Add Ogilvy on Advertising to your shortlist
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading two David Ogilvy books: Confessions of an advertising man and Ogilvy on Advertising.
As marketers we spend a lot of time focused on ‘new’ advertising methods – often too much time. Incredibly, I managed to complete an entire university marketing degree without ever coming face-to-face with the work of Bill Bernbach, Leo Burnett, John Caples or David Ogilvy (among many other giants).
Terry O’Reilly hosts a brilliant 30 minute radio show on the CBC called The Age of Persuasion that often refers to the masterpiece campaigns of the greats. It wasn’t until years after my degree, while listening to an episode of The Age of Persuasion that I discovered those old campaigns. Since then, I’ve been clamoring to get my hands on as much of their material as possible.
These books are dated – published in 1963 and 1983 – however the content is not (for the most part). Because of the large amount of duplicate content, you’d be safe just reading one of the two – Ogilvy on Advertising. It was written with twenty additional years of Ogilvy wisdom and features color examples of ads to support his arguments.
You will walk away from these books with a bounty of Ogilvy quotes in your back pocket and lots of practical advice. For me, these are some valuable topics and takeaways:
- Creativity doesn’t matter – effectiveness does
- Conduct research and then use your brain to build great campaigns
- Differentiation is king
- When you’ve got a winning formula – run it until its dead
- Don’t be afraid of longer copy
- Good writing is slavery – edit, revise, repeat
- Hire people who are better than you are
- Committees kill great campaigns
- Over-promotion has a negative long-term affect on sales
These books are a powerful reminder of how important it is to frame our current work in the context of our history – to be humble enough to know that we don’t know very much and wise enough to study the giants of our craft.
If you are a new marketing grad or current marketing student, learn the rules from the greats, abide by their rules and only then learn how to break them.
These are among the most valuable advertising/marketing books I’ve ever read, and for this reason they come with my highest recommendation.
I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one. - Leo Burnett