Musician Darden Smith Gives an Exclusive Performance for Ogilvy & Mather Employees to Raise Awareness About SongwritingWith:Soldiers

PARSIPPANY, NJ--(Marketwired - Jun 5, 2015) - Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide (www.ochww.com), the health behavior change specialists of Ogilvy & Mather (www.ogilvy.com), and a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY) (www.wpp.com), along with Ogilvy's military veterans professional network, Salute, co-hosted a private, employees-only performance yesterday by singer/songwriter Darden Smith and panel discussion about SongwritingWith:Soldiers (SW:S) with Smith and the group's executive director Mary Judd.

In 2012, Smith co-founded the nonprofit group SW:S with Judd as a catalyst for positive change -- using songwriting to help service members tell their stories in a unique way to dispel pain, rebuild trust, and strengthen connections. By January 2015, 150 songs were co-written, recorded, and shared by service members and award-winning professionals. These songs help connect military service members and civilians while helping to build awareness of the challenges veterans face upon returning home.

Smith performed three songs for employees at the Ogilvy Theater in the organization's New York City office. Shortly after, Judd described the SW:S weekend retreats and the program's emphasis on helping to build creativity and awareness of the unrelenting strengths in the veterans and their families. SW:S has held retreats in New York, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and California and hopes to expand its reach in the future. They were then joined on stage by Brett Jones, Marine veteran and co-founder of Salute, for a group discussion that addressed the great ongoing work that SW:S does for America's military heroes.

Michael Parisi, a managing partner at Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide, who is the executive sponsor for Ogilvy's Salute group and responsible for setting up the event, shared, "We are thrilled to have had Darden with us yesterday to share his creative talents as a songwriter and storyteller with our employees. His unrelenting dedication to help those who have served our country was a real inspiration to Ogilvy's Salute group. With his visit to our offices, we are even more motivated and committed to helping improve the lives of our nation's heroes."

For more information about SongwritingWith:Soldiers, please visit www.songwritingwithsoldiers.org/

About Salute
Salute, an Ogilvy & Mather professional network, provides a community and platform for Ogilvy veterans, reservists, and guardsman from the US and around the world. They partner with both national and local veteran organizations for the betterment of the community at large. The network is also open to anyone in Ogilvy who supports veterans, whether they be family members or simply friends and allies who want to join the cause. The network also looks to bolster Ogilvy's recruitment efforts by seeking out veterans, transitioning or otherwise, to join the Ogilvy workforce and to help foster and promote a culture that develops and retains veterans in their careers.

Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide is committed to creativity and effectiveness in healthcare communications, everywhere. Our global headquarters are in Parsippany, NJ, with additional hubs in New York, London, Paris and Singapore. We maintain multiple additional offices in markets critical to our clients' global aspirations. Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide provides marketing services including behavioral insights, content strategy and management, digital, interactive and new media services, marketing analytics and research, media planning and buying, medical education, payer marketing and market access, professional advertising and promotion, public affairs and relations, relationship marketing, sales training development, social media and social listening, and wellness and consumer advertising and promotion. The network also offers scientific communications and publications planning services through a wholly owned separate legal entity. The organization houses and maintains individual Ogilvy CommonHealth and Ogilvy Healthworld brand identities within the marketplace.