The One rises on the back of OPSM vision James Bainbridge
When brand specialist The One Centre recently won all of OPSM, there was speculation it was shifting its focus above-the-line.
OPSM handed business including the advertising account formerly held by Batey Kazoo to TOC, which already carried out below-the-line and planning work for the retailer.
This followed a successful campaign TOC for OPSM’s Activise contact lens product, which saw a 61% increase in trials and 175% growth in subscriptions.
TOC now handles everything from research to visual merchandising for OPSM, which sits on the agency’s client list alongside Alfa Romeo, Publishing & Broadcasting Limited, NSW Lotteries and Warner Music.
There is no repositioning in the offing, according to the agency’s chief executive John Ford.
The 25-strong company has always carried out creative work—headed by the award-winning duo of creative director Darren Glindemann and writer Philip Shearer—alongside design, research and planning as it works with clients at every stage of identifying business opportunities and executing the resulting ideas.
OPSM has bought into Ford’s holistic business and marketing philosophy, expressed in the tag he gave his company when the former head of planning and partner at TBWA and Batey set up shop in 1999.
Companies should see all their activities as an opportunity to get their brands closer to consumers. This ranges from executing above-the-line campaigns to the smell and furniture in stores.
The logical development from this is that all communications work should be carried out by TOC.
The agency also works on specific projects with other agencies. It has worked with creative shops such as London’s BBH on Levi’s and Strawberry Frog on the Sprint brand.
A company’s activities are a “brand theatre”, Ford said. He said he preferred the term “media-versal” to “media neutral”.
“Media neutral means just using the same old media in an unbiased way.
“We look at how to use the media you’re not using to communicate with people,” he says.
While the advertising industry has traditionally seen brand thinking as a soft-edged periphery to the business of advertising, Ford sees advertising as just one expression of “the central thought of what direction you’re taking your business in”.
Not only are new clients taking note, but Ford has attracted top talent to his team, most recently with the appointment of Marcus Lui as creative director — branded environments, packaging and product design.
Lui has worked for design and brand agencies in New York on clients such as DKNY.
“Within each of the areas we’ve tried to find a young star, who’s not locked down in their view of how media segments,” Ford said.
Research is another key area for the agency, and qualitative or quantitative research normally lies at the start of its end-to-end service.
“To be strong on the left brain communications work you have to be strong on right brain work—business and research and development,” he said.
While Ford reels out the buzzwords and catchy phrases often heard in advertising and marketing, the company works to transfer thinking into practice.
One example of this is the “zero geography model”, which determines that, thanks to tools such as digital media, a company can work for anyone, anywhere. Accordingly, 40% of TOC’s revenue is generated offshore. It is now working on an entertainment project in the UK for a consortium involving Kerry Packer.
