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Confessions of a David Ogilvy Fan

I was fortunate to have grown up in an era when the Ogilvy & Mather style of copywriting was at its peak. You know the style: a fearless amount of white space, a bold headline in an ever-so-mildly self-deprecating font, and dense but frictionless copy conveying a sense of — how do you describe it? Not arch, exactly, but certainly knowing. As if the copywriter is discreetly tapping the side of his nose as you read it.

The whole package feels as if the writer can’t quite believe that his client was serious when they said they wanted you to know about this product. Because someone with as good taste as you must surely already know about it already.

So sorry to interrupt. But while I’ve got you, would you mind giving this a read?

I’m rereading Ogilvy on Advertising (I try to reread the classics every few years) and I am reminded what a superb writer Ogilvy was. Like the best of his ads, you read a story that feels like it’s being shared over a pint in a pub or over a brandy in the club, and when you get to the end, you suddenly realize — wait a minute, I learned something.

The alcohol metaphors are not accidental. Ogilvy’s writing is what a good single-malt Scotch would sound like if it could speak.

The man was passionate about writing. He understood that it is perhaps our most refined tool, and he used it with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. His masterful understanding of the power of language allowed him to do some astonishing things with it. His words made people do things.

Most importantly, his words convinced people to do the one thing they hate doing the most: part with their money. And he got them to do it willingly. That commands a lot of resepct.

Ogilvy wrote that he liked to hire “gentlemen with brains.” People with an aristocratic sensibility who are savvy, literate, and imaginative. An aristocratic sensibility is an unfashionable character trait these days. But frankly I think commercial writing, and maybe the world at large, could use more knowledgeable snobs. They work very hard at making things fun.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga. — David Ogilvy


Categorised as: Life the Universe and Everything

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3 Comments

  1. Ogilvy wrote the first real advertising book I ever read, and to this day, it remains my marketing bible (the same way Elements of Style remains my style bible).

    For an ad person, the brilliance of “At 60 miles per hour, the loudest sound is the ticking of the clock” is a palpable thing; Ogilvy deconstructs a Rolls-Royce down to its seemingly most insignificant element, yet somehow manages to sell you the whole car.

    In my unabashed fanboy post to Tom McElligott, I point out that McElligott never insulted the reader’s intelligence; he often wrote ads as if the writer and reader were sharing a private joke. There is more than a trace of that in Ogilvy, whose greatest gift to advertising was his unrelenting focus on the product and reader.

    Those who think that focus — and Ogilvy’s writing — is outdated might want to revisit Apple’s ad campaigns over the years. In fact, Apple’s ads have only really failed when they’ve strayed from a focus on their own products.

    In simple terms, they fail when they fail to remember Ogilvy’s lessons.

    • sottovoce says:

      Somehow I missed your Tom McElligott post. Thanks for pointing me toward it.

      The “private joke” angle that you mention — that captures the real essence of it. Those guys wrote ads that were personal. That was the result of knowing the product and knowing the audience. Precisely the opposite of today’s algorithm-controlled “targeted” advertising. Algorithms can’t replicate passion.

      When I was a kid I was mesmerized by the International Paper “How to Write” series. Until recently I had always thought that McElligott had done them, but then I discovered that they were done by Ogilvy & Mather. Not that the two were interchangeable — McElligott seemed to be more willing to go into riskier and edgier territory — but when you look at them, you realize that they had to be the product of one or the other of those masters. Who else could make two text-heavy pages on how to read an annual report so utterly enjoyable?

  2. TCWriter says:

    You really should spend your days going over my blog for posts you might have missed. Investing your time any other way is a waste.

    I admit that some of Ogilvy’s rules are now dated (his insistence on a standard ad layout no longer make sense). Then again, his focus on the customer seems to have been lost; so much of today’s advertising (and content) seems bizarrely oriented towards going “viral” (never mind this almost never happens).


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