What would David Ogilvy (one of the original Mad Men) think of online marketing?
The American television series Mad Men has received rave reviews and awards for its depiction of a fictional New York advertising agency in mid 1960s. Part of it’s appeal is the attention to detail and thorough research the creators have given to everything, from the set, props, wardrobe and script. Indeed, several legendary advertising figures and campaigns are often mentioned in the boardroom conversations, David Ogilvy among them.
For viewers who are unfamiliar with advertising history and it’s key figures, David Ogilvy was an Englishman (born 1911) to a Scottish father and Irish mother. He attended Fettes College in Edinburgh then Oxford, but left before his degree to work as a chef in Paris, then returned to Scotland to sell AGA cookers, which he did very successfully.
His older and more successful brother, Francis, gave him a job in advertising agency in London, Mather & Crowther. David then moved to New York to seek new opportunities.
Between 1938 and 1948 he worked as a researcher for George Gallup, a British intelligence officer during the war and an Amish farmer in the post war years. During this time he read extensively on advertising and business management.
Returning to New York in 1948, he was instrumental in starting a new advertising agency Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson, & Mather. The agency would later be known as Ogilvy & Mather. His talent for writing and research (honed at George Gallup) coupled with hard work and a growing network of contacts, propelled Ogilvy’s fledgling agency to steadily win accounts for household brands and blue chip companies. Being British gave him a different perspective on American culture, which he used to his advantage.
Ogivily’s innovative theories on advertising were an antidote to what was prevalent at the time. Much advertising was too artistic, poetic and in his opinion, meaningless. Ogilvy believed advertising should sell the product and be memorable. Benefit and fact based headlines and copy was, in his view, the best way to achieve this, as this headline for Rolls Royce shows:
At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock
He also believed that any illustrations or photography in printed advertising should have story appeal and the ‘burr of singularity’, which is discussed later in this blog post.
While he personally created a handful of classic and enduring advertising campaigns for the likes of Rolls Royce, Hathway shirts, Dove, Guinness, Puerto Rico and British tourism, he eventually left the copy writing and creative input to his staff. Ogilvy ultimately became a figure head for the agency, regularly giving speeches, writing books, travelling around the world (he hated flying) and appearing on TV. In his later years, he believed he stopped working as a copywriter too early.
David Ogilvy’s Legacy
While Ogilvy wrote three books during his life time (he died in 1999) the most comprehensive about the man himself and his legacy is Ken Roman’s biography ‘The King of Madison Avenue’. Roman is one of the few people who could do justice to writing the first ever biography about David Ogilvy, since he started working at Ogilvy & Mather in 1963. Roman eventually became CEO and Chairman.
Ken Roman visited Edinburgh in 2009 to promote the book at a reading organised by The Drum magazine (see video clip below). This was followed by a visit to Ogilvy’s former school, Fettes College. Roman discussed the key moments of Ogilvy’s life, his qualities, failings and anecdotes from their decades of working together.
Having read Ogilvy’s two key books on advertising(‘Confessions’ and ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’) I was interested to find out more about the man himself and what lead him to create the legendary advertising and of course, the global agency. While his life was not without a dull moment (he married three times) it’s Roman’s assessment of Ogilvy’s legacy that helps us understand his relevance in advertising and business today. It also supports my views on what he would of thought of the new digital age we live in today.
It’s easy to focus solely on the advertising campaigns, Ogilvy influenced many aspects of the advertising business. We can credit him for:
- Encouraging business and corporations to adopt a brand image. He didn’t invent the idea but he championed it as early as 1955. All the Ogilvy & Mather offices had a consistent brand image, from the stationery, advertising and office interiors.
- He was instrumental in making the advertising a profession.
- Changed in the industry norm for charging commission to fees, like the legal profession
- Championed direct mail long before it’s prevalence in the 80s and 90s. Many organisations and businesses still appoint agencies to deliver direct mail campaigns today.
- Campaigns should be measured in terms of sales or results. Today many industry awards honour effectiveness in terms of sales, response or results.
- He abhorred agencies that created advertising to seek awards and recognition for creative inventiveness.
