by David Ogilvy
Marvelous.
Yours,
David
A note to Jackie Kilgour, who was putting together an annual report, about which of two photographs to use:
JK:
I like (A) better because it makes me look YOUNGER and NICER. But no man should be allowed to pick his own photo. So I defer to your judgment.
D.O.
A comment about the paper clips David uses to secure his neckties inspired this memo to Michael Ball, then a Vice Chairman.
July 15, 1981
TIE CLIPS
Some people are naturally extravagant – with their own money and the company’s money.
I believe that it would increase profits if the Barons* would inculcate a tradition of parsimony throughout their archdioceses. (Some of the Barons are themselves extravagant.)
How to do it? Here are some ideas:
(1) Crack down publicly on two or three office heads who spend too much on decorating their offices.
(2) Wage war on the unnecessary use of telex. I have the impression that telex has become the normal medium for interoffice communication, as it is in the Diplomatic Service. The vast majority of telex messages I see are not urgent in any way.
For example, ______’s 500-word telex about awards. Not long ago, _____ sent me an even longer and even less urgent telex.
I find extravagance esthetically repulsive. I find the New England Puritan tradition more attractive. And more profitable.
It is a matter of posture, manners, style and habit.
People see the telex machine in their offices. It looks like a typewriter. Maybe they think it is free …
David
* * *
The guilty Junkers – or one just like it.
LOSES TASTE FOR FLYING
Why doesn’t David like to fly? In a 1985 interview in Resume, a Swedish magazine, he told this story:
“Everything began one beautiful summer evening in Stockholm in the 1930’s. I was on a cruise, but when I arrived late back to the harbour one evening the boat had already left. There was no alternative but to fly to Helsinki. The plane was a three-engined Junkers which bounced about in appalling turbulence. I felt terrible and lost my taste for flying for life …”
Advances in aviation technology leave him skeptical. “Turbulence is what frightens me” begins a recent note to Vice Chairman James Benson. “Is there more or less of it on the Concorde?”
* * *
David likes to remind his partners of the economies he achieves by living in a château in France, as in this memo to seven senior people in the United States and the United Kingdom:
August 7, 1969
FRENCH PRICES – OUTSIDE PARIS
The other night I gave a dinner for nine at a restaurant near Touffou. We had several courses, and five bottles of wine. The bill was $31.00 or £13.
D.O.
A memo to Ogilvy & Mather Directors about Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire-Hathaway and one of the most perspicacious investors in the United States:
April 4, 1983
How to Make Money Out of Ogilvy & Mather
Warren Buffett has made a profit of $15,400,000 on his Ogilvy & Mather stock – so far.
He and his foundation have 401,400 shares, for which he paid an average of $9.47.
D.O.
Shelby Page, the agency’s Treasurer for thirty-six years, received a telex from France shortly after Mitterand was elected. Here’s the whole telex:
From: David Ogilvy
To: Shelby Page
Mitterand is going to tax the rich.
I am rich.
To Luis Muñoz-Marin, former Governor of Puerto Rico, and architect of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the U.S., after his party was returned to power in the 1972 elections:
November 21, 1972
Dear Governor:
Thank God.
Yours ever,
D.O.
The opening of a report to his partners on a tour of offices in New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia:
April 1, 1978
Down Under
We set sail from Acapulco in QE2 on January 27, bound for New Zealand. Most of our fellow passengers were rich octogenarians with stentorian voices. One woman had brought sixty-nine evening dresses. Much to the chagrin of the tip-hungry waiters, six or seven of our senile shipmates died every day and were buried at sea – discreetly, at five o’clock in the morning, with the ship hove to so that they would not be mashed by the propellers. Cheap, as funerals go …
Alas, we did not call in the New Hebrides, a group of islands which are ruled by France and Britain jointly. Portraits of the Queen and the President of France hang side by side in every public place. The inhabitants understand who the Queen is, and assume that the other portrait is her King; they notice with interest that she changes kings every six years.
We fell in love with New Zealand – a society without class distinctions, thousands of small yachts in every harbor, beautifully kept gardens, and magnificent scenery. Here began the promotional whirlwind in which we have lived ever since …
Answering a skeptical question as to the truth of a story he tells about the bizarre results of a certain advertisement, David scribbled this note:
I made it up, years ago.
Poetic license. It always gets a laugh.
So shut up.
A memo to a veteran copywriter:
April 2, 1971
Harry has just read me the letter you wrote me yesterday, on your anniversary.
Shyness makes it impossible for me to tell any man what I think of him when he is still alive. However, if I outlive you, I shall write an obituary along these lines:
________ was probably the nicest man I have ever known. His kindness to me, and to dozens of other people, was nothing short of angelic.
