See the story here.

From more than 200 to 3.

This morning, OgilvyOne Worldwide announced 3 finalists for The Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson.

• See the finalist entry videos at the YouTube channel, plus those of the Honor Roll
• Read the press release here
• NYT Media Decoder blog coverage

The final competition among the three will be live, on stage on June 21 at the OgilvyOne seminar “Can you sell, or else?” at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival

Please also be sure to join our LinkedIn Group Sell_or_else and follow our Twitter feed for news about the program and effort up until and after the event.

From Linkedin postings in our Sell_Or_Else group to Twitter Followers (we have 500+) to actual red brick video submissions (200+) at YouTube, Tips on Selling on Slideshare and news coverage, this global program has put a huge spotlight on sales and its important role in marketing. We’re just thrilled and humbled by it. Folks have been generous with both their compliments and criticisms, and it’s helped shaped what we do and how we respond.

We’re hoping to share and publish what we’ve learned both during the process and of course as we hire the winner to help develop the sales guide and principles of the 21st century. There’s anectodal knowledge about social media, sure, and running a big program in so many countries, but there’s also some serious content and lessons in what it means to put a stake in the ground and in how people participate, respond and shape an effort.

Stay tuned to the Sell or Else twitter feed for the latest news as we announce the finalists, and we’ll be at the Cannes Advertising Festival for the June 21 finals for the winners on stage.

The judges panel has helped narrow the finalists and we’re reading essays submitted about sales in the 21st century.

Gretchen Scheiman’s article in MediaPost’s Email Insider today is a call to email marketers to use their existing knowledge base to take over the messaging component of these two new channels. It also features a list of critical components marketers will need to kick-start the channels.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the 32^nd Annual Caples Awards. For those of you unfamiliar with this contest, it’s the Grammys of Direct Marketing (I’m reserving the Tonys title for the Echo Awards and Oscars for Cannes Direct…sorry).

As the stories about the award-winning work were presented and the trophies handed out, a co-worker of mine leaned over and asked, “What’s direct about that execution?” It was a good point. Seems like the lines between direct and general are blurring. But one distinction still stands the test of time-when you work in direct marketing you carry a proverbial scarlet letter.

To see what I’m talking about just walk through many agencies, and too often you’ll notice a common theme. The advertising folks and the direct guys are clearly, and in my opinion deliberately, separated. Whether it’s different floors or different corners of the office, when you work in DM are you (unofficially) the ugly stepchild of the agency?

But why? We give brands the same coddling and pampering as the general guys. Why do we seem to suck at positioning our own industry? I mean, we’re direct marketers. We can segment, calculate and rationalize data till the cows come home. Perhaps it’s time we apply all that smart thinking to address our own selfish needs.

What’s in a name?

First off, it’s time to re-brand. Direct marketing sounds more like a clinical diagnosis than an inspiring and exciting industry. In the UK, direct is known as response advertising. Still a little dry, but at least it has the word advertising in it-alluding to the fact that one would find exciting and dare I say, creative advertising work.

We need a name that speaks to what we do today. Direct marketing has come a long way from buckslips and number 10 envelopes. A good direct campaign connects with people, starts conversations and then, if you’re lucky, takes on a life all its own.

Just like Australian shop BMF did with their integrated campaign for beer manufacturer Lion Nathan and their Tooheys Extra Dry brand. Using the principle of “Six degrees of separation” they invited young beer drinkers to leverage their network so they could eventually have a drink with their idols. Videos were made and followed each participant as they got one step closer to meeting their famous friends. Watch the award entry video for the “Six Beers of Separation” campaign here. It’s smart, targeted, creative and best of all, it actually worked!

Perception is everything.

Next, we need to start changing how direct marketing is seen within the ad community. Admittedly this is a tall order. Things started to look up when we adopted interactive into the direct marketing family (perhaps a post for another day). But we still need to do a better job of making DM more relevant, and ultimately more respected.

I’m not saying this for my own selfish reasons, but rather for the health of direct marketing. Think about it: what young writer or art director from the Miami Ad School is going to choose a DM gig over a general one? If we don’t do a better job positioning our industry, this perception problem will be the least of our worries.

