weight Watchers pitch team who made this happen. The ideas and the depth of our digital capabilities across OgilvyOne and Neo blew the clients away. And it was the energy and spirit of the team and the chemistry with the clients that made the real difference. The only way to win a pitch like this is to go all out and that’s exactly what we did. Our unbelievable new business team under Daniel Korn’s leadership was the real driving force. Thanks to Abigail Lacey, Juan Luna, Charlotte Spatcher, and Keith Smolar we shot our credentials video on a treadmill, we did a company-wide hackathon and we pledged to lose more than 50 pounds as a team during the pitch process.
With every pitch there are so many people to thank and this one was no different. I can’t possibly list everyone who contributed to this win in this email. But I do want to call out the core team who rehearsed relentlessly until the early hours before every pitch presentation: our creative leaders Jim Thompson, Edu De la Herran, Alfonso Marian and Jan Leth, the incredible Gemma Craven and Caroline Chianese who were the backbone of this pitch which focused heavily on social and digital media, our planning team with Jonathan Rigby and Alvaro Cabrera and our gentle but firm pitch general Billy Aymami. The team would also like to thank all 115 hackathon participants and especially the winners: Brett Pollack, Chris Heydt, Madeline Malachowski, and Samantha Levine. And finally we want to thank the many people who came up to us throughout this process to express their concerns about our health. What can we say? Weight Watchers works! But you can stop worrying now — the pitch is over so we will all stop losing weight.
This latest win comes on the heels of a year of great momentum for New York and for OgilvyOne New York, with our most recent wins of the iShares Relationship Marketing business and the Brown Shoe Customer Engagement AOR assignment. Let’s not take our foot off the gas and let’s keep our momentum going throughout the second half of this year!
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Virginia Alber-Glanstaetten