Ogilvy advertising agent revelations. Advertising agent revelations

The history of this book

But very little time passed, and a dizzying success came to my agency.

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

More recent research on this topic 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 also in England. Frances Cairncross wrote in The Economist: “Common to all successful companies - purposeful, thoughtful creation of corporate culture. "

We treat each employee of the agency as a person. We help our employees when they have problems - whether it is difficulties in fulfilling 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 personnel. In this sense, our agency resembles a clinic at a higher medical educational institution.

Our management system is extremely democratic. We do not recognize the bureaucracy of a hierarchical management system or rigid informal lines of command.

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

We like people with good manners. Our New York branch awards the Professionalism and Courtesy Award annually.

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

We admire hardworking, motivated and pedantic employees who are very responsible in the performance of their duties.

We can't stand schemers, sycophants, boasters and pompous donkeys. We are disgusted with cruelty.

All opportunities are open to each employee of the agency career growth... 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 much as their professionalism.

The recommendations that we give to our clients do not differ from the recommendations that 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 various branches of our agency located in different countries of the world. It is very important for consumers to know that they can expect the same service standards across all of our locations. That is why we want our corporate culture to be the same in all countries of the world.

We attach great importance to confidentiality. Clients do not respect the agencies that give away their secrets. They also dislike it when an agency tries to raise its reputation through their success. Getting between a client and their success is a sign of bad taste.

Our agency cultivates the desire to always be dissatisfied with the results of our work. This is the antidote to complacency.

Our extremely diverse company functions as a whole 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 easily; in addition, we try to keep them concise. We cannot tolerate pseudo-academic jargon expressions such as relational, paradigm, demassification, reconceptualization, suboptimal, symbiotic connection, splintering, dimensionalization. (Lord Rutherford told the staff at the Cavendish Laboratory that if they couldn't explain their physics work to the girl behind the bar, then 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 foundation of our corporate culture. Here are some of them:

2. It is impossible force people to buy a product, you can only interest them in purchasing this item.

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

4. We hire well-mannered, decent, intelligent people.

5. The consumer is not an idiot. This is your wife. Don't hurt her by underestimating her intellectual ability.

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

Four problems

One coffee brand was once popular - Chase & Sanborn. At some point, the manufacturer decided to hold a sale. Over time, the use of discounts became a habit. What's 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 allow the creation of that indestructible image that would make the brand a part of the daily life of consumers.

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

Why are so many managers working in large companies so addicted to bargain trade? Because their employers' interest in making a profit does not extend beyond the next quarter. Why is this happening? Because they care more about stock options than about the future of their companies.

Trade in goods at reduced prices acts like a drug. Ask a manager addicted to the drug what happened to his company's market share after the crazy idea of \u200b\u200bcutting prices was implemented. He will change the topic of the conversation. 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 brands created by their predecessors treat them extremely casually. Sooner or later they will realize that they cannot sell brand name products that no one has even heard of. Brands are the “seed” that they inherited. They eat their seed grain.

My testament

2. The temptation to entertain the public rather than sell a product is contagious.

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

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

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

David Ogilvy 1988

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

The history of this book

My testament

I began my research career with the great Dr. Gallup at Princeton. Then I started doing advertising. As far as I know, I am the only major "creative" advertising specialist who started his professional career as a researcher. Therefore, I consider the creative function from the point of view of an objective researcher. Here are some of the lessons I've learned from my experience.

1. Creating successful advertisements is a craft that relies on inspiration to a certain extent, but essentially requires skill and hard work. If you have even an ounce of talent and know which marketing techniques work at the point of sale, you will achieve a lot.

2. The temptation to entertain the public rather than sell a product is contagious.

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

6. The function of advertising is not to persuade consumers to try a product once, but to persuade them to use this product repeatedly, giving it preference over other products in the same category that they have 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. Adopt their methods.

9. Advertising campaigns are mostly too complex. Their creators set a number of goals for themselves and try to combine the very different points of view of many specialists involved in the development advertising campaign... 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, with a black eye patch as its main feature, was in effect for twenty-one years. My ad for Dove soap has been running for thirty-one years and is in huge demand.

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

David Ogilvy 1988 year

Autobiography

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

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

My mother was beautiful and eccentric Irish. She disinherited me on the grounds that she thought I could make more money than I deserved without any help from her. I could not disagree with her.

At the age of nine, I was sent to the aristocratic boarding house Dotheboys Hall in Eastbourne. The director of the boarding school wrote about me: “He, undoubtedly, has an extraordinary mind, is inclined to argue with teachers and always tries to convince them that he is right, and not the textbooks. However, this is one more confirmation of his uncommonness. " When I suggested that Napoleon may have been Dutch because his brother was 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 supposed 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 grabbed my cheek and threw me forcefully onto the floor.

At the age of thirteen, I entered the Fettes School, a Scottish school in which my great-uncle, Lord Justice General Inglis, the greatest defender of Scotland of all time, introduced the Spartan order. At this famous school, I made friends: Ian MacLeod, Niall Macpherson, Knox Cunningham, and some other future MPs. Of all the school teachers I remember, first of all, Henry Havergal (he awakened in me the desire to play the double bass) and Walter Sellar, who wrote the book "1066 and All That" during the period when he taught us history.