Perhaps the simplest solution is to get back to why we got into advertising in the first place-to celebrate awesome ideas. Whether that idea gets executed in the form of a mobile app or a dimensional mailer, isn’t the point. Great work is just that-great.

Now all we need are more creatives from every corner of the shop to recognize that.

Check it out and be sure to see and vote on the latest entries in OgilvyOne’s The Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson on our YouTube channel and join our linkedin group.

The truth is, the economy will recover, the flow of entry-level jobs will return. We will always need the best to join in our pursuit. Yes, really. Even during down times, every year Ogilvy hires perhaps two dozen associates who work across account management, consulting, planning, program management and production. They rotate though our agency in a program that for many amounts to a terrific introduction to the business, including the new direct.

What skills do you need to bring?
So what should someone just starting out bring to our business? David Ogilvy summed it up well: “…don’t get a job in advertising unless it interests you more than anything else in the world.”

A keen interest in the craft of marketing is the best ballast to the tumultuous nature of what we do for a living. But what else, practically, is most helpful? To find out, I polled a random sample of last year’s crop of associates on what they thought was most useful in their first year. I received a wide range of answers.

Advice from recent Associates
Much advice was in the realm of the practical, such as mastering PowerPoint and Excel, how to use the web to research obscure topics, and importantly, how to prioritize.

On the other hand, one associate wrote, “You don’t need a full technical understanding of the Adobe creative suite to work in this business. In college, they make it sound like knowing how to work files in Illustrator was life or death in this industry. Sure, creativity is a must, but creative comes in a ton of different shapes aside from a .psd file.”

That same thoughtful associate emphasized the importance of patience:
“Yes, I know patience is actually a virtue, but it has been an incredibly helpful skill as well. You have to pay your dues, you are going to endure hardships, you are going to have times when you disagree with colleagues and managers, but patience will help you put things in perspective and bite the proverbial bullet. I have already lost count of the times that just taking a deep breath, giving it a few minutes, and returning to whatever it was has helped me….”

Another associate emphasized courtesy: “Yes, it is the deliverable, but often it is just reassurance that can come in the form of ‘I got your email and I will get on it ASAP.’ Sometimes, it is giving someone the courtesy of saying, ‘I hope everything is well’ before launching into the laundry list of requests you need filled. While being detail-oriented, prompt and able to multi-task are indeed necessary, I believe interjections of humanity are equally important and must always be genuine. As we start our careers, it can be easy to focus on building our portfolio of work and lose sight of building our relationships with the people around us. I feel those relationships are what give our personal work and achievement any quality and value to begin with.”

This read true to me. It was so when I started in direct. But those just entering the business possess something the rest of us lack: fresh perspective.

Those starting out see our industry’s warts as well as our marks of beauty more readily than the jaded. They have refined bullshit detectors. They understand the tensions in the business and if we give them a chance, they will wrestle with them. These tensions are serving client business results and our industry’s pursuit of profit in this new age of procurement; our commitment to diversity and our continued difficulty in delivering on the promise of a wholly diverse and consistently inclusive agency; our belief in pervasive creativity and a tendency, sometimes, to settle on an easier solution.

What makes newcomers to Ogilvy most valued is their fresh perspective, if — the big if — they have the courage to take advantage of it. And we actually give them permission and encourage them to find their voice.

What about those of us already here?
Do we lack the listening skills to hear what they have to say? Or worse, do we fail to provide the environment that gives newcomers permission to test their wings?

When was the last time the most junior person in the room had permission, or better, was encouraged, to deliver a strong point of view? When was the last time you asked their opinion and listened critically to what they had to say?

Each of us has survived in the business only because someone along the way decided we were worthwhile, that we had an opinion about something that mattered.

It takes personal courage, but it also takes a culture. David Ogilvy spoke eloquently about our agency’s role as a “teaching hospital.” Have we given our interns, our newcomers, the chances they deserve?

We are reminded.
At the Ogilvy global workshop in Istanbul last month, Miles Young invited young employees from around the network to compete via an essay contest on Pervasive Creativitiy. The 13 winners served as rapporteurs, taking notes on our discussions, helping with the complex logistics. On the last day, each was given a brief window to share their perspective on what we missed, speaking in front of the Ogilvy leadership team. They were passionate, honest and, admittedly, tough to listen to. To most, their observations were spot on.