- He was a great leader, whose principles and values helped to build a major international agency that still exists today. Albeit, after a hostile takeover in 1989 by Martin Sorrell’s WPP Group.
- He showed respect for good manners in advertising, in dealing with clients, and in treating employees. In contrast to some of the petulant and egotistical personalities that have appeared in the marketing industry.
For me, one the most interesting sections in the book is the final chapter, titled ‘(More)Unpublished David Ogilvy’. This is a selection of memos, letters, speeches and articles from the files of his partners.
In one memo from 1973, Ogilvy supported working freelance or ‘moonlighting’: “We encourage moonlighting, particularly among our copywriters. It broadens their experience. It gives them more sense of responsibility. It increases their income – at no cost to us.”
He continues: “Only two rules. Chaps must not moonlight on competing accounts or for other agencies, and they must not be caught doing the work in office hours.”
What would David Ogilvy think of today’s digital platforms?
I agree with the author’s belief that Ogilvy would have approved of todays digital channels and social media, since they can be used for research, data capture as well as delivering a campaign. The web is full of dashboards for capturing data and statistics about an individual, brand or business. In addition to numbers, the sentiment can also be measured and filtered if needed. I am sure Ogilvy would have marvelled at these innovations and approved of their use in marketing.
Personalised content and location based advertising is the modern day equivalent of direct mail. However, from experience of working for large organisations, print based direct mail is still widely used, so digital channels haven’t replaced it entirely yet.
Incidentally, using the technology would have been beyond him. Ogilvy never used a typewriter, only freshly sharpened pencils. He rarely watched television and didn’t embrace it as an advertising medium. His contemporaries, such Bill Bernbach and Leo Burnett (often mentioned in Mad Men also) were the creatives blazing a trail with television.
Nowadays, you know, the creative departments and agencies are dominated by specialists in television. Their ambition is to win awards at festivals. They don’t give a damn whether their commercials sell, provided they entertain people and win awards. The won’t have anything to do with research if they can help it. These creative entertainer have done the advertising business appalling damage.
Using David Ogilvy’s advertising principles in your business
While many of today’s advertising creatives and writers owe a bigger debt to greats such as Bill Bernbach (Volkswagen adverts) and Leo Burnett (Malboro man and Jolly Green Giant campaigns) if your business needs to produce it’s own press or outdoor advertising they should adopt
Ogilvy’s approach of communicating the facts and benefits in an attractive and compelling way.
6 Degrees Networking, co-founder, Steven Mitchell adopted this approach for a series of shop window postcards for City Car Club. The postcards were nominated for a Chip Shop Award in 2008. The six cards simply convey the benefits of using City Car Club. You can view the postcards here.
Great advertising, Ogilvy was fond of saying, has a ‘burr of singularity’, something unusual enough to stick to the reader’s or viewer’s mind, the way a non-metaphoric burr sticks to your trousers. A burr could be a visual device in a print advertisement, like the eye patch conveying the aristocratic aura and story appeal of the Hathaway man. View this classic advert.
I keep on beating the drums for advertising that sells, and flogging those who think that advertising is entertainment. I will go to my grave believing that advertisers want results, and the advertising business may go its grave believing otherwise.
For anyone new to advertising and marketing Ogilivy’s first book Confessions (written in 1964) and his second one ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ (written in 1982) are essential reading. He is a good writer and very quotable:
Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.
Ogilvy’s third book was an autobiography ‘Blood, Beer and Brains’ which received mixed reviews, however, it was re-released in 1997 with new a title and additional material two years before he died at Château de Touffou, France on 21 July 1999.
Ultimately, Ogilvy has inspired many to embark on advertising as a career and his principles are widely advocated by many marketers and industry figures today. A recent campaign for Dos Equis beer pays homage to the Hathaway shirt campaign.
Not only did he pioneer a new direction for advertising he created successful advertising for many UK companies (such as Guinness, Rolls Royce and Schweppes) who were exporting to the US for the first time (view some these classic adverts here). This feat was recognised and he was awarded a CBE (he thought he deserved a Knighthood). Today Ogilvy & Mather creates campaigns for brands such as Cisco, Coca-Cola, IBM, Ikea and Yahoo! The agency employs 16,000 people spread over 173 cities around the world.