I studied poorly at Oxford. Keith Feiling, professor of history, awarded me a scholarship to the College of Christ Church, Oxford University, where I was fortunate enough to study with people like Patrick Gordon Walker, Roy Harrod, A.S. Russell, and other teachers. However, I was completely absorbed in my own thoughts, and soon, as you would expect, I was expelled from college.

This was in 1931, during the Great Depression. For the next seventeen years, while my friends became doctors, lawyers, government officials, and politicians, I wandered the world not knowing what I wanted. I was a cook in a Parisian restaurant, a traveling salesman, a social worker in a slum in Edinburgh, and also assisted Dr. Gallup in his research in the film industry; I was also an assistant to Sir William Stephenson in the British Security Coordination Intelligence Service and finally a farmer in Pennsylvania.

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

Max Beerbohm once told SN Berman: “If I were very rich, I would launch a major advertising campaign in all the leading newspapers. IN advertisements there would be just one phrase, printed in large letters, - the words I accidentally heard, with which my husband convinced his wife: “ Darling, there is nothing in this world to buy».

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

I wrote the book in the first person and thereby went against the norms of behavior accepted in modern American society. But I think it wouldn't be fair to say werecognizing their sins and describing events his life.

David Ogilvy Ipswich, Massachusetts

Thirty years ago, I worked as a chef in a restaurant at the Majestic Hotel in Paris. Henry Salt of the Pavillon once told me that it was probably the best kitchen that ever existed.

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 food. We all, without exception, worked, inspired by one desire - to cook a dish better than anyone else has done before. Strength of mind any of us would do credit even to a Marine.

I have always believed that if I could understand how Monsieur Pitar, the chef, maintained such a high, white-hot morale among the chefs and their henchmen, I would be able to apply his leadership style to running my advertising agency.

First of all, it should be noted that Monsieur Pitar was the best chef in the entire brigade, and we knew this. He had to spend most of his time at his desk, drafting menus, checking invoices and placing orders for groceries. Nevertheless, once a week he always left his office (which was located in the middle of the kitchen and separated from it by glass partitions) in order to independently to cook some kind of dish. We always gathered around him in a crowd to watch him do it, sincerely amazed at his virtuosity. It was inspiring to work for such a first-class master!

(Following the lead of Chef Pitar, I still write advertisements myself from time to time to remind my creative team that I have not lost my craft.)

Monsieur Pitar directed the kitchen staff, never letting go of the metal rod, and we were all terribly afraid of him. He sat in his glass cage - important person, the highest symbol of power. When, in doing my job, I made a mistake, I certainly looked to see if his piercing gaze was drilling me.

Chefs, like creatives, work under tough conditions and tend to be irritable. I doubt that a more prudent boss could prevent our fights, which sometimes reached the point of assault. Monsieur Bourgeno, our chef saucier, told me that by the time the chef turns forty, he is either dying or losing his mind. I knew what he meant that evening when our chef potagier started throwing raw eggs at me across the kitchen and nine of the forty-seven eggs hit me. He was furious that I had invaded his kingdom of pots in search of bones for the poodles of an important client.

Our chef patissier was equally eccentric. Every evening, when he went home after work, he hid a chicken in his felt hat. One day, going on vacation, he made me hide two dozen peaches in the pants of his underwear. However, when a government dinner was held in honor of the King and Queen of England at Versailles, it was this rogue genius, the only one of all the confectioners in France, who was entrusted with making decorative baskets of sugar and glazed cookies.

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

(I now praise my subordinates as rarely as Monsieur Pitar praised his chefs, in the hope that they would value rare praise more than a continuous stream of positive reviews of their work.)

Monsieur Pitar knew how to make unforgettable "gifts". One evening, when I made a Rothschild soufflé (it consisted of three liqueurs), he took 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 the bullet of a Russian out of his mind).

Monsieur Pitar hated incompetence. He knew it was demoralizing for professionals to work side by side with amateurs. I saw him fired three pastry chefs within one month for the same “sin”: they could not bake brioche buns so that their yeast caps rose evenly. Mr. Gladstone would approve of such a harsh attitude: he believed that "the prime minister must first of all be a good butcher."

Monsieur Pitar taught me to maintain an extremely high level of customer service. For example, one day he overheard me telling the waiter that we had just finished plat du jour (dish of the day) - and he almost fired me for it. I drew his attention to the fact that the preparation of the dish in question would take so much time that no client would wait until his order was ready. What was that dish? Maybe our famous colibiac de saumon (salmon kulebyaka) is a complex fish dish made from sturgeon bone marrow, semolina, slices of salmon, mushrooms, onions and rice, wrapped in yeast dough prepared in a special way and baked for fifty minutes? Or the most exotic dish - Karoly eclairs, stuffed with woodcock giblets cooked in champagne, covered with brown shofrua sauce and drenched in a jelly sauce made from game broth? To be honest, so much time has passed and I have already forgotten what the dish was, but I remember Monsieur Pitard's words very precisely: “The next time you see that we are running out of a dish of the day, be sure to let me know. Then I will start calling restaurants in other hotels until I find the one that has the same dish on the menu. Then I'll take you by taxi for this dish. Never again tell the waiter that we have run out of something. "

(I am now furious when someone at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather tells a client that we cannot put together an ad or a commercial by the promised deadline. Reputable companies always deliver on promises, even if it is costly time and effort.)

