Ogilvy's revelations of an advertising agent. Confessions of an advertising agent

History of this book

But it didn't take long for my agency to become a dizzying success.

I wrote this book during my summer vacation in 1962 and gave the copyright to my son on his twenty-first birthday. I thought about 4,000 copies would be sold. To my great surprise, the book received tremendous recognition from readers and after some time was translated into fourteen languages. To date, about a million copies have been sold.

More recent research on this subject can be found in my book Ogilvy on Advertising, published by Crown in 1983.

Currently, the concept of corporate culture has gained immense popularity not only in the United States of America, but in England. Frances Cairncross wrote in The Economist: "The common feature of all successful companies- Purposeful, thoughtful creation of corporate culture.

We treat each employee of the agency as an individual. We help our employees when they have problems - whether it's official duties or illness, alcoholism, etc.

We help our employees find the most effective use of their abilities, spending a lot of time and money on Professional Development personnel. In this sense, our agency resembles a clinic at the highest medical level. educational institution.

Our system of government is exceptionally democratic. We do not recognize the bureaucracy of a hierarchical system of government or a rigid informal chain of command.

We provide agency employees with an extremely high degree of freedom and autonomy.

We like people with good manners. Our New York chapter gives out an annual award for "professionalism and courtesy."

We like people who are sincere in discussions, who are honest with customers and, most importantly, who are truthful with consumers.

We admire the hard-working, purposeful and pedantic employees who are very responsible in the performance of their duties.

We cannot stand schemers, sycophants, braggarts, and pompous asses. We are disgusted by cruelty.

All opportunities are open to each employee of the agency career development. We are free from any kind of prejudice - religious, racial or sexual.

We do not accept nepotism, as well as any other form of favoritism. When promoting employees to high positions, we take into account their personal qualities as well as their professionalism.

The advice we give to our clients is no different from the advice we would give if we were the owners of their companies - and we follow this principle regardless of what our own interests dictate to us.

Many clients use the services of different branches of our agency located in different countries peace. It's important for consumers to know that they can expect the same standards of service across all of our locations. That is why we want our corporate culture was the same in all countries of the world.

We attach great importance to privacy. Clients don't respect the agencies that give away their secrets. They also don't like it when an agency tries to boost their reputation at the expense of their success. Standing between the client and his success is a sign of bad taste.

Our agency cultivates the desire to always be dissatisfied with the results of their work. It's the antidote to complacency.

Our highly branched company functions as a single entity through a network of personal friendships. We all belong to the same team.

We prefer to write reports and letters in simple and understandable language so that these documents can be read without difficulty; in addition, we try to keep them concise. We do not tolerate pseudo-academic jargon such as "relational", "paradigm", "demassification", "reconceptualization", "suboptimal", "symbiotic connection", "splinterization", "dimensionalization". (Lord Rutherford told the Cavendish Laboratory that if they couldn't explain their work in physics to the girl behind the bar, it was bad work.)

some of my obiter dicta(principles formulated in the process of activity) I repeated so often that sometimes it drove employees crazy; These principles have become the basis of our corporate culture. Here are some of them:

2. You can't force people to buy goods, you can only interest them in the purchase of this product.

3. We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We strive to gain knowledge with the same zeal as a pig looking for truffles. From time to time even a blind pig can find a truffle, but it would be good for him to know that these mushrooms grow in oak groves.

4. We employ well-mannered, decent, smart people.

5. The consumer is not an idiot. This is your wife. Do not offend her by underestimating her intellectual abilities.

9. Search all the parks in your city - you will not find a single monument to the collective there.

Four problems

Once upon a time, one brand of coffee was popular - Chase & Sanborn. At some point, the manufacturer decided to hold a sale. Over time, the use of discounts has become a habit. What's up with this brand today? He shows no signs of life at all.

Here are excerpts from my speech in Chicago in 1955.

Selling goods at a discount does not create that indestructible image that would make the brand part of Everyday life consumers.

Andrew Ehrenberg of London Business School is the biggest marketing specialist today. He argues that offering a product at a discounted price can make people want to try the product. trademark, but then, as if nothing had happened, they return to buying the brands they are used to.

Why do many managers working in large companies so addicted to bargain selling? Because their employers' interest in making a profit doesn't extend beyond the next quarter. Why it happens? Because they care more about stock options than they care about the future of their companies.

Selling goods at discount prices acts like a drug. Ask a manager who is addicted to such a drug what happened to his company's market share after implementing a crazy idea to reduce prices. He will change the subject. Ask him if the volume has increased as a result. arrived. The manager will then try to change the subject.

Market participants who have inherited the brands created by their predecessors treat them extremely casually. Sooner or later, they will realize that they cannot sell branded products that no one has even heard of. Brands are the "seed grain" that they have inherited. They eat their "seed grain".

My testament

2. The temptation to entertain an audience rather than sell a product is contagious.

5. The key to success is to promise the consumer a benefit such as even more refined taste, even better washing, even more miles per liter of gasoline, even more attractive complexion.

7. What justifies itself in one country almost always justifies itself in other countries.

The one who once was a sales agent will remain so forever.

David Ogilvie 1988

We express our gratitude to V. Muzykant for kindly provided illustrative materials from his own archive

History of this book

My testament

I began my research career with the great Dr. Gallup at Princeton. Then I started doing advertising. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only major "creative" advertising professional who has started his own professional activity like a researcher. Therefore, I consider the creative function from the point of view of an objective researcher. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from my experience.

1. Creating successful advertising is a craft that relies on some inspiration, but essentially requires some skill and hard work. If you have at least a modicum of talent and know what marketing techniques work directly at the point of sale, you will achieve a lot.

2. The temptation to entertain an audience rather than sell a product is contagious.

5. The key to success is to promise the consumer a benefit such as even more refined taste, even better washing, even more miles per liter of gasoline, even more attractive complexion.

6. The function of advertising is not to induce consumers to try a product once, but to convince them to use this product many times, giving it preference over other products in the same category that they used before. (Thanks to Andrew Ehrenberg for this idea.)

7. What justifies itself in one country almost always justifies itself in other countries.

8. Magazine editors have more communication skills than advertisers. Embrace their methods.

9. Advertising campaigns are mostly too complex. Their creators set themselves a number of goals and try to combine the very different points of view of many specialists involved in the development advertising campaign. By trying to cover too many aspects, they get zero results. Their advertisement looks like a fragment of a committee meeting.

11. An effective advertising campaign can function for many years without losing its ability to sell a product. My ad for Hathaway shirts, featuring a black eye patch, ran for twenty-one years. My Dove soap ad has been running for thirty-one years, and this soap is in huge demand.

The one who once was a sales agent will remain so forever.

David Ogilvie 1988

Autobiography

As a child, I lived at Lewis Carroll's house in Guildford. My father, whom I idolized, was a Scottish Highlander. He spoke Gaelic. He was a classical scholar and an uncompromising agnostic. One day my father discovered that I had secretly started going to church.

“My dear son, how can you take all this nonsense for granted? This is good for servants, but not for educated people. You don't have to be a Christian to act like a gentleman!»

My mother was a beautiful and eccentric Irish woman. She disinherited me on the grounds that I, in her opinion, could earn more money than he deserved, without any help from her. I couldn't help but agree with her.

