Have We Got a Job for You! OgilvyOne Contest for World's Greatest Salesperson

NEW YORK, March 29 /PRNewswire/ -- If you think you have what it takes to sell a common, ordinary brick, then OgilvyOne Worldwide has a once in a lifetime opportunity for you – complete with an all expenses paid trip to the south of France for the spectacular Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and a job with OgilvyOne. (This is not your everyday sales pitch – so act now.)

Using all the tools of the sales trade, OgilvyOne is on a mission to reinvigorate the noble art of salesmanship and the credo of its founder David Ogilvy who said, "We sell, or else." To that end, OgilvyOne is launching a global search to find the world's greatest salesperson through an online video competition on YouTube.  Three finalists will be selected from entries received March 30 through May 16.  The finalists will be flown to the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival for a chance to compete for a fellowship with the agency at a special session on June 21st where they will show their sales prowess in action.

"Our business is all about selling, and how we sell is changing fast," explained Mat Zucker, Executive Creative Director of OgilvyOne in New York and the originator of the contest. "We thought it was time to reassert the importance of sales, honor the timeless craft of persuasion, glean wisdom from the best, and highlight the new tools and platforms which are re-shaping it for customers."

To help contestants see great salesmanship at its best, OgilvyOne has seeded its YouTube channel with examples of great salespeople using proven sales techniques to close the deal. The humorous videos will be posted on Yahoo!, and other sites to fuel entries.

"In marketing, the noble craft of salesmanship sometimes gets lost in the pursuit of art or the dazzle of technology," says Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide. "At OgilvyOne, our whole mission is to help our clients win more customers and make them more valuable. This contest celebrates selling and creativity, and Cannes is the perfect place for this search to culminate."  

The winner of the "Search for the World's Greatest Salesperson" contest will receive a three-month fellowship with OgilvyOne. Their job will be to rearticulate the lessons of sales espoused by David Ogilvy with a 21st century approach.

For details on the contest visit http://www.youtube.com/ogilvy

About OgilvyOne Worldwide  

OgilvyOne Worldwide is the strongest, most experienced and most highly awarded one-to-one marketing network in the world, with over 130 offices in 50 countries. It provides clients with a full range of direct, consulting and interactive services to deliver profitable customer relationships.  The roster of clients is equally balanced between global clients including American Express, Cisco, IBM, Lenovo, Nestle, SAP and Unilever, and leading clients in our local markets. OgilvyOne Worldwide is a unit of The Ogilvy Group, a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY), one of the world's largest communications services groups.

SOURCE Ogilvy & Mather