Ogilvy Becomes First Agency to Support Skillshare with Expert Teachers

NEW YORK, March 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ogilvy & Mather will become the first agency to provide a series of classes to the public through Skillshare, a new learning platform that aims to democratize the availability of education by pairing experts/teachers with a growing public interested in learning new skills.

Leveraging its digital marketing expertise across different channels, Ogilvy will provide three initial classes by top agency experts including classes in User Experience, Influence Marketing and YouTube & Video Strategy. 

"Ogilvy has always seen itself as a 'teaching hospital' – something our founder, David Ogilvy ingrained in our culture," explained Lauren Crampsie, Chief Marketing Officer of Ogilvy & Mather.  "We think the Skillshare model is well worth participating in and we're looking forward to helping train future advertising greats."

The first class on Wednesday, March 21st is in User Experience Applied – one of the top sought after jobs in the new digital economy.  The class will be taught by Hae-Yin Loke, who manages Ogilvy's User Experience Group, a multidisciplinary unit that includes information architects, interaction designers, content strategists, planners, usability analysts and business analysts.

On March 28th, Dan Schreibstein, VP of Digital Strategy at Social@Ogilvy will teach "How to Influence the Influencers."  He'll cover the A to Z's of building a can't-miss influencer strategy for your business. 

Finally, there will be YouTube & Video Strategy on April 4th with Robert Davis, Executive Director of Ogilvy's Advanced Video Practice and Marcus Andrew, a top Strategist on the same team. They'll be covering Online Video Landscape & Strategy and then deep-diving into YouTube strategy specifically. 

"We're excited to have Ogilvy teaching classes on Skillshare because they've got expertise that anyone interested should be able to learn from. We believe our cities are our biggest universities and industry experts like theirs are some of the best teachers out there," said Michael Karnjanaprakorn CEO & Co-founder of Skillshare.

The classes cost $25 per person. All proceeds will be donated to PROJECT:2040, a nonprofit organization that matches high performing minority engineering students with Silicon Valley start-ups for summer internships. It also provides the students with the insights, networks and support to ensure their successful participation in the high tech innovation economy. The program launches summer 2012.

About Ogilvy & Mather:
Ogilvy & Mather is one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world. Through its specialty units, the company provides a comprehensive range of marketing services including: advertising; public relations and public affairs; branding and identity; shopper and retail marketing; healthcare communications; direct, digital, promotion and relationship marketing. Ogilvy & Mather services Fortune Global 500 companies as well as local businesses through its network of more than 450 offices in 120 countries. It is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). For more information, visit www.ogilvy.com.

About Skillshare:
Skillshare a community marketplace to learn anything from anyone, anywhere. We believe that everyone has something they want to learn and something they can teach to others. This means our communities are really the greatest universities. Our mission is to democratize education by empowering anyone to be a teacher. Anyone can share their skills, and anyone can benefit from and should have access to the knowledge that the people in our communities have. To contact Skillshare about press opportunities, contact [email protected]. 

SOURCE Ogilvy & Mather