Ogilvy on Advertising

The majority of campaigns fail to give consumers enough information.

Shortly before he died, Bill was asked what changes he expected in advertising in the eighties. He replied, ‘Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion years. Only the superficial things have changed. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man – wha

His attitude to the creative process can be summed up in three things he said: 1 ‘There is an inherent drama in every product. Our No. 1 job is to dig for it and capitalize on it.’ 2 ‘When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.’ 3 ‘Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and l

But Resor made one mistake. He stayed too long. By the time he was 80, his ideas for advertising campaigns had become anachronistic. And partners who would have made good successors retired before he did.

The early success of Young & Rubicam was due more than anything else to the fact that General Foods was their biggest client. One day Rubicam told the head of General Foods that his account had grown too big for any one agency; he should hire a second and later a third. This is how Benton & Bowles got their first major account, and it is wh

The present President of Young & Rubicam has said that ‘Rubicam played a marvelous dirty trick on the rest of us – he didn’t leave behind a list of rules.’ He did, however, leave behind an aphorism which appeals to the present generation at Young & Rubicam: resist the usual. Or, as his copy chief Roy Whittier put it, ‘In advertising, the be

When your profit margin allows, it pays to offer a free premium. Always test different premiums. One of the most effective is cash prizes in sweepstakes. Sweepstakes, premiums, free offers, and low prices will build up your initial response, but the customer who is attracted by these devices is not always the customer who turns into a long-term buy

Their Achilles’ heel is their consistency. They are always predictable. It helps to win battles when you can anticipate the enemy’s strategy. The best of all ways to beat P&G is, of course, to market a better product.

What is marketing? I once heard Marvin Bower define marketing as objectivity. I cannot beat that.