By Orit, Founder / CEO
In 1986 I rented one small room on East 25th Street, inside a video production company. Someone told me that if I wanted to freelance, I could work from home, but if I wanted people to see me as an agency, I needed an office.
The space came with a pool table, a full bar and a huge Marilyn Monroe painting. None of it was mine, but anyone walking in assumed it was. Perception is reality, and vice versa. I learned that early.
I still have one of my first business cards. I couldn’t afford to print in color, so I colored every one by hand. Our card today is on 110-point stock, embossed and debossed. I’m proud of both.
I came up as a graphic designer at ABC TV, Doubleday and Mego, then spent eight years in consumer electronics, where I became Group Creative Director and launched Video Review, the industry’s first newsstand magazine. When I left to open Orit Design, Miramax, Sony and Fine Line came with me.
Working with film studios taught me a lot about luxury. Both sell a feeling people want to be part of. Ferragamo came next, and later Hennessy. As more of our clients turned out to be premium and luxury brands, I decided to commit to luxury. It didn’t feel like a risk. It was instinct.
Not many women were starting agencies then, and fewer still were working with luxury brands. I did it anyway, because I thought they deserved better branding than they were getting.
What It Taught Me
Strategy first has always been our motto. The creative was always good, but beautiful work without a strong foundation doesn’t last. I’ve seen gorgeous campaigns fall flat because nobody had decided what the brand stood for. People remember work like that for a season and then forget it. So we figure out who a brand is first, and then we design.
I was underestimated a lot early on. It turned out to be useful, because people say more when they don’t see you as a threat. I listened, and then I did the work.
I also learned not to wait to be asked. Most of the good things that happened to us came from going after them.
What Lasted
We were agency of record for Ferragamo for more than 20 years, Robert Marc for eleven, Hennessy for eight and Miramax for six. Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Harry Winston trusted us with names that took generations to build. Those long relationships are what I’m proudest of. Agencies get replaced all the time, and we’ve held on to ours as an independent firm. I think it comes down to being honest with them and caring about their brands the way they do.
“Their passion for their work is impressive. This is the only agency that we’ve wanted to work with again and continue to go to for advice. They were able to gain the trust of our most senior leadership. It’s nice to have found an agency that we can trust and continue to build a relationship with.” – Judy Sroufe, Global Brand Leader, Mascioni Hotel Collection
We’re a branding and creative agency, and we focus on luxury and premium brands: hospitality, jewelry, fashion, fine spirits and home. We find what makes a brand different and build everything else around it.
How We Changed
The agency’s name changed as we grew. Orit Design became O Design Group, and then The O Group, with three divisions: O Design, O Interactive and O Promotions. We had no idea what the digital world would turn into, but we jumped in early, and over time the three divisions merged into the agency we are today.
We’ve had five offices in forty years. Along the way we went from that one room on East 25th Street to a 7,500-square-foot office on 30th Street, with room for more than 30 people and a balcony to match. This time the bar was all mine, and so was the Lichtenstein print on the wall. That was our Mad Men era, minus the men.
We’ve had to change how we work more than once. When COVID hit, years after I was told a real agency needed an office, we shot our Windoor campaign in Atlanta while we were in New York and the client was in Florida. Now we’re approaching AI the same way. We use it for research, not creative. It helps us move faster, but it can’t decide what a brand stands for.
Knowing what you stand for matters more now than it has in years. The luxury market isn’t shrinking, but it’s getting narrower, and the brands doing well are the ones with a clear point of view. Helping brands find theirs is what we’ve done for forty years.
Recently we rebranded and repositioned Paws Up Montana, rebranded Reinhold Jewelers in Puerto Rico and launched its new e-commerce site and store, and branded and launched Santi, Chef Michael White’s flagship in New York.
To The Women Starting Now
There are more women running agencies than there were in 1986, but the numbers are still small. By industry estimates, only a few percent of agencies in North America are owned by women, and only about a third of all businesses make it to ten years. Nobody tracks how many women-founded independent agencies have reached forty, but I know it isn’t many.
My advice is to start anyway. Put your name on it and charge what the work is worth. Pick clients you’d be happy to work with for twenty years, and hire people who are better than you at the things you’re not. Then stay with it.
I’ve also learned that you can’t do everything well at once, but over a lifetime you can have a family, a career and a life built around what you love. Forty years in, I get to choose the brands we work with, and that leaves more room for the rest. My top five these days are family, friends, travel, pickleball and Pilates.
Thank you to our clients, our partners and our team for these forty years, and to the women who came up with me and after me. I’m not done yet.
The O Group is a New York City luxury branding and creative consultancy, founded in 1986. We specialize in foundational brand development across hospitality, home and lifestyle, jewelry and fashion, and fine spirits, food and wine.
