Oligvi and Mather

When Charlotte took over O&M as CEO in 1991, O&M was going through tough times. O& M had already lost few accounts before Charlotte joined and this trend continued in 1991. Infact, starting 1987, the industry as a whole was undergoing transformations. Many companies , in order to cut costs, were cutting back on their advertising spending by shifting their advertising spending from mass ,media and print campaigns to direct marketing, cable and telemarketing. Because companies were looking for bargains, O&M was also facing competition from fringe advertising agencies. The client companies were going global and asked the advertising agencies to market companies’ brand across geographical boundaries. Internally, O&M was unable to cope up with their clients’ changing needs. Although O&M had local offices which were spread out in different locations, there was a lack of structured collaboration or decision making. In addition, even after O&M lost key clients, it was unable to reduce their costs at center or at their local offices. This put a strain on O&M profits. In 1993, although O&M was following new strategies, few people in the company could relate to strategy.

In order to get back account from clients and also to get new clients, Charlotte spearheaded a change in strategy in which “brand” was a central theme. This was termed as brand stewardship. The focus of brand stewardship was to understand the complexity of emotional and logical relationship between the product and its target consumers and then apply those ideas in product advertisement. This involved creating several virtual organization (WCS) in which each organization focused on one only brand. Each of these organizations worked with local offices to promote brands globally with local sensitivity.

Charlotte’ strategy of brand stewardship was successful in short term as a tool to overcome the existing crisis. Although this was unpopular among the employees of O&M , Charlotte as a leader had...