Ogilvy & Mather: An Informal Recap Of My Visit

I visited the Los Angeles division of Ogilvy & Mather yesterday morning for a short tour, presentation, and a Q&A session with a panel of workers from both the account and creative side of the advertising agency.

I left with pretty mixed feelings.

The first thing I noticed about the place, and the area surrounding it, was that it is very industrial looking. The first thing you see when you walk in is a big metal cylinder (with TVs hanging from the sides) that you have to walk through to get to the offices and conference rooms. The metal cylinder looked like it’d be a boatload of fun to skateboard in but it didn’t seem very practical; if I were a client, I don’t know how I’d feel about seeing a giant metal cylinder, which blocks the receptionist, as the first thing I see when I walk into the building.

The “cubicles” and offices were very open (no privacy much?), but the cubicles, and area overall, seemed really cramped to me. The one exception was the conference room, which had a pool table and basketball hoop. Noticeably absent however was a ping-pong table, which was a staple in other advertising agencies that I have been to and better identified with.

The presentation wasn’t bad but the sample creative work they showed me wasn’t very inspiring.

The people who worked there seemed pretty cool though. Most of what they told me was stuff I already knew, but very useful for anyone trying to get into a good ad agency. One person shared his story of how he made the transition from being an Account Executive to a Copywriter. Another person mentioned that if you're lucky enough to get your resume and cover letter read, and get extended an interview, you have to be pretty knowledgeable about the agency to actually get the job. This is pretty standard for any job you apply to, but I found this to be overwhelmingly true (much more so than with more typical jobs) with the advertising agencies that I have interviewed with. All the agencies I interviewed with in Boston spent at least 10-15 minutes of the first round interview just asking me stuff about their own company (ie. who their CEO is, who their biggest clients are, what clients they just got, what creative work they’ve done and which I identify most with, etc). Advertising agencies attract a lot of great talent and generally have a very strong culture, so my advice to anyone trying to get in would be 1) have the company extremely well-researched, 2) be prepared to tell them what their values are, and 3) be prepared to explain how you also have these same values.