At the age of nine I was sent to the aristocratic boarding school Dotheboys Hall in Eastbourne. The director of the boarding school wrote about me: “He undoubtedly has an extraordinary mind, he is inclined to argue with teachers and always tries to convince them that he is right, and not textbooks. However, this is another confirmation of his originality. When I suggested that Napoleon might have been Dutch because his brother was the king of Holland, the director's wife sent me to bed without supper. During the rehearsal of the play The Comedy of Errors, in which I was to play the role of the abbess of the monastery, I recited my opening monologue in a tone that she did not like, for which she, grabbing my cheek, threw me to the floor with force.

At the age of thirteen, I entered Fettes, a Scottish school that was introduced into the Spartan order by my great-uncle, Lord Justice General Inglis, Scotland's greatest defender of all time. I made friends at this famous school: Ian Macleod, Niall MacPherson, Knox Cunningham, and some other future MPs. Of all the schoolteachers, the ones I remember most are Henry Havergal (who made me want to play double bass) and Walter Sellar, who wrote 1066 and All That while teaching us history.

I didn't do well at Oxford. Keith Feiling, lecturer in history, gave me a scholarship to Christ Church College, Oxford University, where I was fortunate to learn from the likes of Patrick Gordon Walker, Roy Harrod, A. S. Russell, and other teachers. However, I was completely absorbed in my own thoughts, and soon, as was to be expected, I was expelled from the college.

This was in 1931, during the Great Depression. For the next seventeen years, while my friends became doctors, lawyers, civil servants, and politicians, I wandered the world not knowing what I wanted. I have been a cook in a Parisian restaurant, a traveling salesman, a social worker in the slums of Edinburgh, and have also assisted Dr. Gallup in his research into the film industry; in addition, I was Sir William Stephenson's assistant in the British Security Coordination intelligence service and, finally, a farmer in Pennsylvania.

As a teenager, my hero was Lloyd George, so I wanted to be prime minister when I grew up. Instead, I became an advertising agent on Madison Avenue; at present, the combined income of my nineteen clients exceeds that of Her Majesty's Government.

Max Beerbom once said to S. N. Berman: “If I were very rich, I would launch a major advertising campaign in all the leading newspapers. IN advertisements there would have been only one phrase printed in large letters - the words I accidentally heard with which the husband convinced his wife: “ Honey, there's nothing in this world worth buying».

My approach is exactly the opposite of this point of view. I have a desire to buy almost all the products that I saw advertised ... My father once said about this or that product that "it was very well spoken about in advertising." I've spent my entire life giving good reviews for products in ads, and I hope you enjoy buying products as much as I enjoyed creating ads.

I wrote the book in the first person, and in doing so, I went against the norms of behavior accepted in modern American society. But I think it would be unfair to say we, recognizing their sins and describing events his life.

David Ogilvie Ipswich, Massachusetts

Thirty years ago, I worked as a chef in the restaurant of the Majestic Hotel in Paris. Henry Sol of the Hotel Pavillon once told me that this was probably the best cuisine ever.

There were thirty-seven cooks in our brigade. We worked like dervishes, sixty-three hours a week (there was no union in the hotel). From morning to night we sweated, screamed, swore and cooked. We all, without exception, worked, inspired by one desire - to cook a dish better than anyone had done before. Strength of mind any of us would be honored even by a Marine.

I have always believed that if I could understand how Monsieur Pitard, the chef, maintained such high, "white-hot" morale among the cooks and their assistants, then I could apply his leadership style to manage my advertising agency.

First of all, it should be noted that Monsieur Pitard was the best cook in the entire brigade, and we knew it. He had to spend most of his time at his desk, putting together menus, checking invoices, and placing food orders. Nevertheless, once a week he made sure to leave his office (which was located in the middle of the kitchen and separated from it by glass partitions) to independently cook some dish. We always crowded around him to watch him do it, genuinely marveling at his virtuosity. It was inspiring to work for such a first-class master!

(Following Chef Pitard's example, I still write my own ads from time to time to remind my creative team that I haven't lost my craft yet.)

Monsieur Pitard directed the kitchen staff with a metal rod in his hands, and we were all terribly afraid of him. He sat in his glass cage - important person, the highest symbol of power. Whenever I made a mistake while doing my job, I always looked to see if his piercing gaze bored into me.

Chefs, like creatives, work under harsh conditions and are prone to increased irritability. I doubt that a more prudent boss could have prevented our quarrels, which sometimes amounted to physical assault. Monsieur Bourguenot, our chef saucier, told me that by the time a chef reaches forty he is either dead or insane. I understood what he meant that evening when our chef potagier started throwing raw eggs at me from across the kitchen and nine of the forty-seven eggs hit the target. He was furious that I had invaded his pan kingdom in search of bones for the poodles of an important client.

Our chef patissier was no less eccentric. Every evening, when he went home after work, he hid a chicken in his felt hat. Once, going on vacation, he made me hide two dozen peaches in the legs of his underwear. However, when a government dinner was held in Versailles in honor of the King and Queen of England, it was this rogue genius, the only one of all the pastry chefs in France, who was entrusted with preparing decorative baskets of sugar and glazed cookies.

Monsieur Pitard very rarely praised his cooks, but if such a thing happened, it extolled us to the skies. When the President of France attended a banquet at the restaurant of the Majectic Hotel, the atmosphere in our kitchen was heated to the limit. On one such memorable occasion, I covered frog legs with white chaud-froid sauce (chauffroy - game sauce) and decorated each thigh with selected chervil leaves. And suddenly I realized that Monsieur Pitard was standing next to me and watching me do it. I was so frightened that my legs buckled and my hands trembled. He pulled a pencil from his starched chef's hat and waved it, signaling to all the crew members to gather around the table. Then he pointed to the frog legs I was working on and said very slowly and clearly, "This is how it should be done." At that moment, I became his debtor for the rest of my life.

(Now I praise my subordinates as rarely as Monsieur Pitard praised his chefs, in the hope that they will appreciate the occasional praise more than the continuous flow of positive feedback about their work.)

Monsieur Pitard knew how to make unforgettable "gifts". One evening, when I had made a Rothschild soufflé (which consisted of three liqueurs), he led me upstairs to the door of the restaurant and let me watch President Paul Doumer eat my soufflé. Three weeks later, on May 7, 1932, Paul Doumer died (not from my soufflé, of course, but from a bullet from a Russian who had lost his mind).

Monsieur Pitard could not stand incompetence. He knew it was demoralizing for professionals to work side by side with amateurs. I saw him fire three pastry chefs in one month for the same "sin": they couldn't bake brioche buns so their yeast tops would rise evenly. Mr. Gladstone would have approved of such a harsh attitude: he believed that "a prime minister must first of all be a good butcher."

Monsieur Pitard taught me to maintain an extremely high level of customer service. For example, he once overheard me telling a waiter that we had just run out of plat du jour (dish of the day) and nearly fired me for it. I drew his attention to the fact that the preparation of the dish in question would require so much time that no customer would wait until his order was ready. What was this dish? Maybe our famous colibiac de saumon (salmon kulebyak) - a complex fish dish made from sturgeon bone marrow, semolina, slices of salmon, mushrooms, onions and rice, wrapped in a yeast dough prepared in a special way and baked for fifty minutes? Or the most exotic dish - Karoly eclairs (Karoli eclairs), stuffed with a pâté of champagne-cooked woodcock offal, topped with brown chauffroy sauce and drenched in a gelled game-boiled broth sauce? To be honest, it's been so long that I forgot what it was, but I remember Monsieur Pitard's words very clearly: “The next time you see that we are running out of the dish of the day, be sure to let me know. Then I will start calling the restaurants of other hotels until I find the one that has the same dish on the menu. Then I will send you in a taxi for this dish. Don't ever tell a waiter we're out of something again."

