Five major Ogilvy clients received golden tickets yesterday morning—but they won’t get them into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Instead, the tickets promise entry into Ogilvyland: a satirical fossil fuel funfair dreamed up by activists at the climate campaign group Serious People.
The hand-delivered package also included an “oilypop” and a letter to each company’s leaders, highlighting the conflicts between their own sustainability goals and the work that Ogilvy does for fossil fuel companies.
“Ogilvy’s worst nightmare is some of their big clients with with big commitments to sustainability just asking some questions,” Jamie Inman, co-founder of Serious People, told ADWEEK. “All we’re asking is for some of those clients to have a private conversation with Ogilvy.”
Building Ogilvyland
Serious People built a website for Ogilvyland that launched on Oct. 3, and has been rolling out LinkedIn posts with details about the funfair throughout the month. The group also sent emails to hundreds of Ogilvy clients, inviting them to the satirical amusement park, and signing the emails as WPP CEO Mark Read.
Attractions (none of which are real, at least so far) include Coal Mine Mountain, Rising River Rapids, Net-Zero Slowllercoaster, and an oil-slicked slide called Pipeline Plunge.
Mark Read’s Magic Show, which is advertised with a headshot of the exec photoshopped into a magician’s costume, claims to show him making employee opinions magically align with his own by using an “unemployment wand.”