2010 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Marketing budgets are often cut during recession, so we needed to speak candidly to our current and prospective clients about their situation. We wanted to communicate simply, cheaply, and effectively that we understand their needs and can help their business now, perhaps more than ever. This was an opportunity to showcase the profound effect of a big idea.

Creative Execution

The striking business cards featured clever lines and eye-catching designs on an established medium. Creative Directors, Business Directors, Account Directors, Account Managers and others received Recession Business Cards to pass on. By speaking directly and exclusively to our desired audience of business leaders and decision makers, we created the most direct campaign possible.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We created undersized business cards for all our senior staff to drive potential clients to ogilvyonrecession.com; a website Ogilvy created offering smart strategies to deal with the economic downturn. A number of different designs on the back of the card highlighted our ability to deal with the recession creatively and effectively.

Results

The cards - constantly pried from our hands - had to be reprinted again and again, proving that a big creative idea doesn’t need to break the bank to be effective. By year-end many thousands of undersized Business Cards had been handed out directly to their precise target audience all over the Middle East. This was the first recession-themed idea covered by both Campaign and Media Week magazines, where the desired audience celebrated it as relevant, smart, insightful and engaging. In 2009, Memac Ogilvy participated in more pitches than ever before.