‘Does Your Marketing Sell’ by Ian Moore
Introduction
This book is essential reading for anyone who works in the marketing industry or anyone in business who wishes to maximise their company’s marketing efforts. This book is also recommend for any entrepreneur who doesn’t have a marketing background and is looking to work with a marketing or advertising agency for the first time.
This book provides a good grounding in what to be aware of in creating effective marketing materials. Whether it’s a brochure, leaflet, mailer, website or Yellow Pages advert. Even if you are not actually producing the materials yourself, it will give guidance to ensure that you don’t buy poorly conceived materials from a so called ‘expert’.
Extracts of this book are available on Google Books, so there is no excuse for not reading at least some of it to see if you like it. The author Ian Moore is a excellent authority of the subject of marketing. Having originally started as salesman in seventies, then working as copywriter for top London marketing agencies, then starting his own successful agency Blue-Chip Marketing in the nineties. Over the decades Mr Moore has worked for household names such as: Kimberly-Clark, Cadbury, Lloyds TSB, Reebok, Scottish and Newcastle, Walkers Crisps and Warburtons.
The author has a strong affinity with advertising legend David Ogilvy (who also worked as a salesman before entering the advertising industry). Both men are copywriters and believe in benefit driven headlines and copy. Ultimately, they believe that salesmanship will create a higher response and sales compared to marketing that is simply showmanship, or showing off.
The book is structured around Mr Moore’s personal take on the famous selling technique AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). This has been developed from his decades of experience. NEWAIDA is Mr Moore’s trademark for courses and workshops that takes the AIDA concept a stage further and more relevant for business today.
While it would be unfair and unethical of me to simply reveal all the concepts in the book on this blog, I will give an overview to whet you appetite. Let’s start with what this book can help you achieve (taken from the back cover).
Get four times as many customers to ready your adverts
Double the response rates to your mailers
Triple the uptake of your promotional offers
Employ the seven most powerful ways to gain attention
Write with the 100 most persuasive selling words
The missing ingredient
So why does one piece of marketing succeed where another fails? What is it that causes almost 20 times as many people to respond to one message than to another? Just how do you make your marketing sell?
It seems there’s a paradox. What well-intentioned marketers think they should do to make their marketing sell often doesn’t work. And that’s because they get salesmanship confused with showmanship.
Salesmanship is the missing ingredient in making your marketing sell. Salesmanship is the quiet skills of empathy and perception. These skills are often abandoned in modern marketing communications.
Very often advertising for big brands is arty or creative and doesn’t engage the majority of the audience. You might find an TV advert funny, but won’t remember the product. Very often the reader will be confused by the advert and not bother to read it, or solve the ‘riddle’. Adverts that capture the readers attention and appeal to them on the desired level, will resonate and be more successful.
I’ve always made it a golden rule never to propose anything – ranging from a rough idea for single advert to a complex multifaceted campaign – unless we could justify why we believed it would sell. If we couldn’t explain how it would engage the customer to achieve the desired outcome, it didn’t get presented. When you apply this discipline to your proposals, you find – magically – that the words of explanation come out in the simple language of salesmanship.
Navigation
Navigation is the first step in NEWAIDA. This chapter sets out principles in helping your customer to know what to think about and to create the desired reaction. If a customer doesn’t know what to do or think about within a few seconds they won’t engage with the marketing material and won’t go any further.
Ease
If the customer perceives your marketing to have too many hurdles they will fail to respond. This is very relevant where success of the campaign is dependant on the number of responses received. Making your marketing easy to use and engage will increase the number of responses. Supermarkets are filled with promotions, discount vouchers or competitions. Their success will depend on how easy it is for the customer to firstly participate, and secondly, if they perceive it as a good deal. If the promotion fails to do this, the response will be poor.
Wording
Since Mr Moore is a copywriter, it’s understandable why he has added this third topic to the AIDA concept. This is perhaps the most important subject of all. The key thing here is to write in your customer’s language.
