David Ogilvy's principles for advertising, talent, and excellence

Executive overview

Most advertising fails because it is made by committees of mediocre people who prioritize novelty over craft and entertainment over selling. Ogilvy built one of the world's great agencies by doing the opposite: obsessing over facts, hiring and tolerating difficult talent, and holding every output to a standard he called first-class.

His core framework is simple: know more than anyone else, promise a concrete benefit, repeat what works, and never tolerate incompetence.

The consumer is not a moron — she is your wife. Treat her intelligence accordingly, give her facts, and repeat your best work until it stops selling.

Ogilvy's corporate culture maxims

• "We sell or else" — awards and entertainment are irrelevant; sales results are the only measure
• You cannot bore people into buying; you can only interest them
• The consumer is not a moron — never insult her intelligence with vague slogans
• Unless a campaign contains a big idea, it passes like a ship in the night; Ogilvy had fewer than 20 in his career
• Only first-class business, done in a first-class way — the goal was always best, not biggest
• Search all the parks in your cities; you'll find no statues of committees

The head chef lesson: standards and people

• Ogilvy modelled his management style on Petar, the head chef at Hotel Majestic in Paris
• The chef was the best cook in the brigade — authority came from mastery, not title
• He praised rarely; when he did, it meant everything
• He did not tolerate incompetence — it demoralizes professionals to work alongside amateurs
• A-players only want to work with other A-players; tolerating B-players accelerates decline
• In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it costs in agony and overtime

What Ogilvy admired in people (his annual address to staff)

1. People who work hard and bite the bullet — being overworked is more fun than underworked
2. First-class brains combined with intellectual honesty
3. No nepots or spouses — they breed politics
4. People who work with gusto — if you don't enjoy it, find another job
5. No toadies who suck up to bosses; they are usually the same people who bully subordinates
6. Self-confident professionals who respect their colleagues' expertise
7. People who hire subordinates good enough to succeed them
8. People who build up their subordinates — the only path to promoting from within
9. Gentle manners; candour over paper warfare
10. Well-organized people who deliver on time

What Ogilvy expected of himself

• Be fair and firm; make unpopular decisions without cowardice
• Sustain the agency's momentum, ferment, and forward thrust
• Land new accounts; win client confidence at the highest level
• Recruit the highest-quality people at all levels
• Plan policies far into the future
• Pursue excellence over bigness: "I have no ambition to preside over a vast bureaucracy"

Tolerate genius

• Remarkable advertising requires remarkable talent — which is almost always disagreeable
• Tolerate genius: the business community wants outstanding work but rejects the people who can produce it
• Albert Lasker made $50 million partly because he could stomach the atrocious manners of his best copywriters
• Talent is most likely found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels
• Do not strangle the goose that lays the golden egg
• A great company is the length and shadow of a great individual — no team writes an advertisement

How to win new business

• Target advertisers who have no agency yet — avoid entrenched relationships
• Send useful, valuable information to prospects; not pitches
• Ogilvy sent frequent progress reports to 600 people across industries — this landed major accounts
• Midnight oil is the best weapon in hunting new business, next to luck
• For Shell: filled out their questionnaire overnight, flew to London to hand-deliver it, chased the president for 10 days, then engineered a lunch at the House of Commons to close the deal
• The number of truly excellent agencies is tiny — excellence reduces competition

How to build a great campaign

• The most important decision: what benefit you are going to promise
• Give facts — very few ads contain enough factual information to sell
• The more you tell, the more you sell; study the Sears catalog
• Most campaigns are too complicated — trying to say too many things achieves nothing
• Good campaigns can run for decades; Ogilvy's Hathaway eyepatch ran 21 years, Dove ran 31 years

Writing headlines

• The headline is the most important element — five times as many people read it as the body copy
• Write the headline and you have spent 80 cents of your dollar
• A change of headline can make a 10-to-1 difference in sales
• Write at least 16 headlines per advertisement before choosing
• Headlines of 10 or more words consistently outsell short ones
• Always promise a benefit in the headline
• Ogilvy's best headline (18 words, found on page 50 of a Rolls-Royce engineering document): "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"

Advertising to a moving parade

• You are not advertising to a standing army — you are advertising to a moving parade
• Three million consumers get married every year; the ad that sold a refrigerator last year will sell one next year
• It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style against pressure to come up with something new
• Repeat a great advertisement until it stops pulling; most good ads are discarded long before they lose potency

How to rise fast

• Become the best-informed person in your agency on your assigned account
• Read trade journals, internal research, and competitor advertising; visit factories and talk to customers
• Do the homework most young people are too lazy to do — they remain permanently superficial
• One Ogilvy staff member who produced a 177-page television analysis (versus competitors' 5–6 pages) was on the board of directors a year later
• Teamwork as a concept is "bunk — a conspiracy of the mediocre majority"
• No creative organization produces great work unless led by a formidable individual