Soon after joining Monsieur Pitard's brigade, I was faced with an ethical challenge that neither my school teachers nor my father had prepared me for. One day, the chef garde-manger (chef in charge of stockpiling) asked me to take the "sweet meat" to the chef in charge of making the sauces. This meat had an eerie putrid smell, and I thought that the health of any client who was served it was in danger. The sauce will mask this smell and the customer will eat the prepared meal. I protested, but the chef ordered me to do his bidding because he knew he would be in trouble if Monsieur Pitar found out that he had run out of fresh "sweet meat." What was I supposed to do? My upbringing told me that it was dishonest to inform. And yet I did just that. I took the rotten meat to Monsieur Pitard and invited him to smell it. Without saying a word to me, he went to the chef in charge of the inventory and fired him. The poor son of a bitch had to leave at once.

George Orwell, in his novel Down and Out in Paris and London, told the world how dirty kitchens in France are. He just never worked for Majestic! Monsieur Pitar was very picky and made us keep the kitchen perfectly 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 brush the floor and sprinkle it with fresh sawdust. Once a week, a dedicated cockroach killer worked every corner of the kitchen. We were given clean uniforms every morning.

(I now also strictly require my subordinates to keep their offices in order. The clutter in the office creates an atmosphere of neglect, and, moreover, it often ends in the disappearance of important documents.)

We cooks were paid very little. At the same time, Monsieur Pitar was making so much from the commissions paid by his suppliers that he could afford to live in a luxury home. Without trying to hide his wealth from us, he would come to work by taxi, carry a gold-topped cane and dress like the owner of an international bank outside of office hours. The fact that Monsieur Pitar was so flaunting his privileged position made us want to make an equally dizzying career.

Auguste Escoffier, the great French chef who won unfading fame, was of the same opinion. On the eve of World War I, he was chef at a restaurant at the Carlton Hotel in London; he liked to go to Derby to the races in a carriage drawn by four horses, dressed in a gray frock coat and top hat. For my fellow chefs at the Majestic Hotel, Escoffier's cookbook, Guide Culinaire, was the undisputed authority and the “court of last resort” in all our recipe disputes. Just before his death, Auguste Escoffier took time to come and dine at 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 Pitar was located near the counter at which the chefs handed 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, while saying, "Not much!" He wanted the Majestic Hotel to make a profit.

(I now check all the materials for every ad campaign before they reach the client, and send many of them back for revision. I share Monsieur Pitard's passion for making money.)

Perhaps the most important quality of Monsieur Pitard as a leader that made the strongest impression on me was his hard work. 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 Pitar worked seventy seven hours a week and took a day off only once every two weeks.

(I am currently following this schedule myself. I believe my subordinates will be less resistant to overtime work if I work harder than they do. One employee who recently left my agency wrote in his farewell letter: “You are applying an example of working from home. It's kind of embarrassing to sit around on a Saturday night for four hours in the garden next door to your house, watching you sit at your desk by the window and work. You don't even have to say anything. "

At the Majestic I learned something else. If you can become irreplaceable for even one client, you will never be fired. Our most important client, an American lady in a seven-room suite, was on a strict diet of one baked apple per meal. She once threatened to move to the Ritz if the pulp of her apples was not always uniform. I came 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 so many calories she never knew existed. Rumors reached the kitchen that, according to this client, an open-ended contract should be concluded with the chef who prepares these apples.

My closest friend was a venerable argentier (the cook in charge of keeping the silverware) and he was strikingly similar to Charles Burlingham. His most cherished memory is how the King of England Edward VII (Eduard Laskovy) majestically walked along the sidewalk to his crew after dinner at the Maxim's restaurant, which was given in honor of the imprisonment entente cordiale ... My friend was communist, but nobody cared about it. Much more amazed than anyone else was my nationality: a Scotsman in a French restaurant kitchen is as rare as a Scot on Madison Avenue. My colleagues at the restaurant, after listening to my stories about the highlands of Scotland, gave me the nickname Sauvage (savage).

I solidified my savage fame even further by working on Madison Avenue. Running an ad agency is not fun. After fourteen years of running an agency, I have come to the conclusion that a senior executive has one main duty - 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 must definitely assemble a group of creative people. Although there is a chance that such a group will consist mainly of hot-tempered eccentric originals with brilliant abilities.

Like most doctors, you must be prepared to carry out your duties day and night, seven days a week. The constant pressure that all employees of the advertising agency are experiencing, apparently, takes away a lot of their physical and mental strength. Management puts pressure on the account manager and supervisor; they, in turn, rush the creative department. In addition, both them and you are primarily pressured by the clients themselves.

A particular problem in ad agency personnel management is that all employees watch each other very closely to see who is summoned to the manager's office, who has been given an assistant, who has been raised. And it's not about talking to the boss, or the assistant, or raising the salary - they perceive all this as signs of "closeness to their father."

