MANILA – Ogilvy and Mather Philippines has appointed Antonio Miguel Mercado as Managing Director and promotion of Mona Nazario-Garcia to General Manager of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising.
Both effective last October, Mercado (left) takes over from Thorsten Orth who returns to Ogilvy & Mather Advertising Vietnam after 14 months with the Manila business. He comes to Ogilvy from ABS-CBN where, as Vice President and Head of Marketing for Digital Terrestrial TV for five years. He the man behind the network’s digitalTV service TV Plus Ang Mahiwagang Black Box, a service that provides clear, free channels to a majority of the population.
Mercado sees the role as his return to the Advertising industry he grew up with. His career in the industry spans two decades, working accounts in his early years under the tutelage of “pillars of the Philippine Advertising industry” Tony Mercado, his father, and Minyong Ordonez at Basic Advertising.
Meanwhile, Nazario-Garcia (right) is a home-grown talent of 13 years. Armed with insights on South East Asian mothers from previous work, she started in Ogilvy & Mather in 2002 as Account Manager for Kraft and later Regional Manager for SEA for Kimberly Clarke-Kotex and Huggies brands.
In 2006, she took on an assignment as Agency lead for Pond’s which paved the way for the acquistion of Dove and Vaseline business for the Agency. With proven success in brand team leadership, she was later assigned Agency lead for ‘Team Unilab’, which supported various United Laboratories brand categories, and then promoted to Client Services Director and Digital lead for Advertising.
Says Elly Puyat, CEO of Ogilvy and Mather Philippines: “Over the last few years we have had to change the way we think and work together within the Agency to deliver real value for our clients. We embraced the shift to distributable content early, acknowledging that content that is shared and talked about in the right social circles has become as big of an influence on consumer preference and purchase decisions as ‘disposable’ TV, print and billboard material. We also embraced collaboration across our businesses, delivering more effective campaigns across more touchpoints.”
The top appointments were made on the back of Ogilvy’s success in the Philippines as acknowledged by its recent 4A’s Agency of the Year Awards Wins. This includes Best in Market Performance (2014), Best in Management of Business (2015), Digital Excellence Award for Best in Digital Media (2015) and Activation Excellence Award for Best in Execution (2015).
