World's Greatest Salespeople To Pitch Motorola Milestone

Ogilvy develops Cannesdroid app for Advertising Festival

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Jun 15, 2010, 04:46 ET

NEW YORK, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- OgilvyOne Worldwide and Motorola today announced that the Motorola Milestone phone (Droid in the U.S.) will be the product to be "pitched" by the three finalists during the finale of the World's Greatest Salesperson contest in Cannes. To celebrate Motorola's participation, Ogilvy has created the Cannesdroid app exclusively for the Festival.

James King, Marketing Director, EMARA Brand Management & 360 Integration, Motorola Mobile Devices, will be one of three on-stage judges who will provide expert commentary on the finalists' pitches at the seminar. The ultimate winner will be chosen by the audience via real-time SMS voting.

"The Motorola Milestone, and its sister product Droid in the U.S., has revolutionized the Smart Phone category and is flying off the shelves in markets all over the world. But we're always open to new and inventive ways to sell our products and this contest seems like a perfect opportunity to tap into fresh thinking from such a persuasive group of salespeople. I'm excited to be part of the seminar and I'm looking forward to critiquing the finalists' pitches."

Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, remarked "We know that each of these finalists can sell a red brick. The final test of their salesmanship will be how well they can sell a real product in front of a live audience."

To celebrate the Motorola partnership, Ogilvy developed an Android app for Cannes attendees. Named Cannesdroid, the app provides detailed information and maps for festival activities, a live twitterfall that will allow bloggers to share their views of speeches and workshops (with special correspondents who have agreed to tweet throughout the week), and well as useful recommendations for the surrounding area. Cannesdroid uses "layar" type technology to act as a guide to events at the Festival, in which users can point their device at venues as if they were pointing the camera, and relevant information about what's occurring in the areas, myths from Cannes in years past and tweets from attendees in the area are seen through the viewfinder and will appear on-screen.

The app will be free to download from the Android marketplace for all Cannes attendees with an Android device. Cannesdroid will also be pre-loaded on 35 phones that will be distributed to industry VIPs.

Tapping several 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 launched a global search to find the world's greatest salesperson through an online video competition on YouTube where contestants were asked to submit a two minute pitch on how they would sell a red brick.

Y. Lee Abbas from Hokkaido, Japan, Todd Herman from Edmonton, Canada, and Eric Polins from Tampa, USA were the three finalists selected. They will appear at a special seminar at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France on Monday June 21. The winner, who will be named the "World's Greatest Salesperson," will receive a three month fellowship with OgilvyOne to help craft the sales guide to the 21st century.

For details on the contest visit:

http://www.youtube.com/ogilvy

http://www.facebook.com/ogilvy

http://twitter.com/Sell_Or_Else/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/worldsgreatestsalesperson

About OgilvyOne Worldwide

OgilvyOne Worldwide is the strongest, most experienced and most highly awarded one-to-one marketing network in the world, with over 120 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.

About the Motorola Milestone (Droid in U.S.)

The Motorola Milestone (Droid in U.S.) delivers a richer web experience and smarter messaging on the thinnest QWERTY slider available.

SOURCE OgilvyOne Worldwide