Ogilvy & Mather New York Presents Inaugural GLAAD Media Awards in Advertising

• Press Release
• Source: Ogilvy North America
• On 10:43 am EDT, Thursday October 29, 2009

NEW YORK, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Demonstrating its continuing commitment and support of diversity and inclusion in the advertising industry, Ogilvy & Mather New York was a proud sponsor of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's (GLAAD) first Media Awards in Advertising. The Awards recognize and honor individuals and projects in the advertising and marketing industries for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the LGBT community and the issues that affect their lives.

Ogilvy was the sole advertising agency sponsor at the Presenting Sponsorship level.

"At Ogilvy, we are always striving to create work that reflects the diversity of our clients' customer bases," said Marco DiDomizio of Ogilvy's Client Finance Group and co-chair of Ogilvy's LGBT employee resource group. "Our relationship with GLAAD goes way back. We've been recipients of its Commercial Closet Awards numerous times in the past. So when the opportunity to help the organization create an awards program specifically devoted to honoring positive portrayals of gays and lesbians in advertising, we jumped at it."

The ceremony which took place last night at New World Stages, 340 W. 50th Street, was hosted by actor Alan Cumming, the Vito Russo Award honoree at the 16th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.

"Advertisers that promote fair, accurate and inclusive images of the gay and transgender community send an important message to their customers, to fellow corporations - and to anyone who sees their ads - that LGBT people should be accepted and valued for our contributions to society," said Jarrett Barrios, GLAAD President. "GLAAD congratulates the award recipients and will continue to advocate for increased inclusion of LGBT images in mainstream advertising to show gay and transgender people are part of America and respected as customers and employees in these companies."

Award recipients can be seen at www.glaad.org/advertisingawards/recipients.

About GLAAD

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.

About Ogilvy North America

Ogilvy North America (www.ogilvy.com), is the largest unit of Ogilvy & Mather, a WPP company (Nasdaq: WPPGY - News). It has offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Durham, Minneapolis, Denver, and throughout Canada. Ogilvy North America brings together all the capabilities of the Ogilvy network to provide integrated marketing solutions to the agency's clients. It encompasses Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, OgilvyEntertainment, OgilvyOne, OgilvyInteractive, Neo@Ogilvy, Ogilvy Healthworld, Ogilvy Public Relations, OgilvyAction, and RedWorks.

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