(Now I get furious when someone at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather tells a client that we can't write an ad or make a commercial by the promised deadline. Reputable companies always keep their promises, even if it costs a lot time and effort.)

Shortly after joining Monsieur Pitard's brigade, I was confronted with an ethical problem for which neither my school teachers nor my father. One day, the chef garde-manger instructed me to take "sweet meat" to the chef in charge of sauces. This meat had a terrible putrid smell, and I thought that the health of any client to whom it was served was in danger. The sauce will mask this smell, and the client will eat the cooked dish. I protested, but the cook ordered me to follow his orders, because he knew he would be in trouble if Monsieur Pitard found out that fresh "sweet meat" had run out. What was I to do? My upbringing suggested that it was dishonorable to inform. And yet I did just that. I took the rotten meat to Monsieur Pitard and asked him to smell it. Without saying a word to me, he went to the cook in charge of supplies and fired him. The poor son of a bitch had to leave immediately.

George Orwell, in his novel Down and Out in Paris and London, told the whole world how dirty kitchens are in France. He just never worked for Majestic! Monsieur Pitard was very picky and made us keep the kitchen spotlessly clean. Twice a day I had to scrape the surface of the table in the meat pantry with a knife. Twice a day it was necessary to wash the floor with a brush and sprinkle it with fresh sawdust. Once a week, a dedicated cockroach exterminator cleaned every corner of the kitchen. Every morning we were given a clean uniform.

(Now I also strictly demand from my subordinates that they keep their offices in perfect order. Clutter in the office creates an atmosphere of casual attitude to work, and, in addition, this often ends with the disappearance of important documents.)

We cooks were paid very little. At the same time, Monsieur Pitard was earning so much from the commissions his suppliers paid him that he could afford to live in a luxurious house. Not at all trying to hide his wealth from us, he came to work by taxi, carried a cane with a gold head and non-working hours dressed like the owner of an international bank. The fact that Monsieur Pitard flaunted his privileged position in such a way made us want to have the same dizzying career.

Auguste Escoffier, the great French chef of unfading fame, was of the same opinion. On the eve of the First World War, he was head chef at the restaurant of the Carlton Hotel in London; he liked to go to the races in Derby in a carriage drawn by four horses, dressed in a gray frock coat and top hat. With my fellow chefs at the Majestic Hotel restaurant, Escoffier's Guide Culinaire cookbook was the undisputed authority, it was the "court of last resort" in all our disputes over recipes. Just before his death, Auguste Escoffier found time to come and dine in our restaurant. What was happening in the hall was reminiscent of Brahma's dinner with the musicians of the Philharmonic.

During lunch and dinner, Monsieur Pitard was located near the counter, at which the assistant chefs passed the dishes to the waiters. He checked every dish before it left the kitchen. Sometimes he would send the dish back for the chef to work on. He always reminded us not to put too much food on the plate, and he said, "Not so much!" He wanted the Majestic Hotel to make a profit.

(Now I check all the materials for each advertising campaign before they reach the client, and send many of them for revision. I share Monsieur Pitard's passion for making a profit.)

Perhaps the most important quality of Monsieur Pitard as a leader that made the strongest impression on me was his industriousness. I worked sixty-three hours a week, bent over a red-hot stove, and it exhausted me so much that I had to spend my day off on the lawn, lying on my back and staring at the sky. Monsieur Pitard worked seventy seven hours a week and took a day off only once every two weeks.

(Currently, this is exactly the schedule I myself am following. I find that my subordinates will become less resistant overtime work if I work harder than they do. One of the employees who recently left my agency wrote in his farewell letter: “You set an example to work at home. It's kind of embarrassing to sit back for four hours on a Saturday night in the garden next door to your house, seeing you sit at your desk by the window and work. You don't even have to say anything.")

At the Majestic Hotel, I learned something else. If you can become indispensable to at least one client, you will never be fired. Our most important client, an American lady who occupied a suite of seven rooms, followed a strict diet of one baked apple with every meal. She once threatened to move into the Ritz if the flesh of her apples was not always uniform. I have come up with a technology to meet this requirement. It was necessary to bake two apples, rub them through a sieve, and then stuff the peel of one apple with the resulting pulp. The result is the most gorgeous baked apple our client has ever seen, but with more calories than she even knew she had. Rumors had reached the kitchen that this client thought the chef who made these apples needed a permanent contract.

My closest friend was a venerable argentier (the chef in charge of keeping the silverware) and he bore a striking resemblance to Charles Burlingham. His most cherished memory is of how King Edward VII of England (Eduard the Affectionate) majestically marched down the sidewalk to his carriage after a dinner at Maxim’s restaurant, which was given in honor of the conclusion entente cordiale. My friend was communist, but no one cared about that. What amazed me the most was my nationality: a Scot in the kitchen of a French restaurant is as rare as a Scot on Madison Avenue. Colleagues at work in the restaurant, having heard enough of my stories about the highlands of Scotland, gave me the nickname Sauvage (savage).

I further cemented my reputation as a savage by working on Madison Avenue. Running an advertising agency is no fun. After fourteen years of running the agency, I have come to the conclusion that the top executive has one main duty– to create an atmosphere in which a creative person can open up and benefit the company. Dr. William Menninger described these difficulties with extraordinary insight.

In order to be successful in the advertising business, you absolutely must gather a group of creative people. Although it is likely that such a group will consist mainly of hot-tempered eccentric originals with brilliant abilities.

Like most doctors, you must be prepared to perform your duties day and night, seven days a week. Constant pressure that all employees experience advertising agency, apparently, takes away from them a lot of physical and mental strength. Management puts pressure on the account manager and supervisor; they, in turn, rush the creative department. In addition, customers themselves put pressure on them and on you in the first place.

A particular problem in advertising agency personnel management is that all employees are watching each other very closely to see who is called to the manager's office, who has been given an assistant, who has received a raise. And it's not about talking to the boss, and not about the assistant, and not about raising the salary - they perceive all this as signs of "closeness to the father."

The head of an advertising agency is, of course, a person in whom subordinates want to see paternal qualities. To be a good father—whether to your children or to agency employees—a leader must be empathetic, tactful, and humane enough to love his charges.

At the very beginning of the activity of our agency, I worked shoulder to shoulder with each employee; and in those days there were no problems either with communication with members of the team, or with a sense of closeness with them. However, as the size of our team increases, it becomes more and more difficult. How can I be a father to people who don't even know my face? My agency now employs 497 men and women. I calculated that each employee of the agency has an average of one hundred acquaintances - in total this amounts to 49,700 people. If I explain to my subordinates what is happening in the agency, what our intentions are, they, in turn, will tell their 49,700 acquaintances about it. And that will give us 49,700 Ogilvy, Benson & Mather supporters.

Therefore, once a year, I gather all the employees of the agency in the conference room of the Museum of Modern Art and give them an objective report on the state of affairs in the company and profits - and about everything that interests my subordinates. Then I describe what style of behavior I admire, doing it something like this.

