Idea Shop is Ogilvy Group UK’s pop-up ad agency. Ogilvy opened it’s first pop-up shop in Brixton offering its services free of charge for three days in February when it functioned as an advertising and marketing clinic for small businesses, community projects, charities, arts groups and other organisations and individuals in the area. Our crack team of advertising and marketing creatives, planners and strategists advised on advertising, PR, digital, email, social media, strategy, direct marketing, branding, design and copywriting.

For more info or to find out about our upcoming plans for Idea Shop visit ideashop.ogilvy.co.uk  

On 17^th February, the March Many Ogilvy Hands Team organised a Masquerade Ball at the Hoxton Pony. The night was an incredible success with a near sold out venue and masks of every shape and size. We had DJ’s, a live band, one of the largest raffles known to man, free cocktails and even our very own burlesque show! The event brought together all of the UK Ogilvy offices and their friends and families. With everyone’s help we managed to raise almost £4000!

Three times a year, a bunch of Ogilvy folk head out to Uganda for a week to help with valuable projects for the local community.

Every four months, 12 volunteers from around the Ogilvy Group fly out to the Southern Uganda town of Buikwe for a week to get their hands dirty working on a project for the local community. And anyone can help, in any number of ways, from pushing a wheelbarrow in Uganda to putting up posters in the office. If we all lend a hand, together we can make a real difference.

To find out more please check out www.manyogilvyhands.com

Fortunately, working life here turns out to be a tad more exciting than most offices. People play music whilst they work. Coffee or booze with your mates in the bar is practically a daily indulgence (depending on the time of day!). Plastic chickens (aka The Count) might travel with you or your colleagues on holiday.

Ogilvy Group companies are based in East and West London so you'll get to know certain parts of the city a whole lot better. Here's a rough guide to both locations ...

Canary Wharf: OgilvyOne, Ogilvy PR, Ogilvy Advertising, Neo, Soho Square & Ogilvy Interactive

Best restaurants/bars/nights out
Corney and Barrow (fondly known as 'Cornies' - just under our office), Itsu on a Friday for a takeaway lunch- join the queue of Ogilvy staff...

Best place for a hangover
The Ogilvy breakfast bar, the Krispy Kreme kiosk at the entrance to Cabot Place mall (gets your blood sugar nice and sky high even if the resulting crash will make the hangover worse!), the Dove Storage cupboard.

Best place for a client lunch
Plateau - if you can swing it, or Gaucho Grill for an Argentinean meat feast (they also do rickshaw delivery!)

Best tourist attraction
Canada Square Park turns into an ice rink at Christmas, and shows things like Wimbledon and the opera on big screens in the summer. The Thames Clipper is also a great way to see the sights from the Thames (free with your Ogilvy card!)

Place(s) to avoid
Smollensky's, unless you want to pull a drunken, sleazy banker!

Best place to blow the golden handshake
Reiss in Jubilee Place- treat yourself to a new work wardrobe and there's always Plateau for the bubbly.

Paddington: Ogilvy Action, Ogilvy Healthworld & Coley Porter Bell

Best restaurants/bars/nights out
The in-house bar at Westbourne Terrace has six different ambient up-lighter settings to get you in the mood.
Levantine near Paddington station is a classic Lebanese restaurant. Hang around till after 10pm and a tantalising belly dancer appears. Rumour has it that with a carefully concealed camera you can capture said belly dancer and your business director in a compromising position worthy of blackmail.

Best place for a hangover
In the corner of the canteen find a large black pouffe to perch on and savour the mouth-watering bacon sarnies served up by Julie in the kitchen. McDonalds in Paddington Station is a good place to ingest more toxins. Or...the toilets, 2nd floor behind Ogilvy Healthworld - good ventilation.

Best place for a client lunch
Levantine again.

Best tourist attraction
The bronze Paddington Bear statue in the railway station. According to local folk, when authorities actually managed to catch the pesky little fluff ball they cast him in bronze to ensure jars of marmalade across London town would at last be safe from inquisitive and sticky paws.

Place(s) to avoid
Sussex Gardens, apparently West London's very own red light district.

Our vice-chairman, IPA President and famous adland writer, Rory Sutherland, has a virtual space to broadcast his pearls of wisdom in video form and a regularly updated blog on Brand Republic.

In 1948, David Ogilvy founded what we now know as Ogilvy & Mather in New York, when the British agencies Mather & Crowther and S.H. Benson joined forces under his guidance to form Ogilvy Benson & Mather. But our roots go back far further than that - S.H. Benson dates back to 1893, and the Mather name had been prominent in London's advertising scene since 1850.

Either way, we thought it would be a shame not to mark the 60th birthday of 'modern' Ogilvy without a good party. Emma and George, our recent summer schoolers, put this film together in 2008 to commemorate...

It doesn't take an eagle-eyed genius to notice that the number 360 pops up at Ogilvy almost as regularly as 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 pop up in an episode of LOST.

Why? Well 360 is the new 42. Or at least it is if you work in the branding industry. Yes 360 is the answer to life, the universe and everything. It is the core of the Ogilvy philosophy and forms an integral part of the answer to any communications solution.

360 (usually referred to as "three sixty" and an abbreviation of '360 degrees') is a way of thinking about communications and the consumer. Today you are surrounded by a vast number of media spaces wherever you go - from podcasts on your iPod to the stairs you climb at the station. As such advertising is no longer just about simply sending out a message through a TV set. It's about reaching people at poignant and meaningful moments during their day. 360 degree branding basically places the consumer in the middle of all the media they are exposed to - and then uses those that can best deliver a particular message in the most relevant way to build a campaign. In a 360 campaign all the chosen media say the same thing. This means that whenever someone comes into contact with a brand, be it on the back of a bus or online, they will always get the same message.

So, to sum up; 360 is not an Xbox. And it's not a magic integer. It's just a way of making sure that brands say the same thing wherever they are and do so in the most impactful way.