Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
Midnight oil, incompetent amateurs, shaking the pagoda tree
These notes were created during my reading process to aid in my own understanding and were not written for the purpose of instruction or summarization. With that said, I get super excited to discuss ideas contained within, but rarely (read never) do I encounter anyone reading the same stuff. I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they attract a shared excitement to discuss or are perhaps helpful to other readers. Feel free to ask questions and interact. Enjoy!
Opinion
I read this because David Senra recently did another episode on David Ogilvy, and I was so excited by what David shared that I immediately had to read this book. I don’t think I learned any particular world-bending insights, but it was a fun read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
What I’m stealing
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Dog ears, highlights, marginalia
He started his career as an apprentice chef in the kitchens of the Hotel Majestic in Paris. He went on from Paris to sell stoves in Scotland, and later emigrated to America to become Associate Director of Dr. George Gallup's Audience Research Institute at Princeton.
During the Second World War, Mr. Ogilvy was on Sir William Stephenson's staff in British Security Coordination. After the war, he founded the advertising agency known today as Ogilvy and Mather. (Page 5)
Note: FOUR "CAREERS" BEFORE FOunding HIS OWN own FIRM
As an Englishman interested in baseball, Ogilvy says: "Don't bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals. (Page 11)
Note: Ogilvy took an interest in “America’s Past Time”. I suspect he thought this would lead to insights about being American. A way to connect with his clients and be less of an outsider/foreigner
Through maddening repetition, some of my obiter dicta have been woven into our culture. Here are some of them:
(1) “We sell – or else."
(2) “You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.”
(3) "We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles.
A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they grow in oak forests.
(4) "We hire gentlemen with brains.
(5) "The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Don't insult her intelligence."
(6) "Unless your campaign contains a Big Idea, it will pass like a ship in the night." (I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. I am supposed to be one of the more fertile inventors of big ideas, but in my long career I have not had more than twenty.)
(7) "Only First Class business, and that in a First Class way."
(8) "Never run an advertisement you would not want your own family to see.
(9) "Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees." (Page 18)
Pay peanuts and you get monkeys (Page 20)
ignorant amateurs. (Page 21)
Note: Avoid being this at all costs. See page 159-160 for the recipe to go from ignorant amateur to competent pro.
These are the most valuable lessons I have learned:
(1) Creating successful advertising is a craft, part inspiration but mostly know-how and hard work. If you have a modicum 21 of talent, and know which techniques work at the cash register, you will go a long way.
(2) The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.
(3) The difference between one advertisement and another, when measured in terms of sales, can be as much as nineteen to one.
(4) It pays to study the product before writing your advertisements.
(5) The key to success is to promise the consumer a benefit like better flavor, whiter wash, more miles per gallon, a better complexion.
(6) The function of most advertising is not to persuade people to try your product, but to persuade them to use it more often than other brands in their repertoire. (Thank you, Andrew Ehrenberg.)
(7) What works in one country almost always works in other countries.
(8) Editors of magazines are better communicators than advertising people. Copy their techniques.
(9) Most campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of objectives, and try to reconcile the divergent views of too many executives. By attempting to cover too many things, they achieve nothing. Their advertisements look like the minutes of a committee.
(10) Don't let men write advertising for products which are bought by women.
(11) Good campaigns can run for many years without losing their selling power. My eyepatch campaign for Hathaway shirts ran for twenty-one years. My campaign for Dove soap has been running for thirty-one years, and Dove is now the best seller.
Once a salesman, always a salesman (Page 21)
I was a chef in Paris, a door-to-door salesman, a social worker in the Edinburgh slums, an associate of Dr. Gallup in research for the motion picture industry, an assistant to Sir William Stephenson in British Security Co-ordination, and a farmer in Pennsylvania (Page 26)
M. Pitard taught me exorbitant standards of service. (Page 31)
Note: Creating and maintaining a high standard of service is an invaluable lesson to learn early in ones career. The hospitality industry is a great place to start a career and learn this.
You set the pace on doing homework. It is a dis concerting experience to spend a Saturday evening in the garden next door to your house, carousing for four hours while you sit, unmoving, at your desk by the window doing your homework. The word gets around.") (Page 34)
Note: On picking up or setting the pace as a leader
high strung, brilliant, eccentric nonconformists. (Page 35)
Note: On what he looks for scouting and accumulating talent
If I tell all my staff what we are doing in the agency, what we believe in, what our ambitions are, they will tell their 49,700 friends. And this will give us 49,700 rooters for Ogilvy, Benson & Mather. (Page 36)
So once a year I assemble the whole brigade in the auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art, and give them a candid report on our operations, profits and all. Then I tell them what kind of behaviour I admire, in these terms:
(1) I admire people who work hard, who bite the bullet. I dislike passengers who don't pull their weight in the boat. It is more fun to be overworked than to be underworked. There is an economic factor built into hard work. The harder you work, the fewer employees we need, and the more profit we make.
The more profit we make, the more money becomes available for all of us.
(2) I admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people. But brains are not enough unless they are combined with intellectual honesty.
(3) I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two of our people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after her baby.
(4) I admire people who work with gusto. If you don't enjoy you are doing, I beg you to find another job. Remember the Scottish proverb, "Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."
(5) I despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.
(6) I admire self-confident professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. They always seem to respect the expertise of their colleagues. They don't poach.
(7) I admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. I pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferiors as their subordinates.
(8) I admire people who build up their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. I detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary.
(9) I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings. I abhor quarrelsome people. I abhor people who wage paper-warfare. The best way to keep the peace is to be candid. Remember Blake:
I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow.
(10) I admire well-organised people who deliver their work on time. The Duke of Wellington never went home until he had finished all the work on his desk (Page 36)
Having told my staff what I expect of them, I then tell them what I expect of myself:
(1) I try to be fair and to be firm, to make unpopular decisions without cowardice, to create an atmosphere of stability, and to listen more than I talk.
(2) I try to sustain the momentum of the agency - its ferment, its vitality, its forward thrust.
37 (3) I try to build the agency by landing new accounts. (At this point the upturned faces in my audience look like baby birds waiting for the father bird to feed them.)
(4) I try to win the confidence of our clients at their highest level.
(5) I try to make sufficient profits to keep you all from penury in old age.
(6) I plan our policies far into the future.
(7) I try to recruit people of the highest quality at all levels, to build the hottest staff in the agency business.
(8) I try to get the best out of every man and woman in the agency. (Page 38)