The head of an advertising agency is definitely a person in whom subordinates want to see paternal qualities. In order to be a good father, it doesn't matter for his children or for the employees of the agency, the 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 collective, or with a feeling of closeness with them. However, as the size of our team grows, it becomes more and more difficult. How can I be a father to people who don't even know me by sight? My agency currently employs 497 men and women. I calculated that each employee of the agency has, on average, a hundred acquaintances - in total, this is 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 a total of 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 on everything that interests my subordinates. Then I talk about what style of behavior I admire, doing it like this.

1. I admire people who work hard, who are ready for any challenge. I hate negligent employees shirking work. Working with full dedication is much more interesting than working without fully utilizing your abilities. There is a very tangible rationale for the rationale behind hard work: the harder you work, the fewer employees an 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 smart people among its employees. However, intelligence alone is worthless without intellectual honesty.

3. I have one immutable rule: do not hire family members and spouses of existing employees, as this leads to intrigue and upsets the balance in the team. If two employees of the agency get married, one of them is obliged to leave - preferably a woman who should 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 you have to be dead for a very long time?

5. I hate toadies currying favor with their bosses. Typically, these people are rude to their subordinates.

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

7. I appreciate people who hire helpers who can surpass themselves. I feel sorry for people who are so insecure that they prefer to keep mediocre workers under their control.

8. I highly value people who develop their subordinates as this is the only way to promote agency employees to higher positions. I hate having to appoint outside specialists to important positions, and I look forward to the day when this will not arise at all.

9. I admire people with good manners who are always kind to their colleagues. I hate grumpy people. I have an aversion to people who fight paper wars. The best way to maintain harmony with others is to be sincere. Remember Blake's words:

A friend offended, angered -

I poured out my anger in words.

The enemy hurt me -

I hid my anger in the depths.

10. I admire those who know how to properly organize their working day and do their job on time. The Duke of Wellington never went home without finishing going through all the documents that were on his desk.

After informing my subordinates what I expect from them, I begin to tell what I demand 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'm trying to maintain 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 sense, the agency staff remind me of chicks waiting to be fed by daddy.)

4. I am trying to win the high trust of our customers.

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

6. I plan the agency's work for many years to come.

7. I strive to hire people of the highest quality in all respects, and I try to form a team that is passionate about 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 energy, so it is important to be able to quickly recover from a defeat. For this, it is very important to have confidence in your like-minded people and be patient with their shortcomings, as well as the ability to settle differences between the "children". Running an agency also requires the ability to accurately predict opportunities.

The moral climate in the team is very important. People who work for an agency can lose their fighting spirit if their leader displays 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 dislike it when the managers responsible for fulfilling their ad creation order delegate authority to downline employees, just as patients dislike doctors outsourcing their treatment to medical students.

In my opinion, in some large agencies, the delegation of authority has gone too far. Senior managers of such agencies have become overly involved in administrative work, completely shifting responsibility for maintaining contact with clients to subordinates. Delegation is essential for building large agencies, but it also leads to mediocre results. I do not strive to run a large bureaucratic apparatus, which is why our agency has only nineteen clients. Striving to provide the highest level of customer service limits profit opportunities, 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 his staff begin to be performed by someone from the agency's staff, who, in addition to his main job, also takes on the responsibilities of the head. In such a situation, employees feel like children whom the mother gave to a caring nanny for raising. However, the "children" calm down as soon as they begin to realize that their "nanny" is more patient, more open to communication and more experienced than myself.

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

Creative people are especially attentive; more than anyone else, they value accurate observation (and the ability to tell the truth to themselves).

In many cases they tell only part of the truth, but they do it very talentedly; as a rule, they talk about things that previously went unnoticed. By re-placing emphasis 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 things that others do not notice.

Compared to others, they have richer mental abilities from birth, can think on several ideas at the same time, and also carry out a comparative analysis of more ideas, therefore, they are able to give 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 write formalized psychometric tests based on clinical observation, 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. Then I call the author and congratulate him or her on a job well done. Survey results showed that creative people prefer to work for Ogilvy, Benson & Mather over other agencies, so my phone call is the reason for applying for a job.

After that, I ask the candidate to send me six of the best advertisements or commercials he has ever written text for. This allows me to find out if the candidate knows how to recognize good ads or if he is just a tool in the hands of a talented leader. Sometimes I go to my "victim" home; Ten minutes after I have stepped into the person's home, I can determine what his mental capacity is, 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. What I'm most interested in is the claims of advertisers living in the Midwest. I'd rather hire an aspiring young man from Des Moines than a high-paid slacker working for a Madison Avenue fashion agency. Observing these "giants" of the advertising business, coldly correct and extremely boring, I always remember Roy Campbell's poem "On 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 bloody horse?

I am with special attention I am considering applications from Western European countries. Some of our best creatives are Europeans. They are well educated, work hard, are less conservative, and are more objective about the American consumer.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are overwhelmed with employees who cannot write advertising copy or presentation scripts. They are as helpless as a deaf-mute on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

It is very sad that most people in advertising (we are talking about advertisers and advertisers) are so fanatical about the traditional approach to advertising. The business world needs outstanding advertising, but at the same time it is very cold towards people who are able to create such advertising. This is why most advertisements are so uninteresting. Albert Lasker made $ 50 million in advertising, partly because he was able to endure the awful manners of his celebrity copywriters: John E. Kennedy, Claude Hopkins and Frank Hammert.

