I met David Ogilvy twice when I was 19 years old. Both times, the great man looked at the work I was doing at that moment and gave advice (which actually wasn’t advice, but criticism). Nonetheless, it felt like an honour to have my work panned by such a legendary adman.
‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ was the first book I read about the business. It polarised the advertising world. It was a bit like the Stones v Beatles debate. You either followed the wisdom of Bill Bernbach or you followed the wisdom of David Ogilvy. (I follow both).
Even though Ogilvy’s book is prescriptive in many ways, when you look under the hood, David espoused the same ideology as Bill.
Here are five pieces of advice from Ogilvy that hold just as true today as they did back in the ‘well-paid’ days of advertising.
1. “Big ideas, that’s what the advertising business is all about.”
As David Ogilvy once put it, “Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”
In other words, make it big, make it seen, make it memorable.
2. “Study the product.”
Someone wise once said, “Interrogate the product until it confesses”. Ogilvy shared the same sentiment. He said, “My advice is to start by doing your homework. The more you know about the product, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it. Study the precedents. Look up the campaigns for similar products in recent years. Find out which worked and which didn’t work, and then go one better. Study the research – how consumers think about your kind of product, what benefit you should promise them”.
3. “Boil down your strategy to one single promise.”
This is one of the hardest tasks to achieve in the advertising world. Ogilvy was one those creative leaders that hated sloppy thinking, but revered clarity of thought. Great ideas come out of simple, albeit poignant, strategy. Poor, mediocre ideas come out of fluff.
4. “Don’t be a bore.”
One of Ogilvy’s more famous quotes was this. “You cannot bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them into buying it.” If you can follow this piece of advice your communications will be in the 1% of stuff that gets noticed.
5. “The beginning of greatness, in advertising, is to be different.”
Ogilvy, along with the likes of Bernbach, Burnett and Rubican, were the pioneers of the brand image era. They understood the power of creating a unique personality for each of the brands they worked for. Ogilvy said this about brand differentiation. “The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.”
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Andy Greenaway, Creative Director at RUMBLE
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