An autobiographical note to Bill Phillips:
March 5, 1971
Will Any Agency Hire This Man?
He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college. He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knows nothing about marketing, and has never written any copy. He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.
I doubt if any American agency will hire him.
However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.
The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.
D.O.
December 8, 1971
Gentlemen – With Brains
In Principles of Management I said, “One of the most priceless assets Ogilvy & Mather can have is the respect of our clients and the whole business community.”
With every passing year, I am increasingly impressed with the truth of this.
It is not enough for an agency to be respected for its professional competence. Indeed, there isn’t much to choose between the competence of the big agencies.
What so often makes the difference is the character of the men and women who represent the agency at the top level, with clients and the business community.
If they are respected as admirable people, the agency gets business – whether from present clients or prospective ones. (I am coming to think that it also counts with the investment community.)
… John Loudon recently told me, “In choosing men to head countries for Shell, I have always thought that character is the most important thing of all.”
Ogilvy & Mather must have “gentlemen with brains” – not only in London and New York, but in all our countries.
To compromise with this principle sometimes looks expedient, short term. But it can never do Ogilvy & Mather any permanent good.
D.O.
P.S. By “gentlemen” I do not, of course, mean Old Etonians and all that.
A note to heads of offices:
January 4, 1980
Year after year, I see the creative output of every office. Year after year, I also see their profits.
My conclusion: “The better the advertising, the more profitable the office. The worse the advertising, the more money the office loses.”
David Ogilvy
A memo that struck terror into the hearts of the agency’s eleven copywriters, written when David decided, on the departure of Jud Irish, to become Copy Chief himself:
August 15, 1959
In my new role as Copy Chief, it will be necessary for me to know more about the talents of our copywriters than I now know.
Will you please let me see – in proof or layout form – the six best advertisements (print or broadcast) that you have produced since joining Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, and the three best that you had produced in your previous incarnations – if any.
I would like to have these on my desk before tomorrow evening.
David Ogilvy
A reference letter for Dave McCall, a former Copy Chief of Ogilvy, Benson & Mather:
February 28, 1964
Dear Mr. Weis:
Mr. McCall is an old friend of mine. He joined our company twelve years ago. When he resigned he was a Director and Senior Vice-President.
He and his family are splendid in every way – in spite of the fact that he is white, a Republican and a Christian.
Yours truly,
D.O.
A letter to the New Hampshire Vacation Center:
April 12, 1971
Gentlemen:
“America is alive and well and living in New Hampshire.” This is one of the best headlines I have ever read.
I offer humble congratulations to the man or woman who wrote it.
Yours sincerely,
D.O.
To Cliff Field, a great copywriter, on his seventh anniversary with the company:
September 21, 1963
Cliff:
I see that you have been here for seven years. I’ve been here for twice as long. God knows what this proves.
D.O.
From a letter to Geoff Lindley, later head of Ogilvy & Mather in Sydney, when Geoff was in New Zealand:
Dear Geoff,
Your Status Reports always make good reading, for a lot of reasons. The one dated April 22nd is no exception.
I love the fact that we are to advertise “a silent flushing system.” Your copywriter may be able to do something with the fact that Queen Victoria bestowed a knighthood on a man who had advanced the art of flushing. His name was Sir Thomas Crapper.
I also enjoy reading about “the wig sell-in.” What an extraordinary business we are in …
October 11, 1978
A Teaching Hospital
I have a new metaphor.
Great hospitals do two things: They look after patients, and they teach young doctors.
Ogilvy & Mather does two things: We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.
Ogilvy & Mather is the teaching hospital of the advertising world. And, as such, to be respected above all other agencies.
I prefer this to Stanley Resor’s old saying that J. Walter Thompson was a “university of advertising.”
D.O.
A note to Cliff Field who at the time was Creative Head of the agency:
June 11, 1965
Cliff:
__________ thinks that this is a great advertisement. I don’t. It lacks charm.
It plods. Heavy as lead. The models – most of them – look like automobile dealers from South Dakota. Not the way to capture the affections of the people who read The New Yorker.
I plead for charm, flair, showmanship, taste, distinction.
D.O.
A memo to the New York office’s seven “Syndicate Heads,” as David dubbed the leaders of his creative groups:
April 29, 1971
A Word to the Wise
Long ago I realized that I lack competence, or interest, or both, in several areas of our business. Notably television programming, finance, administration, commercial production and marketing.
So I hired people who are strong in those areas where I am weak.
