Meet The Woman Who Made The Biggest Advertising Coup Of The Year

“I didn’t come to Ogilvy to take the job as global CEO to change Ogilvy, because the foundations of Ogilvy are still strong.” This is what Ogilvy global chief executive Devika Bulchandani said to us when Creative Salon interviewed her this summer to talk about her ambitions to revitalise the reputation of Ogilvy. With one clean swoop - the acquisition of New Commercial Arts - she's managed to strengthen these foundations further still.

Let's not forget that Ogilvy is not a network lacking in lustre. Bulchandani has been leading Ogilvy to hit new strides since she was made the global CEO in 2022. But the NCA acquisition is her marking a new invigorated chapter in the history of the network.

WPP CEO Mark Read has repeatedly heaped praise on Ogilvy, including during a third-quarter earnings call last October when he cited its “creative rejuvenation” under Bulchandani as sparking what he described at the time as 3 per cent to 4 per cent growth.

The success has been driven by the network's gargantuan win - Verizon, touted as one of the single largest account wins of the past decade. The agency also picked up Jameson’s global creative account last year.

It has also continued to flex its creative muscle under Bulchandani's creative partner Liz Taylor, and was named Network of the Year at the 2024 Cannes Lions as well as recognised by WARC as the world’s number one Creative Agency Network (2020-2024) and Most Effective Creative Network in consecutive years (2023, 2024).

Bulchandani joined Ogilvy in March 2021 as global president and CEO of North America; in September 2022, she was elevated to the corner office. Prior to Ogilvy, she had spent over two decades at McCann Worldgroup.

The move to acquire NCA, Bulchandani sees as the next chapter in her journey. To global domination? To one day running WPP itself? Those are not the questions that she will answer. But it’s a bold move for Ogilvy and illustrates something of the scope of WPP's and Bulchandani's ambition for the business.

Why NCA? Now that's a foolish question to ask. But how does the indomitable power of James Murphy and David Golding, and their co-founders Ian Heartfield and Rob Curran, slot into the might of Ogilvy?

"You don't mess with the Ogilvy brand. It has the power. It has the foundations......And NCA share my belief and ambition of re-architecting and reimagining the industry," she says.

"It's a people business, and we can craft any amount of offering. But the thing that attracted me to NCA is James (Murphy) and David (Golding). They are an irresistible duo. An irresistible force. David and James know how to build the most beloved British brands. And I want us to be the most important global agency in the UK and the most important local agency that is a network. Now it has both vantage points," she adds.

Here Bulchandani talks to us about the NCA deal, what that means for her vision for the Ogilvy network, and how the acquisition will help marketers seize new opportunities for commercial creativity.

Creative Salon: The NCA acquisition - is it unfolding the vision you had for Ogilvy when you first joined?

Devika Bulchandani: Ogilvy has celebrated 75 years. But any great agency or any great company has chapters. So I've completed a three-year chapter (at the agency) and it's been an incredibly positive one in terms of our growth, our reputation, and the kinds of capabilities that we can bring to bear to solve our clients' problems. An incredible chunk of all this is what will go in the history books of the Ogilvy story. But it's also at moments like this, when we know we're ahead and our foundations are very strong, it becomes the time to disrupt ourselves.

I don't want to just sit surrounded by some of these accolades that we've had but I want to keep really defining or disrupting ourselves before somebody else decides to do it. Within Ogilvy we have five lines of business - Ogilvy advertising, brand and content; Ogilvy Health; OgilvyOne; Ogilvy PR social and influence; and Ogilvy Consulting. Core to all of that that brings it together is creativity.

If you look at the NCA proposition at a smaller scale, they've set up something that says it goes beyond advertising, and that the customer experience is just as important for a brand. And if you look at the Ogilvy proposition, because we're larger and have more capabilities, we're about more than advertising. So there was a real synergy there, right from the start.

CS: What was it about the founders James Murphy and David Golding that first attracted you to NCA?

Bulchandani: I'm a planner by trade and I like when a planner is sort of re architecting and reimagining the industry. That's how I felt when I first met David Golding. So it really builds on that foundation for us as a business - of being able to bring to bear many different capabilities that solve complex problems but all through the lens of creativity. That's who they both are.

I do have to give Mark (Read) a lot of credit and thank him for doing this deal on behalf of Ogilvy. The more time I spent with James and David there was just this chemistry from a people perspective, that we all come from a similar belief and a similar ambition. I always say I 'touch' three clients a day, not literally obviously. James has the very same thing, and his first question to me was - who are the clients I need to watch out for? I loved that. And I bought into their hunger and hustle. But also heart and humility in equal measures.

The timing of all of this works so perfectly because I was making a lot of moves in our senior ranks, starting with Antonis (Kocheilas) who was taking on the role of chief transformation officer and giving up his position as CEO of advertising. I needed more senior people in the global ranks. This gave me the opportunity to get [former UK CEO] Fiona [Gordon] to take on a larger global role, because she's done a spectacular job in the last three years here over the UK.

CS: This industry is about building brands, but agency brands have been collapsing all around us. And that is not just a WPP story. And you say you're keeping the NCA brand as a standalone brand. Was there ever a conversation to rebadge Ogilvy in the UK as NCAOgilvy?

Bulchandani: I always say Ogilvy is bigger than any one person, and you don't mess with the Ogilvy brand. There was a discussion early on, I think, for about 10 seconds. But you do not mess with the Ogilvy brand. It has the power. It has the foundations. It was Ogilvy before I came, and it's going to be Ogilvy when I'm gone. And James and David are coming here because they have the respect for the brand. It's really interesting to also see them discover more and more about what we have and what we're capable of doing. They're like kids in a candy store.

CS: WPP doesn't really have boutique agencies in the truest sense of the word. However, Ogilvy has David, INGO, and now NCA. What are your plans for taking NCA into other markets? How do you think that would deliver better for clients and whatever their needs are at this time?

Bulchandani: We have David, which is in multiple markets and not just in one market. INGO is also in multiple markets in Europe. And now with NCA, it gives us the the ability to offer our clients the different solutions and ways of working that they find most comfortable. The beauty of a David or an INGO and now with NCA is the might of the Ogilvy network behind them. There's a lot of instances where David will be leading, but they still need the global network across several markets, but they want a smaller, more scrappy way of working. So I love that we can offer our clients whatever solution they want.

I'm not sure we're going to need to take NCA across other markets. Also I'm not in a rush to create a network of conflict shops or small shops. The one region where we don't have this sort of the might of a David or an INGO or an NCA is Asia Pacific, so that's something on my mind. But no firm plans.