1. I admire people who work hard, who are ready for any challenge. I can't stand negligent employees shirking their jobs. Working with full dedication is much more interesting than working without using your abilities to the fullest. There is a very tangible rationale for hard work: the harder you work, the fewer employees your agency needs, and the more high profit it receives. The more profit the agency gets, the more money each of us gets.

2. I highly value people with high intelligence, because it is impossible to run a large advertising agency without having smart people among its employees. However, intelligence alone is worthless without intellectual honesty.

3. I have one absolute rule: do not hire family members and spouses of existing employees, as this leads to intrigue and disrupts the balance in the team. If two employees of the agency marry, one of them is required to leave - preferably the woman who is supposed to take care of the child.

4. I admire people who enjoy their work. If you don't like what you are doing, I highly recommend looking elsewhere. Remember the Scottish proverb: be happy while you live, because the dead will have to be a very long time?

5. I hate sycophants who curry favor with their bosses. As a rule, these people treat their subordinates rudely.

6. I admire self-confident professionals - skilled professionals doing their job with unsurpassed skill. They always respect the experience and qualifications of their colleagues and do not interfere in their work.

7. I highly appreciate people who take helpers who can surpass themselves. I feel sorry for people who are so unsure of their abilities that they prefer to keep mediocre workers under their control.

8. I highly appreciate people who develop their subordinates, because this is the only way to promote agency employees to higher positions. I can't stand having to appoint outsiders to important positions, and I look forward to the day when it won't be necessary at all.

9. I admire people with good manners who are always kind to their colleagues. I can't stand grumpy people. I have an aversion to people who wage "paper wars". The best way to maintain harmony in relations with others - to be sincere. Remember Blake's words:

A friend offended, angered -

I poured out my anger in words.

The enemy offended me -

I hid my anger in the depths.

10. I admire those who know how to properly organize their working day and complete their work on time. The Duke of Wellington never left home without finishing all the paperwork that was on his desk.

Having told my subordinates what I expect from them, I proceed to tell what I require from myself.

1. I try to be strict but fair, make unpopular decisions without fear of judgment from others, create an atmosphere of stability and listen more than talk.

2. I try to support driving force agency, its "progressiveness" - in other words, its vitality and desire to move forward.

3. I try to develop the agency by attracting new clients. (In this way, agency employees remind me of chicks waiting to be fed by daddy.)

4. I try to win the high trust of our clients.

5. I try to make as much profit as possible to keep us all out of poverty in our later years.

6. I plan the work of the agency for many years ahead.

7. I strive to hire people who are of the highest quality in every respect and try to form a team with a passion for the common cause.

8. I try to get the most out of every employee of the agency.

Managing an advertising agency takes a lot of effort, so it is important to be able to quickly recover from defeats. To do this, it is very important to trust your like-minded people and be patient with their shortcomings, as well as the ability to resolve differences between “children”. The ability to unmistakably anticipate favorable opportunities is also necessary for the management of an agency.

The moral climate in the team is very important. People working in an agency can lose their fighting spirit if their leader shows examples of unprincipled opportunism.

The head of an advertising agency must first of all know how to properly delegate authority. This is easy to do in words, but not at all easy in practice. Clients don't like it when the managers responsible for fulfilling their advertising order delegate their authority to subordinate employees, in the same way that patients don't like doctors who delegate their care to medical students.

In my opinion, in some large agencies, the delegation of senior management has gone too far. Senior managers of such agencies have become overly involved in administrative work, completely shifting the responsibility for maintaining contact with clients to subordinates. Delegation is essential for creating large agencies, but it also leads to mediocre results. I do not aspire to lead a large bureaucracy, which is why our agency has only nineteen clients. Striving to provide the highest level of customer service limits the opportunities for profit, but can bring more job satisfaction.

The process of delegation of authority in many cases leads to the fact that the functions of an intermediary between the head of the agency and its staff begin to be performed by one of the employees of the agency, who, in addition to his main job, also takes on the duties of the head. In such a situation, employees feel like children whom their mother has given to be raised by a caring nanny. However, the "children" calm down as soon as they begin to understand that their "nanny" is more patient, more open to communication and more experienced than I am.

My success or failure as an advertising executive, more than anything else, depends on my ability to find people who can create outstanding advertising campaigns—people who have an inner fire. Currently, the creative abilities of a person have become the object of close study by psychologists. If psychologists can name the characteristics of a creative person, they will provide me with a psychometric test to select young people who can be trained in the art of creating outstanding advertising campaigns. Dr. Fred Baron of the Institute of Personality Assessment at the University of California has undertaken promising research in this area. His conclusions are consistent with my own observations.

Creative people are characterized by special attentiveness; more than anyone else, they value accurate observations (and the ability to tell the truth to oneself).

In many cases they tell only part of the truth, but they do it with great talent; as a rule, they talk about things that previously went unnoticed. By re-emphasizing and eliminating obvious inconsistencies in wording, they seek to draw attention to what usually goes unnoticed.

They see what is happening in the same way as others, but they also see what others do not notice.

Compared to others, they have more rich mental abilities from birth, can think about several ideas at the same time, and also carry out comparative analysis more ideas, therefore, they are able to produce a more valuable result.

They are more energetic in character and have at their disposal an inexhaustible supply of mental and physical energy.

Consequently, their world is more complex, and, in addition, they lead an eccentric lifestyle.

To a much greater extent than most other people, they have abilities that depend on the subconscious - fantasy, daydreaming, imagination.

While Dr. Baron and his colleagues are busy compiling formalized psychometric tests based on clinical observations, I have to rely on "old-fashioned" empirical methods to find people who can generate creative ideas. When I see an interesting advertisement in the press or on television, I find out who wrote the text for it. I then call the author and congratulate him or her on a job well done. The results of the survey showed that creative people prefer to work at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, and not at other agencies, so my phone call becomes a reason to apply for a job.

I then ask the candidate to send me six of the best advertisements or commercials they have ever written for. This allows me to find out if the candidate can recognize good advertising or he is just a tool in the hands of a talented leader. Sometimes I go to my "victim" home; ten minutes after I step through the door of the person of interest to me, I can determine what his mental abilities are, what his taste is, and whether he is cheerful enough to cope with work in extreme conditions.

We receive hundreds of job applications every year. Of greatest interest to me are the statements made by advertisers living in the Midwest. I would rather hire an ambitious young man from Des Moines than a well-paid slacker working in a fashion agency on Madison Avenue. Watching these "giants" of the advertising business, coldly correct and extremely boring, I always remember Roy Campbell's poem "About some South African novelists":

Do you like the severity of their pen, -

Oh yes, I agree with you!

In their speech there is a bridle, a chain,

But where is the bloodied horse?

I'm with special attention I consider applications from Western European countries. Some of our very best creatives are Europeans. They are well educated, work hard, are less conservative, and more objective in judging the American consumer.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are overwhelmed with employees who can neither write advertising texts nor script presentations. They are helpless, like a deaf-mute on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

It's sad that most people in advertising (both advertisers and advertisers) are so fanatical about the traditional approach to advertising. The business world needs extraordinary advertising, but at the same time it is very cold towards people who are able to create such advertising. That's why most advertisements are so uninteresting. Albert Lasker made $50 million in advertising, and part of the reason for this is that he was able to endure the terrible manners of his "star" copywriters: John E. Kennedy, Claude Hopkins, and Frank Hammert.