Currently, some of the largest ad agencies are run by second generation administrators who have temporarily resurfaced with their ability to connect with senior executives. However, a sneak is not capable of creating an effective ad campaign. The bitter truth is that, despite the availability of sophisticated ad creation techniques and tools, a modern ad agency is not getting the results that could have been achieved in the days of Lasker and Hopkins. Our business requires massive influx talents... And really talented people, in my opinion deep conviction, can only be found among dissidents, rebels and rebels.

I was recently invited to take part in a seminar on the problems of creative organizations hosted by the University of Chicago. The other participants in the seminar were mostly highly competent psychology professors studying what they called creativity... Feeling like a pregnant woman at a convention of obstetricians and gynecologists, I told them everything I had learned about the creative process first hand as a 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 the tyranny of common sense. Their imaginations are blocked.

I hardly know how to think logically, but I have developed a method of maintaining a mental connection with my subconscious in case this "disorderly store of ideas" suddenly offers me something interesting. I often listen to music. I'm on a short leg with John Barleyseed. I often take hot baths. I work in the garden. I communicate with the Amish. Watching birds. I take long walks outside the city. And I often take a vacation so that my brain is completely calm for a while - no golf, no cocktails, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration. Only a bike!

Thus, being exclusively engaged in 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 an uncontrollable curiosity.

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

After the concert, held at the Carnegie Hall, Walter Damrosh asked Sergei Rachmaninoff what lofty thoughts rushed through his head when he wandered around the auditorium performing his concert. “I counted the audience,” Rachmaninov replied.

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

In today's business world, it doesn't make sense to be a creative, original-minded person if you can't sell what you've created. You cannot count on the company's management to recognize good ideaunless it is submitted to him by a good seller. In fourteen years of working on Madison Avenue, I've only had one interesting ideawhich I could not sell. (I wanted International Paper to donate 26 million acres of forest land for public use - for self-driving, fishing, hunting, hiking, bird-watching. My idea was that such a noble gesture would be perceived as an act extraordinary generosity, of historical significance, that would put this company on a par with the creation of the Carnegie Library and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was a great idea, but I could not sell it.)

And the last conclusion I came to was that no creative organization, be it a research laboratory, magazine, Parisian restaurant kitchen, or advertising agency, can create anything worthwhile unless it is led by an outstanding personality. The Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University 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 for Monsieur Pitard.

Not everyone will enjoy working in a master's studio. The submissive position that work under the guidance of 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 heaven”:

Such employees leave my "studio", but soon realize that they "have lost their paradise." A few weeks after leaving, one of these employees - a poor fellow - wrote: “When I left the agency, I was prepared for the fact that I would be a little sad. However, what I actually experienced was not sadness, but intense mental pain. In all my life, I have not experienced a more painful sense of loss. I think this is exactly the price that one has to pay for the lost opportunity to belong to the circle of the elite, because in this world such an opportunity is rare. "

When a good employee leaves the company, his close friends wonder why this happened, and in most cases, they suggest that he was mistreated by management. I recently found a way to prevent this misunderstanding. When a young head of creative at our agency applied for his resignation to take up the post of vice president at another agency, we exchanged letters in the style of correspondence between the retiring cabinet minister and the prime minister. These letters were published in the magazine of our agency. A respected apostate wrote to me this:

I answered him as follows:

Only a very few great creative people have a gentle disposition. In most cases, these are grumpy egoists - people who are not accepted by modern society. Take Winston Churchill, for example. He drank like a shoemaker. He was irritable and stubborn. Objections put him in a gloomy mood. He was rude to fools. He was extremely extravagant. He began to cry 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 about Churchill:

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

How to win customers

Fifteen years ago, I was a humble tobacco farmer in Pennsylvania. I now head one of the best advertising agencies in the United States of America with $ 55 million in annual revenue, $ 5 million in payroll and offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Toronto.

How could this happen? As my Amish friends say, "I'm surprised myself."

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

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

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

Any agency can grow big enough if it deserves it. Our agency is based on small funds, but we intend to develop it into an outstanding agency even 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 ads. When one executive of a giant advertising agency tried to get an order to create an advertisement for Camel cigarettes, he suggested that the client should allocate thirty copywriters to fulfill the order. However, the cunning head of the tobacco company R. J. Reynolds replied: "Maybe better than one, but good?" After that, he placed an order with young copywriter Bill Esti and remained a client of his agency for twenty-eight years.

In 1937, Walter Chrysler commissioned Sterling Getchell, who was thirty-two years old at the time, to advertise the Plymouth automobile. In 1940, Ed Little commissioned a little-known agency, Ted Bates, to create an advertisement for Colgate toothpaste. And General Foods began partnering with Young & Rubicam when the agency was only one year old. Following his retirement, John Orr Young, one of the founders of Young & Rubicam, gave the following advice to manufacturing companies in his memoir on how to choose an ad agency:

By the time I entered the scene, the big advertisers had become more cautious. The Lord took the side of the "big troops". Stanley Risor, director of J. Walter Thompson since 1926, warned me: “The consolidation of industrial companies into large corporations affects the advertising world as well. Nowadays, the execution of large orders entails the provision of such a wide range of services that only very large agencies can handle them. Why don't you give up your pipe dream and start working with J. Walter Thompson? "

To new ad agencies starting out looking for their first clients, I will bequeath a welcome that yielded excellent results at the beginning of my career. I asked potential clients to reflect on what constitutes the life cycle of a typical ad agency, its inevitable ups and downs, from hectic activity to complete decline.

