The assignment is the agency's first from a Japanese Government agency, and follows MindShare's win of Jetro's media planning and buying brief for specific new projects in China, Europe and the US (Media, April 3).
The campaign will run in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune, as well as local media in the three markets.
The appointment comes at the end of a record-breaking first quarter of business gains for Ogilvy's nine-year-old Japan office. Other wins included an assignment from Crecia Corp, Japan's second-largest maker of toilet paper, adult diapers and other sanitary paper products; and American Home Insurance, which awarded OgilvyOne a brief to target older people via TV, radio, and print. Ogilvy's Pulse PR subsidiary is working for Nichia Chemical to deal with negative fall-out for Nichia from its ongoing lawsuit against the 'blue LED' inventor, Shuji Nakamura.
Nissan Motor has asked Ogilvy's design group, Enterprise IG, to name a new car.
With the recent gains, approximately 15 per cent of Ogilvy's business now comes from Japanese firms, up from five per cent a couple of years ago. "We are working very hard to make it close to 50:50. In order to grow, we believe that being successful with, and well recognised by Japanese companies, is crucial," said agency president Mark Blair.