Currently, some of the largest advertising agencies are run by second-generation administrators who have temporarily surfaced due to their ability to build relationships with senior management. However, the sycophant is not able to create an effective advertising campaign. The bitter truth is that, despite the availability of sophisticated methods and tools for creating advertising, the modern advertising agency does not get the results that could be obtained in the days of Lasker and Hopkins. Our business needs a massive influx talents. And really talented people, in my opinion deep conviction, can only be found among dissenters, rebels and rebels.

Recently, I was invited to attend a workshop on creative organizations at the University of Chicago. The other participants in the seminar were, for the most part, highly competent professors of psychology, studying what they called creativity. Feeling like a pregnant woman at an OB/GYN convention, I told them everything I had learned about the creative process from my own experience as the leader of seventy-three creatives.

It takes more than common sense to sustain the creative process. Original thinking cannot even be described in words. It requires "blind experimentation with ideas generated by subconscious, intuitive guesses." Business people, for the most part, are not able to think in an original way, because they cannot get rid of tyranny. common sense. Their imagination is blocked.

I'm not much of a logical thinker, but I've developed a technique for keeping my mind in touch with my subconscious mind in case this "cluttered storehouse of ideas" comes up with something interesting. I often listen to music. I'm on short terms with John Barleycorn. I often take a hot bath. I work in the garden. I communicate with the Amish. I watch birds. I take long walks outside the city. And I often take vacations so that my brain can be completely at rest for a while - no golf, no cocktails, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration. Only a bike!

Thus, being solely busy doing nothing, I receive a continuous stream of messages from my subconscious - this is the "raw material" for creating future advertisements. However, something else is required: hard work, a receptive mind, and unbridled curiosity.

The greatest creations of man were created under the influence of the desire to earn money. When Georg Friedrich Handel found himself in a difficult situation, he closed himself off from the outside world for twenty-one days and interrupted his seclusion only after he had completely completed his oratorio "Messiah" - this oratorio was a huge success. Only very few of the musical themes in this work were new, the rest Handel found in the subconscious, where they had been stored since he heard them in the works of other composers or wrote them for his own long-forgotten operas.

After a concert held at Carnegie Hall, Walter Damrosch asked Sergei Rachmaninov what lofty thoughts ran through his head as he wandered around the auditorium as he performed his concerto. “I counted the audience,” Rachmaninoff replied.

If Oxford students paid for their studies, I would demonstrate the wonders of education and become a professor modern history. However, I didn't start working in earnest until I got a taste of the money on Madison Avenue.

In today's business world, it doesn't make sense to be a creative, original thinker if you can't also sell what you've created. Management cannot be expected to recognize good idea if it is not submitted for its consideration good seller. In my fourteen years on Madison Avenue, I've only had one interesting idea which I couldn't sell. (I wanted International Paper to donate 26 million acres of forest land to the public for camping, fishing, hunting, hiking, bird watching. My idea was that such a noble gesture would be seen as an act of of extraordinary generosity, of historical significance, which would put this act of the company on a par with the creation of the Carnegie Library and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was a great idea, but I did not succeed in selling it.)

And the final conclusion I have come to is that no creative organization, be it a research lab, a magazine, a Parisian restaurant kitchen, or an advertising agency, can produce anything noteworthy unless it is led by an outstanding personality. The Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge owes its reputation to Lord Rutherford. The New Yorker became what it is today thanks to Harold Ross. The Majestic's restaurant has earned recognition thanks to Monsieur Pitard.

Not everyone will like to work in the master's studio. The subservience that work under a master requires is depressing for some people, and as a result they come to the conclusion that "it is better to reign in hell than to serve in paradise":

Such employees leave my “studio”, but soon realize that they have “lost their paradise”. A few weeks after leaving, one of these employees, the poor fellow, wrote: “When I left the agency, I was ready to be a little sad. However, in fact, I experienced not sadness, but severe mental pain. In all my life, I have never felt a greater sense of loss. I think this is the price that one has to pay for the lost opportunity to belong to the circle of the chosen ones, because in this world such an opportunity does not come often.

When he leaves the company good employee, his close friends are puzzled as to why this happened, and in most cases they speculate that he was mistreated by management. I recently found a way to prevent this kind of misunderstanding. When our agency's young creative director resigned to take over as vice president at another agency, we exchanged letters with him in the style of a resigning cabinet minister and the prime minister. These letters were published in our agency magazine. A respected "apostate" wrote to me this:

I answered him as follows:

Only a very few great creative personalities have a soft personality. In most cases, these are grumpy egoists - people who are not accepted by modern society. Take, for example, Winston Churchill. He drank like a shoemaker. He was irritable and stubborn. Objections brought him into a gloomy frame of mind. He was rude to fools. He was extremely extravagant. He started crying at the slightest provocation. He had a Rabelaisian way of speaking. He was inattentive to his subordinates. Yet Lord Alanbrook, Chief of the General Staff, wrote of Churchill:

I will always remember the years of working with him as the most difficult and difficult years of my entire life. And despite all this, I thank God for giving me the opportunity to work side by side with this man, and for opening my eyes to the very possibility of the existence of such a superman on this earth.

How to win clients

Fifteen years ago I was a humble tobacco farmer in Pennsylvania. Now I run one of the best advertising agencies in the United States of America with a turnover of 55 million dollars a year, a fund wages$5 million and offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Toronto.

How could this happen? As my Amish friends say, "I wonder myself."

In 1948, after affixing a sign to the door of my agency, I issued the following order:

This is a new agency that fights for the right to life. For a certain period we will have a lot of work and our labor will be paid low.

When hiring, the focus will be on age. We are looking for energetic young people. I don't want to deal with sycophants and hacks. I'm looking for real gentlemen with remarkable mental abilities.

Any agency can get big enough if it deserves it. Our agency is based on small funds, but we intend to turn it into an outstanding agency before the end of 1960.

The next day, I made a list of the companies I would most like to see as my clients: General Foods, Bristol-Myers, Campbell Soup Company, Lever Brothers, and Shell.

Back in the old days, advertisers knew that it was often more profitable to hire "dark horses" (little-known agencies) to create advertising. When an executive at a giant advertising agency was trying to get a commission to create an advertisement for Camel cigarettes, he asked the client to assign thirty copywriters to complete this order. However, the cunning head of the tobacco company R. J. Reynolds replied: “Maybe better than one, but good?” After that, he made an order for a young copywriter Bill Esty and remained a client of his agency for twenty-eight years.

In 1937, Walter Chrysler gave an advertising commission for a Plymouth car to Sterling Getchel, then thirty-two years old. In 1940, Ed Little commissioned the little-known agency Ted Bates to create an advertisement for Colgate toothpaste. And General Foods partnered with Young & Rubicam when the agency was just one year old. After retiring, John Orr Young, co-founder of Young & Rubicam, in his memoir, gave manufacturing companies the following advice on how to choose an advertising agency:

By the time I got on the scene, the big advertisers were getting more cautious. The Lord took the side of the "big armies". Stanley Reesor, head of the J. Walter Thompson agency since 1926, cautioned me: “The consolidation of industrial companies into large corporations affects the world of advertising. Now, large-scale commissioning entails providing such a wide range of services that only very large agencies can handle them. Why don't you give up on your impossible dream and start working with the J. Walter Thompson agency?

