Coley Porter Bell brings deep branding expertise to the collective of Ogilvy agencies, helping businesses express their brands within emerging and new technology platforms using our unique immersive brand expression system. 

Ogilvy, alongside partner agencies including Coley Porter Bell, has launched a dedicated tech lab called REALITY to explore and unlock brand applications of emerging technologies. Led by Dickon Laws, Global Head of Innovation, the service will be an innovation translator, pathfinder and risk navigator service for clients.

The tech capability will focus on three key areas: Augmented Experiences – including AR & Camera Strategies; Synthetic Experiences – including World Building, Digital-Humans & Design Generative Content; and Decentralized Experiences – exploring how a ‘trust free’ internet improves customer experience.  Ogilvy has assembled teams of specialists from across the Network, including Coley Porter Bell, AQuest, BottleRocket and Jussi. Previously Ogilvy’s network of innovation teams have worked with Gucci, VW, PizzaHut, Cadbury’s, Estee Lauder, Greenpeace and Lamborghini, now the launch of REALITY makes the emerging tech offering official.

Dickon Laws, Global Head of Innovation at Ogilvy, said: “Although most brands have experimented with emerging tech, there is still a lot of IDK & WTF attached to AR, VR, AI, ML, NPC, NFT and Web3. When you think that the metaverse and its associated technologies are projected to be worth almost $1.5 trillion dollars by 2029, that’s either a lot of growth to miss out on or a lot of mis-invested budget for brand leaders to be accountable for through poor understanding and unfamiliarity.

“Reality has been designed to de-risk that investment and unlock the value for brands by translating what these emerging and maturing technologies can mean for customers. Although we are emerging technologists, really we want to get technology out of the way and focus on needs based adoption”.

REALITY has a dedicated team to drive industry best practice partnerships with leading platforms including Snap Chat, Meta, Epic Games, Soul Machines and Salesforce.  Recently Ogilvy also became the first global company to be certified by Meta for its Spark AR (Meta’s native augmented reality production suite) capabilities, underlining the commitment to its partnership with the global media owner.

James Ramsden, Executive Creative Director at Coley Porter Bell, commented: “As more and more progressive, digitally empowered brands leave behind old identity structures and move to a more ‘immersive’ system and approach to engagement, partnering with REALITY means we can help brands bring this exploration to life and deliver real world experiences.”