Every one of you Syndicate Heads is strong in some areas, weak in others. Take my advice: get people alongside you who make up for your weaknesses.
If you are strong in production and weak in strategy, have a strategist as your right arm.
If you are strong on strategy and weak in production, have a production genius as your right arm.
If your taste is uncertain – or nonexistent – have someone at your right hand whose taste is impeccable.
If you are a print writer and inept in television, get someone beside you who is the reverse. (Some of you are good at TV but haven’t a clue about print.)
If you are weak in package goods, have someone at your right hand who is strong in this area.
Don’t compound your own weaknesses by employing people in key positions who have the same weakness.
Who wants to admit, even to himself, that he has no taste, or is bored by television production, or inadequate on strategy?
Ah, that is the question.
One of the recipients of this memo responded by asking David’s advice on what sort of people he should hire. Here are excerpts from a long, handwritten reply:
June 9, 1971
Dear __________
You are the only one of the Syndicate Heads who has asked me this question. Which says a lot about you …
It would be easier for me to answer the question specifically for certain other Syndicate Heads:
A has terrible taste, so should get someone who has good taste
B is a mere execution man – he should get a strategist
C is blind to graphics and so are his art directors
D ditto
E is a shit and should hire an angel
I am making a speech next week to the grand American Chamber of Commerce in London. I’m so nervous that I’m having nightmares about it.
Yours,
David
A trait that sometimes surprised newcomers to the Agency was the attention David directed to the smallest details of people’s jobs, as in this memo to account supervisors and account executives:
May 8, 1958
How to Be Helpful at Meetings
Every week we have several meetings – with clients, and among ourselves. Most of the talking at these meetings is apt to be done by the most senior people present. This sometimes leaves the junior people with nothing to do except listen.
Anyway, that seems to be the general idea. But it is wrong. First of all, junior people should not hesitate to speak out. For example, if they disagree with something I am saying, they should say so – before it is too late. Very often, I lack information which is available to them.
But the main purpose of this memo is to say that the most junior agency representative present at any meeting should make himself useful by “servicing” the meeting.
For example, if we start discussing an old advertisement, he should leave the room and return with the advertisement. Then we would have it before us and could discuss it more sensibly.
If at some point in the meeting it becomes apparent that we would make more progress if we had the art director or one of the media experts present, the junior man should leave the meeting and return with the person concerned.
All too often I see our junior people sitting on their fannies, not reacting to the stimuli which arise …
Above all, it is true to say that the success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents – proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. – present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
D.O.
A memo to the staff, sent out every eighteen months or so during the early years of the company:
March 22, 1957
The paper clip is a very dangerous little instrument. When it is used to fasten papers together, it frequently picks up a paper which doesn’t belong. And it frequently drops a paper which does belong.
All offices, including this one, have lost very valuable papers because of these wretched little clips.
In circulating papers around our offices here, please use these clips as little as possible. It is much safer and more efficient to use a stapler; or, if papers are too bulky for a stapler, use the binder clips.
A handwritten note to Joel Raphaelson, undated, but probably during 1964:
Joel:
I thought you promised to show me the Sears ads (with copy) last Tuesday.
It is now three months since Struthers picked them. Longer than the period of gestation in PIGS.
D.O.
A letter to Ray Taylor, a former Ogilvy & Mather copywriter, on his retirement, from another agency:
June 29, 1983
Dear Ray:
Nineteen years ago you wrote me the best job application letter I have ever received. I can still recite the first paragraph.*
For the next three years you were one of the best copywriters ever employed in our New York office.
I was miserable when you returned to London, and still more miserable when you joined another agency.
But I cannot grudge Masius their good fortune in recruiting you, because it was Mike Masius who got me my first job in the United States.
Now I hear that you are retiring. What a waste of genius.
May your shadow never grow less.
Yours affectionately,
David Ogilvy
A letter to Peter Warren, Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather in the United Kingdom:
May 15, 1983
Dear Peter,
It was very good of you to send me Lord Denning’s book. I finished reading it last night.
What a curious way of writing. I have often been accused of writing too staccato, but compared with Denning, I am positively long-winded.
A draper begot a General, an Admiral and a Judge. I know of a similar case. A poor coal merchant in Invernesshire, who carried his coal into his customers’ houses on his back, begot a General, a Judge and a Cabinet Minister.
Marvelous.
Yours,
David
A note to Jackie Kilgour, who was putting together an annual report, about which of two photographs to use:
JK:
I like (A) better because it makes me look YOUNGER and NICER. But no man should be allowed to pick his own photo. So I defer to your judgment.
