It provides services in five areas: growth and innovation; advertising, brand and content; public relations and influence; experience; and health.

When the agency launched the AGA cooker, a Swedish cook stove, Francis composed letters in Greek to appeal to British public schools, the appliance's best sales leads.

[11] In 1938, David Ogilvy convinced Francis to send him to the United States on sabbatical to study American advertising.

Benson gave the agency four clients that had small advertising budgets and were relatively unknown in the United States: Wedgwood China, British South African Airways, Guinness, and Bovril.

The campaign increased the shirt maker's sales by 160 percent, resulted in new business for the agency, and turned the recognizable "Hathaway Man" and his eyepatch into a popular cultural trope.

Ogilvy hired retired Benton & Bowles executive Esty Stowell in 1956 to handle operations and non-creative functions.

The agency, mainly under Ogilvy's creative direction, built a reputation for "quality" advertising, which was defined by its use of well-researched "long copy", large photographs, and clean layouts and typography.

[27][28] After moving permanently to his French castle Château de Touffou in 1973, David Ogilvy stepped down as chairman and became Head of Worldwide Creative in 1975.

David Ogilvy initially resisted the sale, but eventually accepted the title of WPP honorary chairman, a position he relinquished in 1992.

[39] In 1994, then–North America president Shelly Lazarus and Beers helped win the entire global account of information technology corporation IBM for the agency.

[43] The firm is known for lobbying against climate change mitigation efforts on behalf of some of the biggest oil and chemical groups in the world.

[44] In 2005, Shona Seifert and Thomas Early, two former directors of Ogilvy & Mather, were convicted of one count of conspiring to defraud the government and nine counts of filing false claims for Ogilvy, over-billing for advertising work done for the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) account.

[50] Under Young's leadership, the agency focused on a "Twin Peaks" strategy of producing advertisements that are equally creative and effective.

[52][61][62] Ogilvy Public Relations in China faced accusations in the media of overworking a 24-year-old employee who died of a heart attack while in the office in May 2013.

[64] In June 2015, Young announced he would retire as both Worldwide chairman and CEO to take the position of warden at his alma mater, New College at Oxford University.

[75] As of 2013, sales activation and shopper marketing were administered through Geometry Global, a unit formed through the merger of several WPP agencies, including what was previously known as OgilvyAction.

[78] OgilvyRED was established in 2011 as a consultancy within the agency that worked with Ogilvy's other units to prepare plans for clients' marketing strategies.

[88] He restructured Ogilvy's services under five core business units: Advertising, Experience, Public Relations, Health, and Consulting.

Edward Whitehead, who was the company's president, was introduced as the Commander in a 1952 advertisement, which showed him arriving in New York with a briefcase labeled as the secrets of Schweppes.

[18][107] After the agency was assigned the Rolls-Royce account in 1959,[12] David Ogilvy spent three weeks meeting with engineers and researching the car.

[108] The resulting advertisement featured the headline "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock", which Ogilvy took, giving credit, from a journalist's review.

[111][112] A campaign called "Portraits", which followed "Do You Know Me", showed card-carrying personalities such as Tip O'Neil and Ella Fitzgerald engaged in leisure activities.

The overall feeling and mood for this campaign was a modern, simple design that outlines some of the rewards in a creative and playful style and seen as a move away from old perceptions of it being stuffy and corporate.

[122][123] A short film called Sketches earned over 114 million views online and Business Insider named it the most viral ad of all time in 2013.

The famous tagline emphasized how quiet the Rolls-Royce was, turning a subtle feature into a compelling reason to buy the car.

Ogilvy has been cited as a major inspiration for the fictional ad agency featured in the television series Mad Men.

[128][129] Longtime Ogilvy employee and executive Jane Maas was cited as the inspiration for the Mad Men main character Peggy Olson.

D&AD also awarded a coveted Black Pencil to Burger King's "Moldy Whopper" campaign, which was a collaboration between Ogilvy and two other agencies.

The 40-second video, which showed a lifelike computer-generated cat being decapitated by the car's sunroof, led to criticisms from bloggers and animal rights groups.

[136][137] Also in 2014, Ogilvy & Mather apologized following complaints about the racial implications of an advertisement it created for the South African charity Feed a Child.