To new advertising agencies starting to look for their first clients, I will bequeath a reception that, at the beginning of my activity, gave excellent results. I asked potential clients to reflect on what constitutes life cycle of a typical ad agency, through its inevitable ups and downs, from boom to bust.

At this point, I always imagined how my potential client was trying to hide that I had hit his nerve. Did I just describe the dying advertising agency that is he?

Now, fourteen years later, I myself am indignant at the immorality of such tricks. My learned uncle Sir Humphrey Rolleston said of doctors: “First they do a business, then make yourself name and only then begin to take care of their honor". Now I'm approaching the stage when it's time to seriously think about the preservation of honor, so I'm being quieter than water below the grass. However, things were very different when my bank account was empty. The Pirate King (Gilbert's character) said:

Going in search of a new victim

I act like a king.

Yes, I can sink more ships

Than this is allowed to a well-bred monarch.

However, another king on the best throne,

To call your crown truly yours,

Gotta do a lot more dirty work

Than the work that I have to do.

Following the advice given by Henry Ford to his dealers to "search for new clients by visiting them in person" I began to bypass advertisers who had never used advertising agencies at all, realizing that I didn't have enough references to squeeze into a seat already taken by more than reputable agency. My first target was Wedgewood China, which spends about $40,000 a year on advertising. Mr. Wedgwood and his publicity manager gave me a very gracious welcome.

“On the contrary,” I replied. “I admire your advertisements. However, if you let me at least buy advertising space for you, the magazines will pay me a commission. It will cost you nothing, and I will promise never to cross the threshold of your office again.

Hensley Wedgwood was a kind man - the next morning he wrote official letter about my appointment as an advertising agent, to which I replied with a telegram "I hear the solemn chime of bells." This is how our collaboration began.

However, I had only $6,000 at my disposal, which was hardly enough capital to keep me afloat until the first commissions started rolling in. Luckily for me, my older brother Francis was then CEO Mather & Crowther Ltd., a well-known and reputable London-based advertising agency. He came to my rescue by persuading his partners to raise my capital and allow me to use their firm's name. My old friend Bobby Bevan of S. H. Benson Ltd., another English agency, followed suit, and Sir Francis Meynell persuaded Sir Stafford Cripps to authorize transatlantic investment.

Bobby and Francis insisted that I find an American to head the agency. They did not believe that their compatriot could convince American manufacturers to use the services of his agency. In their opinion, it would be ridiculous to expect that an Englishman, much less a Scot, could succeed in the advertising business in America: the British have no inclination to engage in advertising. In fact, they are disgusted even by the very idea of advertising. In 1948, Punch magazine wrote: "Let us be considered as a nation of shopkeepers, and yet we have no need to become a nation of advertisers." Of the five and a half thousand living knights, baronets and peers, only one is engaged in advertising.

Preconceptions about the advertising business and those in it are not so strong in the United States of America. Neil McElroy, former Procter & Gamble brand manager, became secretary of defense in the Eisenhower administration. Chester Bowles rose from Madison Avenue advertising man to Governor of Connecticut, Ambassador to India, and Deputy Secretary of State. But even in the United States of America, the appointment of advertising professionals to important positions in government is rare. This is very unfortunate, since many of them have far more versatile abilities than most lawyers, professors, bankers and journalists, who are given preference. People who have been in the advertising business long enough have more experience and knowledge to solve problems and find opportunities; to set short-term and long-term goals, to evaluate results, to lead a large team, to clearly present information to committees, to ensure the activities of their organization without going over budget. By observing the activities of older and more successful colleagues in the advertising business from other agencies, I came to the conclusion that many of them are more objective, better organized, more energetic and more hardworking compared to people who hold positions of similar rank in the legal field. , education, banking and journalism.

I had almost nothing to offer an American manager who would be suitable for the position of head of the agency. Nevertheless, after seven months of looking for a suitable candidate, I suggested that Anderson Hewitt leave the Chicago branch of J. Walter Thompson to become my boss. This man was an inexhaustible source of energy, did not get lost in the presence of "bags of money" and he had connections that are of great interest to me.

During the year, Andy Hewitt got two excellent clients. With the help of creative director John LaFarge, he was able to secure a contract with Sunoko. Three months later, his father-in-law Arthur Page convinced Chase Bank to hire us. When we ran out of money, Andy Hewitt persuaded J.P. Morgan & Company to give us a $100,000 loan, the only guarantee of which was a guarantee from his uncle Leffingwell, then chairman of the board of directors of the company.

Alas, our cooperation with Andy was not cloudless. We tried to hide our differences from the agency staff, but children always see that their parents are in a quarrel. After four years of controversy, further exacerbated by our meteoric success, the agency began to split into two factions. After a hard struggle that brought suffering to everyone involved, Andy resigned, and I became the head of the agency. I take comfort in the fact that Andy has continued to work successfully in other agencies, freeing himself from such an obnoxious partner like me.

By opening a new agency, we entered into competition with three thousand other advertising agencies. Our first assignment was to bring the agency out of obscurity so that potential clients would include us on their list. We got there faster than I dared hope, so my story of how it happened might be helpful to other venture capitalists.

First, I hosted a dinner party where ten reporters from trade advertising publications were invited. I told them about my crazy dream to build a big advertising agency from scratch. And from that moment on, they gave me a lot of invaluable advice on starting a new business, published all the press releases that I sent them - God bless them! Rosser Reeves said that no one in our agency could go to the bathroom without the news appearing in the trade press.

Secondly, I followed the advice of Eduard Bernays to give no more than two public performances a year. Each of my performances was calculated to excite the general interest of the "residents" of Madison Avenue. My first performance was a lecture at the Art Directors Club, during which I told everything I knew about the graphic and typographic design of advertising. Before I went home, I handed out to everyone who attended my lecture a list of thirty-nine rules for designing an advertisement layout. These "ancient" rules are still being passed on from hand to hand on Madison Avenue.

In my next public appearance, I exposed the futility and inefficiency of college advertising courses and offered $10,000 in donations to create an advertising college whose graduates would receive an advertising license. This original proposal hit the front pages of many newspapers. Before long, members of the trade press began to contact me for comment on most of the issues that arose. I always expressed my opinion frankly, and I was often quoted.

Thirdly, I established friendly contacts with people who, due to the specifics of their work, communicated with large advertisers. These people included researchers, public relations consultants, management specialists, and advertising space sellers. They saw in me a possible source of future business for themselves, but in reality they received stories about the merits of our agency.

Fourth, I frequently mailed reports of the agency's successes to six hundred people in all walks of life. This direct mail bombardment of information about our agency reached the most influential advertisers and was taken into account by them. For example, when I was trying to get an agency to advertise Seagram products, Sam Bronfman read only the last two paragraphs of a sixteen-page report I had sent him shortly before. And he hired us.

My generous reader is probably shocked by these admissions in self-promotion. The only thing I can say in my defense is that if I had behaved more professionally, it would have taken me twenty years to achieve success. I didn't have the time or money to wait that long. I was poor, no one knew me, so I had to hurry.

Meanwhile, I worked from morning till night, six days a week, creating advertising campaigns for clients who had hired our "newborn" agency. Some of these campaigns have gone down in advertising history.

At first we took on every job we could get, whether it was for a toy turtle, a patented hairbrush, or an English motorcycle. However, I never lost sight of the five great companies that made my first list of prospective clients, and invested our meager profits into building the kind of advertising agency that I thought would eventually get their attention.