At this point, I always imagined my potential client trying to hide the fact that I touched him to the quick. Have I just described the dying ad agency they use he?

Now, fourteen years later, I myself am outraged at the immorality of such tricks. My learned uncle Sir Humphrey Rowleston said of doctors: “First they do a businessthen do yourself name and only then begin to take care of their honor". Now I'm getting closer to the point where it's time to seriously think about preserving honor, so I'm quieter than water below the grass. However, it was very different when my bank account was empty. The Pirate King (Gilbert's character) said:

Going in search of a new victim

I behave like a king.

Yes I can sink more ships

Than this is allowed for a well-bred monarch.

However, another king on the best throne,

To call your crown really yours

Got to do a lot more dirty work

Than the work I have to do.

Following the advice given by Henry Ford to his dealers - “seek new customers by visiting them in person” - I began to bypass advertisers who did not use the services of advertising agencies at all, realizing that I did not have enough recommendations to squeeze into a place already occupied by more reputable agency. My first target was Wedgewood China, which invests about $ 40,000 a year in advertising. Mr. Wedgwood and his advertising manager gave me a very gracious welcome.

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

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

However, I had only $ 6,000 at my disposal, and this capital is hardly enough to stay afloat until the first commissions start coming in. Luckily for me, my older brother Francis was then CEO of Mather & Crowther Ltd., a well-known and respected London-based advertising agency. He came to my rescue by convincing his partners to raise my capital and let me use their name. My old friend Bobby Bevan of S. H. Benson Ltd., another English agency, followed suit, and Sir Francis Meinell persuaded Sir Stafford Cripps to authorize transatlantic investments.

Bobby and Francis insisted that I find an American to head the agency. They didn’t believe that their compatriot could convince American manufacturers to use his agency. In their opinion, it would be ridiculous to expect that an Englishman, especially a Scot, will be able to succeed in the advertising business in America: the British have no inclination to engage in advertising. In fact, they loathe even the very idea of \u200b\u200badvertising. In 1948, Punch magazine wrote: "Let us be considered a nation of shopkeepers as much as we want, and yet we don't need to become a nation of advertisers." Of the five and a half thousand knights, baronets and peers living today, only one is engaged in advertising.

The preconceptions about the advertising business and those who do it are not so strong in the United States of America. Neil McElroy, former brand manager for Procter & Gamble, became Secretary of Defense in the Eisenhower administration. Chester Bowles has risen from being a Madison Avenue advertising agent to Governor of Connecticut, Ambassador to India, and Undersecretary of State. But even in the United States of America, it is rare to appoint advertisers to important positions in government. This is very unfortunate, as many of them are far more versatile than most preferred lawyers, professors, bankers and journalists. People who have been in the advertising business for a long time have more experience and knowledge to solve problems and find opportunities; to set short-term and long-term goals, to assess the results obtained, to lead a large team, to clearly present information for the consideration of committees, to ensure the activities of your organization without going over budget. Observing older and more successful colleagues in the advertising business from other agencies, I have come to the conclusion that many of them are more objective, better organized, more energetic and more industrious than 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 searching 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 "moneybags" and he had connections that were of great interest to me.

Over the course of the year, Andy Hewitt acquired 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 lend us a $ 100,000 loan, the only security for which was the guarantee of his uncle Leffingwell, who was then chairman of the company's board of directors.

Alas, our collaboration with Andy was not cloudless. We tried to hide our disagreements from the agency staff, but children always see that their parents are at odds. After four years of controversy, which were increasingly compounded by our dizzying success, the agency began to split into two groups. After a hard struggle that caused suffering to everyone involved, Andy resigned and I became the head of the agency. I am comforted by the fact that Andy 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 get 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 useful for other venture entrepreneurs.

First, I hosted a dinner, to which ten industry reporters were invited. I told them about my crazy dream to build a large ad 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 employee of our agency can go to the bathroom without the news of it in the trade press.

Second, I followed Edward Bernays's advice to give no more than two public appearances a year. Each of my speeches was designed to spark the general interest of the Madison Avenue residents. My first performance was a lecture at the Art Directors Club, during which I told everything I knew about graphic and type design of advertising. Before going home, I handed out to everyone who attended my lecture a list of thirty-nine rules for designing an ad layout. These "ancient" rules are still being passed from hand to hand on Madison Avenue.

In my next public appearance, I exposed the futility and ineffectiveness of college courses in advertising and offered $ 10,000 as a contribution to the creation of an advertising college that would receive advertising licenses for graduates. This ingenious proposal made headlines in many newspapers. Soon, the industry press began to contact me for comment on most of the issues that arose. I have always expressed my opinion frankly, and they began to quote me often.

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

My generous reader is probably shocked by these self-promotion admissions. 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 succeed. I had neither time nor money to wait that long. I was poor, nobody knew me, so I had to hurry.