Many nice men are too dumb to be anything else. But ________ was far from dumb. Indeed, he had a superb intelligence.
His judgment of men and events was infallible; I came to rely on it more and more as the years went by.
He was one of my few partners who worked harder and longer hours than I did. He gave value for money. And he knew his trade.
He was an honest man, in the largest sense of the word. He had a glorious sense of humor.
He had the courage to challenge me when he thought I was wrong, but he always contrived to do it without annoying me.
There was nothing saccharine about him. Tolerant as he was, he did not like everybody; he disliked the people who deserved to be disliked.
He never pursued popularity, but he inspired universal affection.
I cannot sign this, because I am in Chicago and it will have to be typed in New York …
A memo to Alex Biel, head of the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development, in response to a suggestion that the Center publish a newsletter:
April 26, 1985
ALEX BIEL
If you think this is a good idea, far be it from me to stop you. But consider:
1. Our heads of office are drowning in paper.
2. We hired you to do pioneer, basic research – not to issue newsletters.
3. We have too many newsletters already.
4. Can you imagine Einstein issuing “What’s new in research” memos?
D.O.
A later memo to Alex Biel:
September 12, 1985
DISLIKES
In your memo of August 1 to Jock, you wrote, “Most people simply do not dislike commercials.”
When I was doing research for Hollywood, I found that most people did not dislike any movie stars.
Forty-five years ago I came to the conclusion that ordinary Americans are too nice, or too dumb, or too passive, or too uncritical to dislike anything.
D.O.
From a 1982 memo to Hank Bernhard, former Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, U.S.:
Surface Hypnotism
Anyone who used to watch the Candid Camera show on television must have been
surprised by Alan Funt’s ability to get people to do anything he wanted them to do. He simply told them to do it and they did. Surface hypnotism?
Before a recent speech in Los Angeles, I signalled to the audience with my hands to stand up. To my surprise, they stood up – all 1200 of them – and gave me a standing ovation.
D.O.
A chatty letter on several subjects, to John Straiton, former President of Ogilvy & Mather in Canada, began with a paragraph about a departed colleague:
Eating cheese at dinner has always given me terrible nightmares. Last night I ate a cheese fondue at a dinner in Switzerland – and dreamed that ________ was back in the agency.
Two notes to Joel Raphaelson:
July 27, 1982
I have come across a fascinating word. It means “the first rudiments” of anything. In the big Oxford dictionary. Various spellings:
ABECEDARY
ABCEDARIE
ABSCEDARY
Perhaps too obscure for use in headlines.
D.O.
December 14, 1984
Joel:
“He got in his LIMO and drove to his CONDO.” I don’t think the language is improving.
D.O.
A note to Alex Biel – from an exchange about jargon:
May 15, 1985
ENGLISH
A brand manager who recently left told the agency that he was pursuing a policy of
PRE-EMPTIVE DIMENSIONALIZATION OF BETTERMENT.
D.O.
David sends around a lot of clippings, with notes attached. One such clipping was a headline in the International Herald Tribune:
SUSLOV, 79, DIES: KREMLIN IDEOLOGIST
Top Guardian of Communist Dogma
Succumbs After “Brief, Grave Illness”
The attached note:
Damn right the illness was “grave”
– it killed him.
A note to Bill Phillips:
February 24, 1986
Being interviewed by ignorant reporters can be awful. The other day one of these idiots asked me, “How much does an advertising campaign cost in the USA?”
For once, I was speechless.
D.O.
After David turned over his Chairmanship to Jock Elliott in 1975, he served the company as Creative Head, Worldwide, for a number of years. The following is from a memo he sent, in that capacity, to all heads of offices and creative heads:
July 18, 1977
Confusion?
I am told that some of you are confused by what you perceive as a change in my creative philosophy.
For many years you heard me inveigh against “entertainment” in TV commercials and “cleverness” in print advertising. When the advertising world went on a “creative” binge in the late 1960’s, I denounced award winners as lunatics. Then I started the David Ogilvy Award – for the campaign which produced the biggest increase in sales.
You got the word.
Then, two years ago, you began to receive memos from me, complaining that too much of our output was stodgy and dull. Sometimes I circulated commercials and advertisements which I admired, but which appeared to violate my own principles.
Had I gone mad?
My original Magic Lantern started with the assertion that Positioning and Promise were more than half the battle. You accepted that, and proceeded accordingly.
But another slide in my dear old Lantern states that “unless your advertising contains a Big Idea it will pass like a ship in the night.” Very few of you seem to have paid attention to that.