I have always explained potential clients What a dramatic improvement they could make if Ogilvy, Benson & Mather were to take on the jobs that the old agencies used to do. In each case, we would leave a new footprint, and in each case, sales would increase. However, when I said this, I never managed to maintain a straight face. If the company's sales did not increase sixfold in the previous twenty-one years, this means that its growth rate was much lower than average.

In 1945, some very mediocre agencies managed to become seriously rich off a portfolio of advertising orders from equally mediocre clients. All they had to do was fasten their seat belts and rise to unattainable heights in the wake of a booming economy. An advertising agency does not have to work very hard to get advertising orders at a time when sales are booming on their own. But when the recession hits, advertising agencies with outdated approaches to advertising find themselves in a quandary, and energized new organizations thrive.

It is most difficult for a start-up agency to attract its first clients, because it does not yet have a “track record”, no success data, no reputation. At this stage, it is useful to reflect on how you can benefit from the preliminary collection of information on some aspects of the potential client's activities. There are very few manufacturers whose curiosity will not be piqued when you offer them a demonstration of the results of such a study.

I first experienced this method while establishing contacts with Helena Rubinstein, who had changed seventeen agencies in the previous twenty-five years. Helena's products were advertised by an agency owned by her youngest son, Horace Titus. Research carried out by us on own initiative, showed that this advertisement did not give the expected results.

Madame Rubinstein showed no interest in our research, but when I showed her some of the advertisements, Helena perked up. She was especially interested in the photographs of my wife taken before and after visiting one of the Rubinstein salons. “I think your wife used to look better,” said Madame Rubinstein.

To my great surprise, Horace Titus advised my mother to refuse to work with his agency and pass the order on to me. And so she did. Horace and I became friends and remained so until his death eight years later.

In 1958, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey asked us to show what kind of advertising we would create if they hired us. Ten days later, I presented them with fourteen versions of the advertising campaign - and received an order. After such great luck, the best weapon to use while hunting for new clients is a wealth of imagination and high work capacity.

We spent $30,000 presenting specially designed promotional materials to our potential client, drugmaker Bromo Seltzer. Our advertising was based on the convincingly argued thesis that headaches in most cases are psychosomatic in nature. However, Lemoyne Billings, who was then the brand manager of the manufacturer Bromo Seltzer, preferred advertising presented by Lennen & Newell.

Now we have neither the time nor the desire to develop such advertising campaigns at our own risk before receiving orders. Instead, we show potential clients what we've done for other manufacturers, explain our policies, and introduce them to our agency's department heads. We try to show ourselves as we really are, with all the advantages and disadvantages. If the client does not like what he sees, we will not be lost without him.

When with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines decided to hire another agency, its management invited Ogilvy, Benson & Mather and four other advertising agencies to submit proposals for creating an advertising campaign. It was assumed that the representatives of the company would evaluate our proposals in the first place. I opened the meeting with the following words: “We have not prepared anything. Instead, we invite you to share your concerns. You can then visit other agencies on your list. All of them prepared drafts of the advertising campaign. If you like the offer of one of these agencies, the choice will not be difficult. If not, come back and hire us. After that, we will begin research, which always precedes the development of an advertising campaign in our agency.”

The Dutch "swallowed" this proposal, and after five days, after reviewing the draft advertising campaigns developed by other agencies, they returned to hire us, to my great delight.

Amish - a religious branch of Christianity, immigrants from Germany, Switzerland and Austria - have been living in America for several centuries, strictly observing their customs and traditions. Note. ed.

John Milton, Paradise Lost. Translation by Arkady Steinberg. Note. transl.

Young John Orr, Adventures in Advertising, Harper, 1948.

In the original, the telegram was formulated as follows: "A Full Peel of Kent Treble Bob Major", - this is the name of the order in which eight church bells ring. Note. transl.

End of free trial.

We express our gratitude to V. Muzykant for kindly provided illustrative materials from his own archive

This book is well complemented

David Ogilvie

Secrets of Greatness

Sourced from Fortune Magazine

Steve Jobs. Leadership Lessons

Jay Elliot, William Simon

History of this book

Fourteen years before these "revelations" were written, I moved to New York and opened an advertising agency. According to the Americans, it was a crazy act. What could a Scot know about the advertising business?

But it didn't take long for my agency to become a dizzying success.

Why did I write this book? Firstly in order to attract new clients to cooperate with my advertising agency. Secondly to create market conditions for a public offering of our shares. Thirdly in order to become more famous in the business world. All three goals were achieved.

If I were writing this book now, it would be more subdued, less boastful, and less preachy. The book contains a lot rules: do this, do that, don't do that. Advertisers, especially young ones, don't accept any rules. Today I wouldn't say, "Never print advertising copy in negative (white letters on black background)". I would say, "Studies show that if you print your ad copy in the negative, no one will read it." This is a soft wording, more acceptable in our liberal society.

My colleagues at Ogilvy & Mather stuck to my principles most of the time. promotional activities, and they managed to sell a lot of goods from different manufacturers. As a result, our agency is sixty times larger today than it was when this book was written. Instead of one office and nineteen clients, we now have three thousand clients and 267 branches, including 44 in the United States.

I receive letters from strangers in which my readers thank me for the tips in this book that have increased the sales of their products. In addition, I meet many influential people in the marketing world who claim that they owe their success to the book Confessions of an Advertising Agent, which they read at the very beginning of their career.

I apologize to readers for referring to advertisers in my book as men. Please remember that I wrote this book twenty-five years ago, when advertising agents were predominantly men. Now the vast majority of them are women. And thank God!

After reading this book, someone may reproach me for being too self-confident. I want to assure you that my self-confidence does not extend beyond the field in which I work. In other words, I am a complete layman in everything except advertising. I can't read balance sheets, work on a computer, ski, sail a yacht, play golf or draw. But when it comes to advertising, Advertising Age calls me "the king of advertising." When Fortune magazine first published an article about me called "David Ogilvy a genius?", I asked my lawyer to sue the publisher for having a question mark in the title. Shortly thereafter, I became an "extinct volcano" and found my outlet in running an agency. However, I quickly grew tired of the turmoil on Madison Avenue and moved to France, where I garden and bombard my partners with annoying letters.

In fact, my principles, based largely on research results, are as valid today as they were in 1962. However, there are three statements in the book "Revelations of an Advertising Agent" that require amendment.

US. 170 I wrote that if in your advertisements you are trying to ensure the maximum return of the coupons contained, place the coupon at the top of the advertisement, and make the tear-off line in the middle. Now I wouldn't recommend it. Place the coupon in bottom right corner of the page.

On the from. 173 I wrote that there is no connection between whether people like an advertising idea and how it sells a product. The results of recent studies conducted by the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development show: commercials ads that consumers like sell more products than ads that don't make people feel good.

US. 177 I advised the reader to limit the number of words in television advertisements to 90. It is now known that commercials that use an average of about 200 words sell more product. Street vendors know this, so they talk very quickly.

Chapter 8 TV commercials not responding modern requirements. In my defense, I can offer the following: in 1962, very little was known about what methods of television advertising worked and what did not. More recent research on this subject can be found in my book Ogilvy on Advertising, published by Crown in 1983.