D.O.
A comment about the paper clips David uses to secure his neckties inspired this memo to Michael Ball, then a Vice Chairman.
July 15, 1981
Some people are naturally extravagant – with their own money and the company’s money.
I believe that it would increase profits if the Barons* would inculcate a tradition of parsimony throughout their archdioceses. (Some of the Barons are themselves extravagant.)
How to do it? Here are some ideas:
(1) Crack down publicly on two or three office heads who spend too much on decorating their offices.
(2) Wage war on the unnecessary use of telex. I have the impression that telex has become the normal medium for interoffice communication, as it is in the Diplomatic Service. The vast majority of telex messages I see are not urgent in any way.
For example, ______’s 500-word telex about awards. Not long ago, _____ sent me an even longer and even less urgent telex.
I find extravagance esthetically repulsive. I find the New England Puritan tradition more attractive. And more profitable.
It is a matter of posture, manners, style and habit.
People see the telex machine in their offices. It looks like a typewriter. Maybe they think it is free …
David
The guilty Junkers – or one just like it.
LOSES TASTE FOR FLYING
Why doesn’t David like to fly? In a 1985 interview in Resume, a Swedish magazine, he told this story:
“Everything began one beautiful summer evening in Stockholm in the 1930’s. I was on a cruise, but when I arrived late back to the harbour one evening the boat had already left. There was no alternative but to fly to Helsinki. The plane was a three-engined Junkers which bounced about in appalling turbulence. I felt terrible and lost my taste for flying for life …”
Advances in aviation technology leave him skeptical. “Turbulence is what frightens me” begins a recent note to Vice Chairman James Benson. “Is there more or less of it on the Concorde?”
David likes to remind his partners of the economies he achieves by living in a château in France, as in this memo to seven senior people in the United States and the United Kingdom:
August 7, 1969
The other night I gave a dinner for nine at a restaurant near Touffou. We had several courses, and five bottles of wine. The bill was $31.00 or £13.
D.O.
A memo to Ogilvy & Mather Directors about Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire-Hathaway and one of the most perspicacious investors in the United States:
April 4, 1983
How to Make Money Out of Ogilvy & Mather
Warren Buffett has made a profit of $15,400,000 on his Ogilvy & Mather stock – so far.
He and his foundation have 401,400 shares, for which he paid an average of $9.47.
D.O.
Shelby Page, the agency’s Treasurer for thirty-six years, received a telex from France shortly after Mitterand was elected. Here’s the whole telex:
From: David Ogilvy
To: Shelby Page
Mitterand is going to tax the rich.
I am rich.
To Luis Muñoz-Marin, former Governor of Puerto Rico, and architect of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the U.S., after his party was returned to power in the 1972 elections:
November 21, 1972
Dear Governor:
Thank God.
Yours ever,
D.O.
The opening of a report to his partners on a tour of offices in New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia:
April 1, 1978
Down Under
We set sail from Acapulco in QE2 on January 27, bound for New Zealand. Most of our fellow passengers were rich octogenarians with stentorian voices. One woman had brought sixty-nine evening dresses. Much to the chagrin of the tip-hungry waiters, six or seven of our senile shipmates died every day and were buried at sea – discreetly, at five o’clock in the morning, with the ship hove to so that they would not be mashed by the propellers. Cheap, as funerals go …
Alas, we did not call in the New Hebrides, a group of islands which are ruled by France and Britain jointly. Portraits of the Queen and the President of France hang side by side in every public place. The inhabitants understand who the Queen is, and assume that the other portrait is her King; they notice with interest that she changes kings every six years.
We fell in love with New Zealand – a society without class distinctions, thousands of small yachts in every harbor, beautifully kept gardens, and magnificent scenery. Here began the promotional whirlwind in which we have lived ever since …
Answering a skeptical question as to the truth of a story he tells about the bizarre results of a certain advertisement, David scribbled this note:
I made it up, years ago.
Poetic license. It always gets a laugh.
So shut up.
A memo to a veteran copywriter:
April 2, 1971
Harry has just read me the letter you wrote me yesterday, on your anniversary.
Shyness makes it impossible for me to tell any man what I think of him when he is still alive. However, if I outlive you, I shall write an obituary along these lines:
________ was probably the nicest man I have ever known. His kindness to me, and to dozens of other people, was nothing short of angelic.
Many nice men are too dumb to be anything else. But ________ was far from dumb. Indeed, he had a superb intelligence.
