Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy and Mather
It did not take Charlotte Beers long to find another job, many agencies were calling on her for her now well known talents. Reportedly Saatchi and Saatchi Co., among others came calling long before she was ready to leave Tatham RSCG, however the most appealing offer came from Ogilvy and Mather. Beers met on several occasions with David Ogilvy in France, who later wrote that "Charlotte and I talked for seven hours and found nothing to disagree about."
It was during this time that Beers became known as the "most powerful woman in advertising". Her most successful coup came in 1994 when she landed the biggest new assignment in advertising history with the International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) account, with estimated billings of $500 million.
Bringing in IBM had it's drawbacks, as a result O & M lost three other major high tech accounts, AT&T, Compaq Computer Corps, and Microsoft Corp.. Beers did not see these as major setbacks, and felt that the IBM account was worth it. "Every office of Ogilvy will be held to doing more interesting and demanding assignments, it will make us a better network, and it will force us to do large-scale and complex work as well as everyday tactical ads."
Aside from the IMB account, Ogilvy was landing other large clients such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, with an estimated $80 million in billings. Beers was also becoming known for her ability to create a good balance in stimulating existing client relationships, by helping to win back blue-chip clients like Shell and Chesebrough-Ponds USA Co.
At the "core" of Beers strategy at Ogilvy is "brand stewardship", which is described as the art of creating, building and energizing profitable brands. Under Beers the agencies job became to "keep its resources squarely focused on the brand, covering all aspects of the brand and consumer relationships." Which means that the agency must take "emotional ownership" of the brand according to Beers, with its sights set on nourishing the relationship between the producer and the user.
Beers created a "brand audit" used to understand the relationship between the brand and the consumer. The audit asked such questions as "how does the brand make you feel about yourself?" While at Tatham, Beers believed that no single talent would be the solution, "the idea is to make the sum larger than the parts, " she said, it was at Tatham that she began to focus on the importance of the brand as opposed to company management. It was at Ogilvy that Beers was able to further her ideas about brands and the concept of brand stewardship.
In 1996 after four years at the helm, Beers relinquished her responsibilities to Shelly Lazarus, a long-time Ogilvy executive who had worked closely with Beers to land the IBM account. At 61 Charlotte Beers was retiring to live in Florida with her toy poodle. Beers brought the company out of a slump, to regain its power and become the sixth largest agency with company billings of 7.6 billion dollars. Clients such as American Express, Kodak, Ford and Unilever were all attained under Beers.
Shelly Lazarus is quoted as saying that Beers helped to pave the way for her leadership. Beers and Lazarus have both said they believed that the Ogilvy succession was an important step for women even though there are more women in top agencies positions than ever before. Ms. Lazarus said, "A magazine editor once said to me: 'You can't write about this subject too much because each time young women read about it they get more optimistic about their own futures.'"