Confessions of an Advertising Agent says nothing about corporate culture, especially the corporate culture of advertising agencies. In 1962, I had not even heard of such a concept (and neither did anyone else). Thanks to two business researchers, Terence Deal and Alan Kennedy, we now know that “…the people who started the companies that America is famous for, without exception, worked obsessively to creating a developed culture of their organizations. Companies that have managed to develop their own unique identity through the formation of corporate values, the creation of their heroes, the introduction of rites and rituals and the recognition of the cultural needs of their employees, receive advantages in the competitive struggle.

Currently, the concept of corporate culture has gained immense popularity not only in the United States of America, but also in England. Frances Cairncross wrote in The Economist, "The common thread of all successful companies is the purposeful, thoughtful creation of corporate culture."

Not so long ago, the head of one of the largest advertising agencies told me: "Ogilvy & Mather is the only agency in the world where the corporate culture is really formed." Perhaps more than anything, this sets our agency apart from others. This is how I imagine the main aspects of the culture of our agency.

History of this book

But it didn't take long for my agency to become a dizzying success.

Why did I write this book? Firstly, in order to attract new clients to cooperate with my advertising agency. Secondly, to create market conditions for a public offering of our shares. Thirdly, to become more famous in the business world. All three goals were achieved.

If I were writing this book now, it would be more subdued, less boastful, and less preachy. The book contains a lot rules: do this, do that, don't do that. Advertisers, especially young ones, don't accept any rules. Today I wouldn't say, "Never print advertising copy in negative (white letters on black background)". I would say, "Studies show that if you print your ad copy in the negative, no one will read it." This is a soft wording, more acceptable in our liberal society.

My colleagues at Ogilvy & Mather followed my advertising principles for the most part, and they were able to sell a lot of different brands. As a result, our agency is sixty times larger today than it was when this book was written. Instead of one office and nineteen clients, we now have three thousand clients and 267 branches, including 44 in the United States.

I apologize to readers for referring to advertisers in my book as men. Please remember that I wrote this book twenty-five years ago, when advertising agents were predominantly men. Now the vast majority of them are women. And thank God!

On the from. 173 I wrote that there is no connection between whether people like an advertising idea and how it sells a product. A recent study by the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development shows that ads that appeal to consumers sell more products than ads that don't make people happy.

More recent research on this subject can be found in my book Ogilvy on Advertising, published by Crown in 1983.

Confessions of an Advertising Agent says nothing about corporate culture, especially the corporate culture of advertising agencies. In 1962, I had not even heard of such a concept (and neither did anyone else). Thanks to two business researchers, Terence Deal and Alan Kennedy, we now know that “…the people who started the companies that America is famous for were all, without exception, obsessively working on creating a developed culture of their organizations. Companies that have managed to develop their own unique identity through the formation of corporate values, the creation of their heroes, the introduction of rites and rituals and the recognition of the cultural needs of their employees, receive advantages in the competitive struggle.

Currently, the concept of corporate culture has gained immense popularity not only in the United States of America, but in England. Frances Cairncross wrote in The Economist, "The common feature of all successful companies is the purposeful, thoughtful creation of corporate culture."

Some of our employees spend their entire working life in our agency. We make superhuman efforts to make it pleasant to work here. We attach paramount importance to this.

We treat each employee of the agency as an individual. We help our employees when they have problems - whether it be difficulties with the performance of official duties or illness, alcoholism, etc.

We help our employees find the most effective use of their abilities, spending a lot of time and money on the professional development of the staff. In this sense, our agency resembles a clinic at a higher medical school.

Our system of government is exceptionally democratic. We do not recognize the bureaucracy of a hierarchical system of government or a rigid informal chain of command.

We provide agency employees with an extremely high degree of freedom and autonomy.

We like people with good manners. Our New York chapter gives out an annual award for "professionalism and courtesy."

We like people who are sincere in discussions, who are honest with customers and, most importantly, who are truthful with consumers.

We admire the hard-working, purposeful and pedantic employees who are very responsible in the performance of their duties.

We cannot stand schemers, sycophants, braggarts, and pompous asses. We are disgusted by cruelty.

All career opportunities are open to each employee of the agency. We are free from any kind of prejudice - religious, racial or sexual.

We do not accept nepotism, as well as any other form of favoritism. When promoting employees to high positions, we take into account their personal qualities as well as their professionalism.

The advice we give to our clients is no different from the advice we would give if we were the owners of their companies - and we follow this principle regardless of what our own interests dictate to us.

It was Ogilvy who first applied a rigorous scientific approach to advertising, proving that clear formulas and bare facts are no less effective than witty phrases and sexy images.

David Ogilvy - Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)

David Ogilvy - founder of advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather with an annual turnover of over 10 billion dollars, a classic of advertising theory, recognized as one of the best copywriters in the world; a man included by French Magazine in the list of giants who made the most significant contribution to the world industrial revolution along with Adam Smith, Thomas Edison, Karl Marx, J. D. Rockefeller Sr. and others.

It was Ogilvy who first applied a rigorous scientific approach to advertising, proving that clear formulas and bare facts are no less effective than witty phrases and sexy images.

"There are no secondary words in the advertising text," Ogilvy said. Emotional passages should be preferred to concrete numbers, clichés should be replaced by facts, and fruitless exhortations by tempting prospects. It was these theses that later became the pillars of the advertising theory created by Ogilvy.

Largely thanks to Ogilvy, every civilized inhabitant of the planet knows about the existence of American Express and Shell.

"Every promotional move should complement that complex symbol called the brand image," Ogilvy wrote, recalling the Hathaway ad campaign. He was not the first to come up with this idea, but Ogilvy was the first to create a brand image in practice. Like any self-respecting researcher, Ogilvy "tried everything on himself."

In 1954, he created a new image for ... the whole country. Puerto Rico, after an advertising campaign designed by Ogilvie, has turned in the eyes of potential tourists from a troubled state to a country with a rich history, experiencing a kind of renaissance.

Ogilvie attributed his success to three main factors.

The first is the active and creative use of the results of advertising effectiveness research. Drawing on experience in the advertising industry and in intelligence, he said: "Advertisers who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who neglect to decipher enemy messages."

The second success factor is phenomenal performance. He loved the Scottish proverb "Hard work never killed anyone."

The third factor is the right selection of people. He gave the new heads of departments of his organization a nesting doll with a note: "If each of us recruits people smaller than us, then our company will become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people larger than us, our company will be a company of giants."

About the image he created for himself, The New York Times wrote in 1958: "Mr. Ogilvie certainly stands out from the rest of the advertising specialists - at least in clothes and manners." Ogilvy himself called his style "conservative imposing": light tweed suits, glasses "sitting" on the tip of the nose, a pipe - all this really contrasted sharply with the corporate image of an advertising specialist.

Ogilvy was a genius, but at the same time he remained ordinary person: sometimes conceited, arrogant, presumptuous. He did not tolerate narrow-minded people next to him, was harsh in his statements, often terminated relations with employees and clients. He was afraid to fly by planes and therefore made long sea cruises across the ocean.

One desire of the advertising master failed to materialize. He dreamed of being knighted, which never happened during his lifetime. And one of the saddest events in his life, Ogilvy considered expulsion from Oxford for academic failure.

In 1988, at the age of 77, Ogilvy sold the $6,000 company he founded for $864 million.

Bibliography

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://www.psycho.ru were used.

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