His judgment of men and events was infallible; I came to rely on it more and more as the years went by.
He was one of my few partners who worked harder and longer hours than I did. He gave value for money. And he knew his trade.
He was an honest man, in the largest sense of the word. He had a glorious sense of humor.
He had the courage to challenge me when he thought I was wrong, but he always contrived to do it without annoying me.
There was nothing saccharine about him. Tolerant as he was, he did not like everybody; he disliked the people who deserved to be disliked.
He never pursued popularity, but he inspired universal affection.
I cannot sign this, because I am in Chicago and it will have to be typed in New York …
A memo to Alex Biel, head of the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development, in response to a suggestion that the Center publish a newsletter:
April 26, 1985
ALEX BIEL
If you think this is a good idea, far be it from me to stop you. But consider:
1. Our heads of office are drowning in paper.
2. We hired you to do pioneer, basic research – not to issue newsletters.
3. We have too many newsletters already.
4. Can you imagine Einstein issuing “What’s new in research” memos?
D.O.
A later memo to Alex Biel:
September 12, 1985
In your memo of August 1 to Jock, you wrote, “Most people simply do not dislike commercials.”
When I was doing research for Hollywood, I found that most people did not dislike any movie stars.
Forty-five years ago I came to the conclusion that ordinary Americans are too nice, or too dumb, or too passive, or too uncritical to dislike anything.
D.O.
From a 1982 memo to Hank Bernhard, former Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, U.S.:
Surface Hypnotism
Anyone who used to watch the Candid Camera show on television must have been surprised by Alan Funt’s ability to get people to do anything he wanted them to do. He simply told them to do it and they did. Surface hypnotism?
Before a recent speech in Los Angeles, I signalled to the audience with my hands to stand up. To my surprise, they stood up – all 1200 of them – and gave me a standing ovation.
D.O.
A chatty letter on several subjects, to John Straiton, former President of Ogilvy & Mather in Canada, began with a paragraph about a departed colleague:
Eating cheese at dinner has always given me terrible nightmares. Last night I ate a cheese fondue at a dinner in Switzerland – and dreamed that ________ was back in the agency.
July 27, 1982
I have come across a fascinating word. It means “the first rudiments” of anything. In the big Oxford dictionary. Various spellings:
ABECEDARY
ABCEDARIE
ABSCEDARY
Perhaps too obscure for use in headlines.
D.O.
December 14, 1984
Joel:
“He got in his LIMO and drove to his CONDO.” I don’t think the language is improving.
D.O.
A note to Alex Biel – from an exchange about jargon:
May 15, 1985
A brand manager who recently left told the agency that he was pursuing a policy of
D.O.
David sends around a lot of clippings, with notes attached. One such clipping was a headline in the International Herald Tribune:
Top Guardian of Communist Dogma
Succumbs After “Brief, Grave Illness”
The attached note:
Damn right the illness was “grave”
– it killed him.
February 24, 1986
Being interviewed by ignorant reporters can be awful. The other day one of these idiots asked me, “How much does an advertising campaign cost in the USA?”
For once, I was speechless.
D.O.
After David turned over his Chairmanship to Jock Elliott in 1975, he served the company as Creative Head, Worldwide, for a number of years. The following is from a memo he sent, in that capacity, to all heads of offices and creative heads:
July 18, 1977
Confusion?
I am told that some of you are confused by what you perceive as a change in my creative philosophy.
For many years you heard me inveigh against “entertainment” in TV commercials and “cleverness” in print advertising. When the advertising world went on a “creative” binge in the late 1960’s, I denounced award winners as lunatics. Then I started the David Ogilvy Award – for the campaign which produced the biggest increase in sales.
You got the word.
Then, two years ago, you began to receive memos from me, complaining that too much of our output was stodgy and dull. Sometimes I circulated commercials and advertisements which I admired, but which appeared to violate my own principles.
Had I gone mad?
My original Magic Lantern started with the assertion that Positioning and Promise were more than half the battle. You accepted that, and proceeded accordingly.
But another slide in my dear old Lantern states that “unless your advertising contains a Big Idea it will pass like a ship in the night.” Very few of you seem to have paid attention to that.
Three years ago I woke up to the fact that the majority of our campaigns, while impeccable as to positioning and promise, contained no big idea. They were too dull to penetrate the filter which consumers erect to protect themselves against the daily deluge of advertising. Too dull to be remembered. Too dull to build a brand image. Too dull to sell. (“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”)
In short, we were still sound, but we were no longer brilliant. Neither soundness nor brilliance is any good by itself; each requires the other …
So the time had come to give the pendulum a push in the other direction. If that push has puzzled you, caught you on the wrong foot and confused you, I can only quote Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds … Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”
I want all our offices to create campaigns which are second to none in positioning, promise – and brilliant ideas …
D.O.