One noted that of the Ogilvy folks who stepped to the podium over the first two days of the conference, not one was a woman. (Shelly Lazarus spoke graciously, albeit belatedly, a few moments later.) Another noted that during a work session on how to attract and retain millennials into our agency, neither of the two young associates taking notes was asked their opinion. It’s their future we’re planning and we’re not soliciting their view. And lose the millennials terminology, by the way.

As each of them reminded us, they are Ogilvy.

Exactly the call to arms we needed.

To those who start out: Do not be shy.
You have much to add, you must give yourself permission to take risks, and encourage those around you to listen. We have as much to do with getting off to a good start in the new direct as you do. Sometimes, we need the reminder.

I got home and found 3 clean shirts. Unfortunately, as I packed them in my suitcase I noticed that two of them had rips in the sleeves. 31 expletives later, I calmed down enough to realize that my predicament was my own fault. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. Twice in the last year I got laundry back from my dry cleaner which was damaged in some way. Both times I decided to try somewhere new, only to find myself going back to the same place a few days later. As I finished packing, the question I asked myself was why - why hadn’t I at least tried somewhere different?

The Status quo effect *
Richard Zeckhauser and William Samuelson would likely blame the ’status quo bias’. In their words ‘In choosing among alternatives, individuals display a bias toward sticking with the status quo’. Their studies show how this bias is evident everywhere - it can influence everything from our choice of who to vote for, where to eat or how much to contribute to our retirement funds. Put simply, inertia influences our decision making even when we are not aware of it and even when changing our behavior would be the ‘rational’ thing to do (for example, changing your dry cleaner when they keep ruining your shirts). In Nudge, Richard Thaler points out how magazine subscription services take advantage of our natural inertia to their benefit. They will offer people 3 months free magazine subscription, on the condition that the recipient cancels after 3 months if they no longer wish to receive the publication. They do this with the knowledge that our natural inertia means a good portion of those who take up the offer, will never get around to cancelling their new subscriptions, even when they no longer want them.

And it’s not just my dry cleaner and magazine subscription services who are harnessing the power of the status quo bias. The day I got back from London I received a letter from my credit card company offering me $50 if I set up a direct debit to pay my bills through their new online bill payment service. This is presumably based on the insight that once I have a direct debit set in place, the disruption it would cause me to change to another card or bank will put me off doing so. They are relying on my inertia to prevent me switching in the future.

Marketers, inertia can be your friend
Generally, marketers don’t like to embrace this feature of human behavior. We like to be positive - to talk about the transformative power of brands and great customer experience. We like to believe ‘emotional’ loyalty is more powerful than inertia and habit.  And sometimes it is. And I am by no means advocating poor customer experience as a corporate objective. However, it’s also important to pay attention to what we know to be true about human behavior. So, it’s worth thinking about how you can leverage the status quo bias, or at least how it might be impacting your business, because it does have an effect. Just ask my dry cleaner. Or my shirts.

* The ’status quo’ effect is not to be confused with the British band ‘Status Quo’, who produce an all together different affect. Take a look for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8K8Hj8bxE

Zeckhauser and Samuelson, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1: 7-59 (1988) 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston’

Thaler & Sunstein, Nudge - Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, 2008, Penguin Books,

Our founder, David Ogilvy, started in sales. His crusade “We Sell, or Else” is ours to this day.

On March 30, to reaffirm our commitment to salesmanship, to celebrate the skills and craft of those who do it so well, and to explore how sales is done via modern digital platforms, OgilvyOne launches the The Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson.

At our YouTube channel, you can see the video call for entries, hear about  the prize, share it and it’s where the public can vote to shape the outcome.

If you want to stay in touch, follow the whole effort on Twitter, join the Linkedin Group and/or the Ogilvy Facebook page. We’ll do periodic updates through the re:direct lens here as well.

We’re excited about this challenge, and can’t wait to see the wisdom + creativity of the participants in more than a dozen countries around the world. The competition culminates at The Cannes International Advertising Festival in June, where the finalists will compete on stage.

Here’s what The New York Times has said about it the effort.

Much thanks to several companies including Google, Yahoo!, APM Music and Graham Clifford Design for identity.