Good salespeople are taught to speak the language of their customers. This is known as matching is used to build pace and rapport, by mirroring and complementing aspects of the other person. When you match, you show that you are willing to enter the other person’s model of the world – intuitively, they feel more at easy with you.
Seven deadly sins of marketing communications:
1. Hyperbole (exaggerated and bold claims that over promise and usually under deliver).
2. Cliches (example “The sky’s the limit!” any business can make these claims and they are usually meaningless).
3. Platitudes (meaningless headlines posing a something significant. Also, a competitor could also claim eg, ‘We’re the fastest)
4. Word play
5. Riddles
6. Writer’s fog (a formula to ensure the copy is not too dense with jargon, impersonal and verbose).
7. Designeritis (the design of the marketing taking priority of message and content. Gratuitous use of graphics).
Trade press advertising is viewed as rather unglamorous, and I assume that it was assigned to the agency’s most junior and inexperienced copywriters. Maybe these guys had never done a sales call in a corner shop, or been to a presentation at the likes of Asda head office. Whatever their excuse, it showed in their soapbox style presumptuously aimed at some great unseen yet miraculously enthralled crowd.
More practical copywriting advice
Write to a person and not to a crowd. Try to find the right tone. Make it businesslike yet friendly in tone. Keep it to the point. Make it fit consumption at any level, managing director to office junior.
When writing copy use two ‘you’s for every ‘we’
The reading age of the average supermarket shopper is 11.
Use the language of the people, avoid words with Latin or Old French origins. Avoid jargon also.
The brain is designed to hear language. We train our brains to convert it back into sounds when we read. Writing should be treated not as the written word, but as the spoken word. And surely this means a simple, conversational style.
Don’t use full points on headlines, magazines and newspapers don’t.
Imagery
The author does offer some advice on any images used in marketing by explaining that the visuals should do something useful: to enhance and dramatize recognition for your customer – of their need, or the category, or your product. Use it to dramatize the proposition.
Avoid what the author calls the ‘irrelevant simile’ – they prove nothing. For example, a blue-chip company wants to communicate ‘flexibility’ and uses an image a gymnast. Avoid this, people think it’s the analogous item that is being advertised.
From here on in the author gives insights and advice on approaching the classic AIDA selling concept. Below I have quoted key points from these chapters.
Attention
Adverts with benefits in their headlines are read by four times as many people as ads with no benefits in their headlines. For profitable attention, you need a benefit.
Make your advert newsworthy eg. ‘new improved’, ‘new advanced formula’. Use sensory language to engage the mind, such as the ‘The Inch War’ for Ryvita.
Interest
Key tips:
1. Write for the interested customer.
2. Seek out first-time buyers.
3. Key question: “Am I treating my customer as if they’re already interested?”
Content always beats form. A company newsletter can sometimes appear boastful and selfish. An internal staff one packed with stories and pics about them will be a success – because it’s about its customers (the staff).
Desire
You can’t make your customers need your product, but you find out whether they want it. The communication task, then, is to help them realize that they do.
Use layered delivery. In sales letter you should be able to just read the sub heads to understand the content of the letter.
There’s no such thing as long or short copy only enough copy. Give the customer a stream of relevant, interesting facts and benefits and they’ll stay with you.
The book ‘Positioning’ by Ries and Trout supports the theory that if you can’t get into your customer’s mind first, your best bet is to do it by reference to something they already understand and believe.
Action
1. Help your customer to say ‘yes’
2. Offer ‘carrots’ and incentives to encourage customers to respond to your marketing
3. Set a two dates for an offer deadline, date one big prize, date two smaller prize
4. Use the ‘mop-up’ technique to prompt lasped subscribers or customers who have failed to respond
Finally
I should add that this book is a pleasure to read, as it’s well-written and packed with real life examples and anecdotes to back up the author’s points. The review above is just some of the highlights, there is obviously more content in the book. I would recommend reading it once through, then dipping into chapters every now an then to refresh your memory and inspire you to create or ‘buy’ more effective marketing materials for your company. Read reviews on Amazon.