A memo to the “syndicate heads” in New York:
May 7, 1970
Most of the fashionable hotshots in the creative departments of other agencies are nomads, birds-of-passage.
It is not unusual for them to have worked at six agencies before they are thirty-two. What a turbulent, unsettling, dangerous way to live.
I have no stomach for recruiting these unprincipled adventurers.
By contrast, six of our seven Syndicate Heads have been at Ogilvy & Mather for an average of ten years. All the way from Reva’s eighteen years to the eight years of such promising new arrivals as Gene, Bill and Tony.
I hope that these long tenures are good for the individuals. I know they are good for the agency.
Long may they last.
From a memo commenting on the qualities of a 35-year-old creative director:
… He is still immature in some ways. For example, his “style” when presenting campaigns to clients is curiously boyish. This discomforts me – I prefer a posture of confident authority. But I have observed that many clients like his diffidence and humility. They seem to find it engaging and disarming.
His office is a pigsty. It does not look like the office of a top-management boss, and this can be a problem in a world which is impressed by appearances. Also, an untidy office suggests an untidy mind. I have to keep reminding myself that some very able men are untidy, and that some very stupid men are tidy …
He administers his department rather loosely. But I doubt whether a rigid and orderly administration would fit a creative department. Some measure of informality and kaleidoscopic assignments are probably a good thing here …
To the Management Supervisor on KLM:
March 3, 1969
I have always believed that tourists want fine weather on their vacations. Sunshine – not clouds.
The great tourist movements are towards the sun – from north to south. Hence the popularity of Florida, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean.
For years I have tried to get sunny photographs of Puerto Rico and Britain.
Now you are featuring photographs of Holland in fog and cloud. You must have a good reason for doing this. What is it?
D.O.
A memo to creative heads:
April 17, 1980
A few weeks ago, I asked you to send me the names of anybody on your staff who might qualify to become a Creative Director.
Twenty of you sent me a total of 49 names.
One of you sent me six names – his entire creative staff, I suspect; charitable fellow.
Eleven of you told me that you have nobody who could qualify to become a Creative Director. You have problems. Something wrong with your hiring methods?
Ten of you have not answered. Bastards.
D.O.
A letter to David’s 18-year-old great-nephew in England:
June 6, 1984
Dear Harry,
You ask me whether you should spend the next three years at university, or get a job. I will give you three different answers. Take your pick.
Answer A. You are ambitious. Your sights are set on going to the top, in business or government. Today’s big corporations cannot be managed by uneducated amateurs. In these high-tech times, they need top bananas who have doctorates in chemistry, physics, engineering, geology, etc.
Even the middle managers are at a disadvantage unless they boast a university degree and an MBA. In the United States, 18 percent of the population has a degree, in Britain, only 7 percent. Eight percent of Americans have graduate degrees, compared with 1 percent of Brits. That more than anything else is why American management outperforms British management.
Same thing in government. When I was your age, we had the best civil service in the world. Today, the French civil servants are better than ours because they are educated for the job in the postgraduate Ecole Nationale d’Administration, while ours go straight from Balliol to Whitehall. The French pros outperform the British amateurs.
Anyway, you are too young to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. If you spend the next few years at university, you will get to know the world – and yourself – before the time comes to choose your career.
Answer B. Stop frittering away your time in academia. Stop subjecting yourself to the tedium of textbooks and classrooms. Stop cramming for exams before you acquire an incurable hatred for reading.
Escape from the sterile influences of dons, who are nothing more than pickled undergraduates.
The lack of a college degree will only be a slight handicap in your career. In Britain, you can still get to the top without a degree. What industry and government need at the top is not technocrats but leaders. The character traits which make people scholars in their youth are not the traits which make them leaders in later life.
You put up with education for 12 boring years. Enough is enough.
Answer C. Don’t judge the value of higher education in terms of careermanship. Judge it for what it is – a priceless opportunity to furnish your mind and enrich the qualify of your life. My father was a failure in business, but he read Horace in the loo until he died, poor but happy.
If you enjoy being a scholar, and like the company of scholars, go to a university. Who knows, you may end your days as a Regius Professor. And bear in mind that British universities are still the best in the world – at the undergraduate level. Lucky you. Winning a Nobel Prize is more satisfying than being elected Chairman of some large corporation or becoming a Permanent Undersecretary in Whitehall.