Meanwhile, I worked from morning until night, six days a week, creating advertising campaigns for clients who hired our "newborn" agency. Several of these campaigns have made history in advertising.

At first, we took on all the orders we could get - it didn't matter if it was an order for an advertisement for a toy turtle, a patented hairbrush, or an English motorcycle. However, I never lost sight of the top five companies on my first list of prospective clients, and poured our meager profits into creating the kind of ad agency that I thought would eventually get their attention.

I have always explained to potential clients how they could make a dramatic improvement in their operations if Ogilvy, Benson & Mather took on the orders that the old agencies were still doing. 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 calm air. If the sales volume of the company has not increased sixfold in the previous twenty-one years, it means that its growth rate was much lower than average.

In 1945, some pretty run-of-the-mill agencies managed to make a big fortune with a backlog of advertising orders from similarly mediocre clients. All they had to do was fasten their seat belts and climb to unattainable heights in the wake of a booming economy. An ad agency doesn't have to work very hard to get ad orders at a time when sales are skyrocketing on their own. But when the economic downturn hits, ad agencies that adhere to outdated approaches to creating ads find themselves in a quandary, and new energetic organizations begin to grow rapidly.

It is most difficult for a budding 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 profit from conducting preliminary information gathering 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 when 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 conducted by us on our own initiative showed that this ad did not produce the expected results.

Madame Rubinstein showed no interest in the results of our research, but when I showed her some advertising samples, 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 looked better before,” said Madame Rubinstein.

To my great surprise, Horace Titus advised my mother to quit working with his agency and hand the order over 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 us what kind of advertising we would create if they hired us. Ten days later, I presented them with fourteen advertising campaign options - and received an order. After such a lot of luck, the best weapon to use when hunting for new customers is fantasy and high performance.

We spent $ 30,000 to present specially designed promotional materials to our potential client, the drug manufacturer Bromo Seltzer. Our advertisement was based on a convincingly argued thesis that headaches in most cases are psychosomatic in nature. However, Lemoyne Billings, who was then the brand manager of the manufacturing company Bromo Seltzer, opted for the ads presented by Lennen & Newell.

Now we have neither the time nor the desire to develop such advertising campaigns at our own peril and risk before receiving orders. Instead, we show potential clients what we have done for other manufacturers, explain our policies, and introduce them to our agency 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 at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines decided to hire another agency, and its management invited Ogilvy, Benson & Mather and four other ad agencies to submit proposals for an ad campaign. It was assumed that representatives of the company would evaluate our proposals first. I opened the meeting with the following words: “We have not prepared anything. Instead, we invite you to talk about your concerns. Then you can visit other agencies on your list. All of them have prepared projects for an 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 start research, which always precedes the development of an advertising campaign in our agency. "

The Dutch “swallowed” this offer, and after five days, after getting acquainted with the draft advertising campaigns developed by other agencies, they returned to hire us, much to my delight.

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

John Milton, Paradise Lost. Translated by Arkady Steinberg. Approx. transl.

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

In the original, the telegram was worded as follows: "A Full Peel of Kent Treble Bob Major" - this is the name of the order of ringing of eight church bells. Approx. transl.

End of free trial snippet.

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

This book is well complemented by

David Ogilvy

Secrets of greatness

Based on materials from Fortune Magazine

Steve Jobs. Leadership lessons

Jay Elliot, William Simon

The history of this book

Fourteen years before these "revelations" were written, I left for New York and opened an advertising agency. In the opinion of the Americans, this was an insane act. What could a Scotsman know about the advertising business?

But very little time passed, and a dizzying success came to my agency.

I wrote this book on summer vacation in 1962 and donated the copyright to my son for his twenty-first birthday. I thought about 4 thousand copies would be sold. Much to my 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.

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

If I were to write this book now, it would be more restrained, less boastful, and less preachy. The book contains a mass rules: do this, do this, do not. Advertisers, especially young people, do not accept any rules. Today I would not say, "Never print ad copy in negative (white letters on black)." I would say, "Research shows that if you print your ad copy in negative, no one will read it." This is a mild formulation, more acceptable in our liberal society.

My colleagues at Ogilvy & Mather have followed my advertising guidelines most of the time and have managed to sell many products 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 advice in this book that has helped increase their sales growth. In addition, I meet many influential people in the marketing world who claim that they owe their success to The Revelations of an Advertising Agent, which they read early in their careers.

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

After reading this book, someone might reproach me for being overconfident. I want to assure you that my self-confidence does not extend beyond the area in which I work. In other words, I am a complete layman in everything except advertising. I cannot read balance sheets, work on a computer, ski, sail, 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 “Is David Ogilvy a Genius?” I asked my lawyer to sue the publisher for having a question mark in the title. Soon after, I became an extinct volcano and found an outlet in running the agency. However, I quickly got tired of the bustle on Madison Avenue, and I moved to France, where I do gardening - and bombard my partners with my annoying letters.

In fact, my principles, largely based on research, are as effective today as they were in 1962. However, there are three statements in Revelations of an Advertising Agent that require revision.

On p. 170 I wrote that if in your advertisements you are trying to maximize the return on the coupons you contain, place the coupon at the top of the ad with a tear-off line in the middle. " Now I would not recommend doing this. Place the coupon in lower right corner of the page.

