Thread by @TheCharlieton

I just finished reading ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’.

After personally overseeing many frustrating marketing campaigns in 2018, this book hit me like a bolt of lightning and was easily a top five read in the last 12 months.

Here’s a thread of my favorite takeaways:

Ogilvy viewed advertising not as an art form, but as a medium of information designed to SELL.

“When Aeschines spoke they said, ‘How well he speaks.’

But when Demosthenes spoke, they said “Let us march against Philip.’”

We advertise to elicit action, not the praise of peers.

“Everyone involved has a vested interest in prolonging the myth that all advertising increases sales to some degree. It doesn’t.”

My takeaway: don’t ask a CMO about how effective their ads are. Ask the COO, the CFO, and the CEO. If the marketing is pumping, they’ll know for sure

Marketers love to talk about “positioning” but far fewer can give a clear definition of what positioning really means. Ogilvy cuts through the BS:

Positioning is simply “what the product does, and who is it for”

I’m amazed I’ve never seen an agency include that quote in a pitch

Ogilvy’s formula for a great ad= research + a big idea:

“Unless your ad contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night

I doubt if more than 1 campaign in a hundred contains a big idea

Stuff your conscious mind w information then unhook ur rational thought process”

And because big ideas are MUCH harder to come up with than decent research, the best asset a man can have is “humility is the presence of a good idea”

And when you find a winner, ride it until it stops working.

“If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling.

Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lose their potency.”

My favorite line from the book was Ogilvy on the importance of reading:

“I asked an indiferrent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition.

‘Suppose,’ I asked, ‘your gallbladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gallbladder or a surgeon who relies on intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions on your intuition?”

“This willful refusal to learn the rudiments of the craft is all too common. I cannot think of any other profession which gets by on such a small corpus of knowledge.”

David Ogilvy, on advertising

“Chess is about as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency”

- Raymond Chandler

Ogilvy on hiring:

“When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. Inside the smallest doll, he finds this message:

“If each of hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarves”

Ogilvy on discipline:

“Insist that due dates are kept even if it means working all night

Hard work never killed a man

People die of boredom

There is nothing like an occasional all-night push to enliven morale-provided u are part of the push

Never leave the bridge in a storm”

Ogilvy on how to win clients:

“The easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising.

During one period of seven years, we never failed to win an account for which we competed, and all I did was to show the campaigns we had created.”

“Sometimes, I did not even have to do that. One afternoon a man walked into my office without an appointment and have me the IBM account; he knew our work.”

And when you hire an agency, Ogilvy thinks “what you should worry about is not the price you pay for your agency’s services, but the selling power of your ads”

“When a client frets about the price of his agency’s services, he ends up getting a low price and poor advertising”

On ad construction:

“On average, 5x as many people read the headlines as read the body copy

It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.

The silliest thing of all is to run an ad w/o any header at all- ‘a headless wonder’”

Ogilvy’s favorite headline ever, for a pile (hemmorroid) remedy:

“Send us your dollar, and we’ll cure your piles, or keep your dollar and keep your piles.”

Ogilvy’s favorite ad format:

- Photo at the top
- Headline of up to 9 words
- 240 words of copy at bottom

“Readers look first at the illustration, then the head, then at the copy. This order follows the normal order of scanning, from top to bottom”

Also the format of FB ads!

Ogilvy believed in the value of corporate marketing campaigns, bc “people who know a company well are 5x more likely to have a favorable opinion of it”

This can aid in recruiting staff or in the sale of the firm.

“But such campaigns seldom have more than 1 supporter - the CEO”

On good copywriting:

“Short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.”

- Winston Churchill

Ogilvy on competing with marketing giants like P&G:

“Their Achilles heel is their consistency. They are always predictable. It helps to win battles when you can anticipate the enemies strategy.

However, the best way of all to beat P&G is, of course, to maker a better product.”

Ogilvy on research:

“Research can tell you whether your advertising communicates what you want it to communicate.

Keep in mind EB White’s warning:

“When you say something, make sure you have said it.

The chances of you having said it are only fair.”

Ogilvy on research:

“Research can find out which of several package designs will sell best.

I shall never forget Cornelia Otis Skinner demonstrating to a big food company that she could not open their products without a pair of pliers.”

“Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatsoever.

(That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.)”

- David Ogilvy

And the book ends with a concise and curated reading list of 20 or so must-read books on marketing- nothing better than finding a map at the bottom of a proven goldmine!