You have a first-class mind. Stretch it. If you have the opportunity to go to a university, don’t pass it up. You would never forgive yourself.
Tons of love,
David
From a memo to the Board, undated:
Not long ago, I overheard a conversation between two men sitting beside me in an airplane. It went like this:
“What business you in?”
“I’m an account executive in an ad agency.”
“Accountant?”
“No.”
“You write ads?”
“No.”
“Who writes the ads?”
“Copywriters.”
“That must be a fun job.”
“It’s not that easy. We do a lot of research.”
“No, we have research people to do that.”
“You sell the ads to the clients?”
“No, the copywriters do that.”
“Do you bring in new clients?”
“That’s not my job.”
“Forgive me, but what is your job?”
“I’m a marketing man.”
“You do marketing for the clients?”
“No, they do it themselves.”
“Are you in Management?”
“No, but I soon will be.”
From a memo to the Directors of Ogilvy & Mather preceding the arrival in their hands of his new book, “Ogilvy on Advertising,” which none of them had yet seen:
July 25, 1983
(1) You will notice that I exaggerate my role in the agency today. I figured that few people would take me seriously if I came across as a man living in the past.
(2) I hope you will also notice repeated references to my partners. This is a change from the unrelieved egotism of Confessions, and conveys the impression that Ogilvy & Mather is a large group of able people.
(3) The book includes many examples of good work by other agencies. I have never done this before. It is calculated to dilute the impression that the book is nothing more than a new business presentation for Ogilvy & Mather.
(4) Another departure: I admit several mistakes.
(5) You may feel that the book errs on the side of being anti-creative and pro-cash-register, and that this will damage our reputation. I have two excuses:
A) I wrote what I really believe. My last will and testament.
B) I think that more new business prospects will be attracted by the cash-register stuff than will be repelled by my attacks on pseudo-creativity.
David Ogilvy
•
An Australian journalist, compiling a book on lengthy careers, asked David how he has “lasted so long.” Here are excerpts from his reply, sent to Australia in April 1986.
David Ogilvy’s Marathon Innings
I am Scottish. When I was thirty-eight, I went to New York and started an advertising agency. It was an instant success and is now one of the biggest in the world, with 9,000 employees in 41 countries.
Now seventy-five, I am no longer Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, but am still a Director and a member of the Executive Committee.
In the early days I could not afford to hire outstanding professionals, so I did almost everything myself …
As my company’s income grew, I was able to hire some able partners, but it remained a one-man band. I continued to monopolize all the power and all the publicity. If I had been hit by a taxi, Ogilvy & Mather would have gone up in smoke.
So I turned over a new leaf. I stopped seeing clients. Stepped out of the limelight. Stopped creating campaigns. Gave up day-to-day management. And started taking vacations – bicycling in France and vegetating on my farm in Pennsylvania.
This self-abnegation was difficult for me, but it worked. My partners blossomed, and the agency continued to grow – faster.
I have done my best to avoid getting in the hair of my successors. I take no part in line management …
My successors and I have seen eye-to-eye on most issues. We have lived with the same corporate culture for 25 years.
I travel a lot, visiting Ogilvy & Mather offices in various countries – particularly those I can reach by train and ship; I am frightened of flying. Increasingly I am communicating by videocassette; tapes have more import than memoranda.
My marathon innings have been due, more than anything else, to four things:
1. I have outlived all my competitors.
2. My obsessive interest in advertising has not dimmed.
3. My younger partners have tolerated my presence in their midst.
4. I had the wisdom to give them a free run. As a result, Ogilvy & Mather has outgrown its founder.
I cannot play golf, tennis or bridge. Only croquet. I cannot, alas, ski or sail. I still ride a bicycle.
I spend several hours a day working with my gardeners, and several hours at my desk.
And I read a great deal, mostly biography.
A letter in response to a query from Ray Calt, an executive at another advertising agency:
April 19, 1955
Dear Mr. Calt:
On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:
1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.
2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.
3. I am helpless without research material – and the more “motivational” the better.
4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until that statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.
5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every conceivable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.
6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinions of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.
7. At this point I can no longer postpone doing the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas.
I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)
8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.
9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.
10. Next morning I get up early and edit the gush.
11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)
12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry – because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.
Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.
Yours sincerely,
D.O.
Rare photograph: Quite possibly a first attempt at typing.