Three years ago I woke up to the fact that the majority of our campaigns, while impeccable as to positioning and promise, contained no big idea. They were too dull to penetrate the filter which consumers erect to protect themselves against the daily deluge of advertising. Too dull to be remembered. Too dull to build a brand image. Too dull to sell. (“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”)
In short, we were still sound, but we were no longer brilliant. Neither soundness nor brilliance is any good by itself; each requires the other …
So the time had come to give the pendulum a push in the other direction. If that push has puzzled you, caught you on the wrong foot and confused you, I can only quote Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds … Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”
I want all our offices to create campaigns which are second to none in positioning, promise – and brilliant ideas …
D.O.
A memo to the “syndicate heads” in New York:
May 7, 1970
TENURE
Most of the fashionable hotshots in the creative departments of other agencies are nomads, birds-of-passage.
It is not unusual for them to have worked at six agencies before they are thirty-two. What a turbulent, unsettling, dangerous way to live.
I have no stomach for recruiting these unprincipled adventurers.
By contrast, six of our seven Syndicate Heads have been at Ogilvy & Mather for an average of ten years. All the way from Reva’s eighteen years to the eight years of such promising new arrivals as Gene, Bill and Tony.
I hope that these long tenures are good for the individuals. I know they are good for the agency.
Long may they last.
From a memo commenting on the qualities of a 35-year-old creative director:
… He is still immature in some ways. For example, his “style” when presenting campaigns to clients is curiously boyish. This discomforts me – I prefer a posture of confident authority. But I have observed that many clients like his diffidence and humility. They seem to find it engaging and disarming.
His office is a pigsty. It does not look like the office of a top-management boss, and this can be a problem in a world which is impressed by appearances. Also, an untidy office suggests an untidy mind. I have to keep reminding myself that some very able men are untidy, and that some very stupid men are tidy …
He administers his department rather loosely. But I doubt whether a rigid and orderly administration would fit a creative department. Some measure of informality and kaleidoscopic assignments are probably a good thing here …
To the Management Supervisor on KLM:
March 3, 1969
I have always believed that tourists want fine weather on their vacations. Sunshine – not clouds.
The great tourist movements are towards the sun – from north to south. Hence the popularity of Florida, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean.
For years I have tried to get sunny photographs of Puerto Rico and Britain.
Now you are featuring photographs of Holland in fog and cloud. You must have a good reason for doing this. What is it?
D.O.
A memo to creative heads:
April 17, 1980
A few weeks ago, I asked you to send me the names of anybody on your staff who might qualify to become a Creative Director.
Twenty of you sent me a total of 49 names.
One of you sent me six names – his entire creative staff, I suspect; charitable fellow.
Eleven of you told me that you have nobody who could qualify to become a Creative Director. You have problems. Something wrong with your hiring methods?
Ten of you have not answered. Bastards.
D.O.
A letter to David’s 18-year-old great-nephew in England:
June 6, 1984
Dear Harry,
You ask me whether you should spend the next three years at university, or get a job. I will give you three different answers. Take your pick.
Answer A. You are ambitious. Your sights are set on going to the top, in business or government. Today’s big corporations cannot be managed by uneducated amateurs. In these high-tech times, they need top bananas who have doctorates in chemistry, physics, engineering, geology, etc.
Even the
middle managers are at a disadvantage unless they boast a university degree and an MBA. In the United States, 18 percent of the population has a degree, in Britain, only 7 percent. Eight percent of Americans have graduate degrees, compared with 1 percent of Brits. That more than anything else is why American management outperforms British management.
Same thing in government. When I was your age, we had the best civil service in the world. Today, the French civil servants are better than ours because they are educated for the job in the postgraduate Ecole Nationale d’Administration, while ours go straight from Balliol to Whitehall. The French pros outperform the British amateurs.
Anyway, you are too young to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. If you spend the next few years at university, you will get to know the world – and yourself – before the time comes to choose your career.
Answer B. Stop frittering away your time in academia. Stop subjecting yourself to the tedium of textbooks and classrooms. Stop cramming for exams before you acquire an incurable hatred for reading.
Escape from the sterile influences of dons, who are nothing more than pickled undergraduates.
The lack of a college degree will only be a slight handicap in your career. In Britain, you can still get to the top without a degree. What industry and government need at the top is not technocrats but leaders. The character traits which make people scholars in their youth are not the traits which make them leaders in later life.
You put up with education for 12 boring years. Enough is enough.
Answer C. Don’t judge the value of higher education in terms of careermanship. Judge it for what it is – a priceless opportunity to furnish your mind and enrich the qualify of your life. My father was a failure in business, but he read Horace in the loo until he died, poor but happy.