Ogilvy on Advertising – the book that changed my life

Back in high school, there was this craze about advertising among teenagers. The whole media was coming of age, and the agencies were booming. As a result, at that time there was a huge leap in terms of quality as well as quantity in the ad world. Unfortunately, what i was about to find out a couple of years later, when i started going to the university, was that most of those “passionate” about it, were in fact craving for the money and the lifestyle they perceived as the natural spoils of war from the brand battlefield. Even those mentioning creativity from time to time, were still more interested in the awards, fame and bragging rights than the actual job they would eventually be hired to do. It’s almost ten years since then and the things have only gotten worse. For example, I went from admiring a funny, flamboyant, yet smart creative director to working with a cretin, man-child web planner who had issues understanding basic Internet terminology, both of them part of the same agency. But i guess I’ll have to cover that in another post.

Today it’s all about a wonderful book, that literary changed my life: Ogilvy on Advertising. Funny enough, this was my first marketing related book, which i got as a birthday present from a very good friend of mine.  If i remember correctly, is was also one of the very few, if not the only serious advertising books you could get your hands on in my country at the time. It was just before the whole avalanche of quick money publishing tumbled over the bookstores: marketing, branding, self help etc.  Yet, a decade after reading it for the first time and more than a quarter century after being published for the first time, I feel it’s just as relevant today as it was back then. It succeeds because it follows a very simple principle: as an advertiser your job is to sell not to put on a show.

To bring it justice, as I’m writing this, I’m also browsing its pages, just to consciously remember some of the things that influenced my perception of the whole marketing process. As far as generalities go, this is a medium sized book, with a little over 200 pages. The copy i got, which i suspect it’s quite a common version, has a clean layout with beautiful typography and plenty of white space. You’ll find an extensive amount of visual examples, each ready to prove the points stated in the text. In just the same way, you could also see it as a short history of clever and effective advertising from the second half of the 20th century. It is written in an informal tone, with enough real life stories to keep you going and clear explanations of why some things work, while others don’t. Along its twenty chapters you’ll get to read David Ogilvy’s take on things ranging from getting a job in the field, running an agency to praising research and questioning America’s top spot. While there are a couple of chapters that seem a bit out of place, they are still equally entertaining and informative.

Unlike more recent material, which suffers from delusions of grandeur or promises to give you easy recipes for success which only work on paper, this is the real deal. But in order for it to work you have to approach it with an open mind. After all, you might be taken aback just by reading the first few paragraphs, if you’re a fan of Hollywood styled ads. It works by giving you a series of general principles and workflow advice that as much as it is common sense, it’s also just as commonly ignored or discarded as antiquated nonsense.

The first few chapters will put you up to speed on how to produce advertising that sells, what are/were the jobs you could go for, some information on how to run an agency and the means in which you can get clients along with some useful tips for the client in search of an advertiser. These are all great at clearing the bullshit and the legend surrounding this line of work. Yet, criticizing creativity for its own sake is most obvious when speaking about print ads. If you are to take a look at current samples of this kind, you could easily find a generous amount of design extravaganza suffocating the product or its selling points, as designers are too busy building impressive artwork portfolios. For example, one priceless snippet compares the general layout of news stories with that of ads from the same publications, clearly pointing out the latter’s most common readability mishaps.

While you won’t have to deal with TV commercials, foreign travel, charity events or even take Procter & Gamble head to head, there’s still a lot to learn from these chapters as well. As with the rest of the book, it helps you adopt a clean and correct mindframe. This allows you to focus on selling by learning to ignore the false goals and destructive behavior.

Because a history lesson never hurt nobody, towards the end, it talks about what the author regards as “six giants who invented modern advertising”: Lasker, Resor, Rubicam, Burnett, Hopkins and Bernbach. It would be foolish to think that their experiences are directly applicable today, as even David Ogilvy doubts it at times. Yet, they act more as a source of inspiration for the newcomer who can employ the new media possibilities in much the same way as those forerunners did with a young market in the first half of  the 20th century. The book ends with a list of 13 predictions concerning changes in the advertising industry. A quick glance over them reveals that most have in some way or another came true.

All in all, if you’re serious about working in advertising or any other form of commercial communications, then you should definitely read this. While it might be slightly demoralizing for those who fancy themselves as artists rather than salesmen, it has the great merit of bringing them with their feet back on the ground. In fact, I’m sure that if just a part of those young blood “creatives” of today read this, then this field will enter a brand new age. Instead of the visual freak show or the subliminal programming, we could focus on clear selling points and useful creativity. If anything, you should give it a try just for the pure entertaining value. After all, the man was among other things a professional copywriter.