On the from. 173 I wrote that there is no connection between whether people like an ad idea and how it sells a product. Recent research by the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development shows: commercialsthat consumers love sell more products than ads that don't generate positive emotions in people.

On p. 177 I advised the reader to limit the word count in TV ads to 90. It has now become known that advertisements that use an average of about 200 words sell more. Street vendors know this, so they talk very quickly.

Chapter 8 on television advertising is not up to date. In my defense, I can cite the following: in 1962, very little was known about which methods of television advertising worked and which did not. More recent research on this topic can be found in my book, Ogilvy on Advertising, published by Crown in 1983.

In The Revelations of an Advertising Agent, nothing is said about corporate culture, especially the corporate culture of advertising agencies. In 1962, I had not even heard of such a concept (like 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 all worked obsessively on creating a developed culture of their organizations... Companies that have succeeded in developing their own unique identity through the formation of corporate values, creating their own heroes, introducing rituals and rituals and recognizing the cultural needs of their employees gain an advantage 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: "A common feature of all successful companies is the purposeful, thoughtful creation of a 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 this is more than anything that sets our agency apart from others. This is how I imagine the main aspects of the culture of our agency.

The history of this book

But very little time passed, and a dizzying success came to my agency.

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

If I were to write this book now, it would be more restrained, less boastful, and less preachy. The book contains a mass rules: do that, do this, don't do that. Advertisers, especially young people, do not accept any rules. Today I would not say, "Never print ad copy in negative (white letters on black)." I would say, "Research shows that if you print your ad copy in negative, no one will read it." This is a mild formulation, more acceptable in our liberal society.

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

In fact, my principles, largely based on research, are as effective today as they were in 1962. However, there are three statements in Revelations of an Advertising Agent that require revision.

On p. 170 I wrote that if in your ads you are trying to maximize the return on the coupons contained, place the coupon at the top of the ad with a tear-off line in the middle. Now I would not recommend doing this. Place the coupon in lower right corner of the page.

On the from. 173 I wrote that there is no connection between whether people like an ad idea and how it sells a product. Recent research from the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development shows that advertisements that consumers love sell more products than advertisements that don't make people feel good.

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

In The Revelations of an Advertising Agent, nothing is said about corporate culture, especially the corporate culture of advertising agencies. In 1962, I had not even heard of such a concept (like 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 all worked obsessively on creating a developed culture of their organizations. Companies that have succeeded in developing their own unique identity through the formation of corporate values, creating their own heroes, introducing rituals and rituals and recognizing the cultural needs of their employees gain an advantage 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: "A common feature of all successful companies is the purposeful, thoughtful creation of a corporate culture."

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

We treat each employee of the agency as a person. We help our employees when they have problems - whether it is difficulties in fulfilling 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 personnel. In this sense, our agency resembles a clinic at a higher medical educational institution.

Our management system is extremely democratic. We do not recognize the bureaucracy of a hierarchical management system or rigid informal lines of command.

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

We like people with good manners. Our New York branch awards the Professionalism and Courtesy Award annually.

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

We admire hardworking, motivated and pedantic employees who are very responsible in the performance of their duties.

We can't stand schemers, sycophants, boasters and pompous donkeys. We are disgusted with 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 much as their professionalism.

The recommendations that we give to our clients do not differ from the recommendations that 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 pioneered the rigorous scientific approach to advertising, proving that clear formulas and hard facts are as effective as witty phrases and sexy images.

David Ogilvy - Advertising Agent Revelations (1963)

David Ogilvy - founder of advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather with an annual turnover of over $ 10 billion, a classic of advertising theory, recognized as one of the best copywriters in the world; a person 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 pioneered the rigorous scientific approach to advertising, proving that clear formulas and hard facts are as effective as witty phrases and sexy images.

"There are no secondary words in the ad copy," Ogilvy said. Emotional passages should prefer concrete numbers, clichés should be replaced with facts, and fruitless exhortations should be enticing prospects. " It was these theses that later became the pillars of Ogilvy's theory of advertising.

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

"Every advertising move should complement that complex symbol called the brand image," Ogilvy wrote, recalling the advertising campaign for Hathaway. He was not the first to have such an 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 developed by Ogilvy, has turned in the eyes of potential tourists from a troubled state to a country with a rich history, experiencing a kind of renaissance.

Ogilvy attributed his success to three main factors.

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

The second success factor is phenomenal performance. He loved the Scottish saying "Hard work hasn't killed anyone yet."

The third factor is the correct selection of people. He presented a nesting doll with a note to the new heads of divisions of his organization: "If each of us recruits people who are less than us, then our company will become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than us, our company will be a company of giants."

The New York Times wrote about the image he created for himself in 1958: "Mr. Ogilvy certainly stands out among the rest of the advertising specialists - at least in his dress 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 the advertising specialist.

Ogilvy was a genius, but at the same time he remained an ordinary person: sometimes vain, arrogant, arrogant. 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 air and therefore made long sea cruises across the ocean.

One desire of the advertising master did not come true. 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 poor academic performance.

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

List of references

For the preparation of this work were used materials from the site psycho.ru

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