The Unpublished David Ogilvy

by David Ogilvy

  1. First, we admire people who work hard. We dislike passengers who don’t pull their weight in the boat.

  2. We admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people.

  3. We admire people who avoid politics – office politics, I mean.

  4. We despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.

  5. We admire the great professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. We notice that these people always respect the professional expertise of their colleagues in other departments.

  6. We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates.

  7. We admire people who build up and develop their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. We detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary.

  8. We admire people who practice delegation. The more you delegate, the more responsibility will be loaded upon you.

  9. We admire kindly people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings – particularly the people who sell things to us. We abhor quarrelsome people. We abhor people who wage paper warfare. We abhor buck passers, and people who don’t tell the truth.

  10. We admire well-organized people who keep their offices shipshape, and deliver their work on time.

  11. We admire people who are good citizens in their communities – people who work for their local hospitals, their church, the PTA, the Community Chest and so on.

  In his talk to the staff at Christmas in 1962, David quoted responses to an internal survey on the strengths and weaknesses of the Agency. This excerpt starts about halfway through the talk.

  Those are the main points on the positive side – esprit de corps, hard work, high standards of professional performance, guts in telling our clients the truth, a clearly defined point of view, and better advertising campaigns.

  So far, so good. But now we come to the bad part.

  PROBLEMS OF SIZE

  One particularly thoughtful individual has this to say:

  “As we grow, it seems to me to be more difficult to maintain that great esprit de corps. I have had a feeling that some of our great vitality is waning, and that the agency has less of that zip, bustle and excitement that were so prominent during the first years.”

  … Here I want to address those of you who head up departments and account groups, and indeed everyone who is the boss of anyone else. I look to you to become our main sources of inspiration. Perhaps you will not mind if I offer you some advice on how to go about it:

  A) Don’t overstaff your departments. People enjoy life most when they have the most work to do.

  B) Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don’t live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second-rate work.

  C) When your people turn in an exceptional performance, make sure they know you admire them for it.

  D) Don’t let your people fall into a rut. Keep leading them along new paths, blazing new trails. Give them a sense of adventurous pioneering.

  E) Do your best to educate your people, so that they can be promoted as rapidly as possible.

  F) Delegate. Throw your people in over their heads. That is the only way to find out how good they are.

  G) Seek advice from your subordinates, and listen more than you talk.

  H) Above all, make sure that you are getting the most out of all your people. Men and women are happiest when they know that they are giving everything they’ve got.

  RIGIDITY

  Another criticism I have received is that we are too rigid in applying our creative principles:

  “Here at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather campaigns are developed according to the disciplines you have established. There is a danger that these disciplines are interpreted too narrowly.”

  I make no apology for having established a set of creative principles, but I cannot believe that they represent the last word. I am hungry for younger creative people to come along and enlarge our philosophies.

  Start where I leave off.

  TOO MUCH PAPER

  Another criticism I have received is that there is far too much paper around here:

  “One of the first differences I noticed on coming over was the volume of paper work. The amount of it is bad. But what it reflects is good. Much of the paper is the result of a lot of people thinking and having thoughts about a problem.

  “A case in point was the torrent that flowed while the 1963 Shell plan was being developed. A score of people were having thoughts. And they had the enthusiasm and the energy to write them down.”

  O.K., but I wish to heaven they wouldn’t write them down at such exorbitant length. Really, the amount of paper we have to read nowadays is horrible. For Pete’s sake write shorter memos. Don’t argue with each other on paper. Don’t send copies of trivial memos to 29 people …

  I would like you all to make a New Year’s Resolution. Cut your wordage in half. This will make it possible for us to finish our homework before midnight.

  Well, I have now reported the three negatives – the problem of inspiration in an agency which is no longer small; rigidity in applying our creative principles; and too much paper.

  Adding it all up, the pros and cons, how does Ogilvy, Benson & Mather look to me? How does the OBM of 1962 compare with the agency I dreamed of in 1948?

  To tell you the truth, it looks a million times better than I ever dreamed it could look. I just cannot believe what a good agency this has grown to be. I am terribly proud, and terribly grateful.

  From a talk to the National Industrial Conference Board, April 1961:

  … There is no great trick to doing research. The problem is to get people to use it – particularly when the research reveals that you have been making mistakes.

  We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.

  Before Pearl Harbor, the United States Government succeeded in deciphering the telegrams which the Japanese Ambassador in Washington was sending back to Tokyo, reporting his conversations with Cordell Hull. Unfortunately, there was a failure to act on this intelligence.

  Later on, the Navy was able to crack the Japanese Naval cipher. This time somebody acted on the intelligence. The happy result was the victory at Midway.

  It’s the same way in marketing. The problem is to find people with the guts to act on intelligence reports, particularly when they are unfavorable.

  * * *

  PECULIAR BEHAVIOR

  David is often astonished by working habits that differ from his own. Once, discussing a copywriter at another agency whom he admired in some respects, he said:

  “Listen to this – every day at precisely five o’clock that man gets up from his desk, puts on his hat and his coat, and goes home.”

  Long pause to let it sink in. Then, leaning forward for emphasis: “Think of the extraordinary self-discipline that requires!”

  * * *

  In the modern corporation, who should have the responsibility for reading research reports and deciding what action should be taken? When I was a child I used to lie in bed early in the morning, debating with myself as to what servants I would employ when I grew up and got rich. Would I start by hiring a chef, a chauffeur, a gardener, a butler, or a masseur?

  Nowadays, I lie in bed wondering who I would hire if I became a manufacturer. I am inclined to think that I would start with a research analyst – even before an advertising manager …

  From a dinner talk to the St Andrew’s Society, November 1962:

  Mr. President, Mr. Consul-General, Lord Strathclyde, Sir Alexander Brackenridge, fellow members of the St Andrew’s Society.

  Today is the birthday of Sir W
inston Churchill. I remember an incident which took place at the end of the Casablanca Conference.

  It was the last morning, after the official business was finished. Sir Winston sent for his security officer. The old man had just finished breakfast and was lying in bed smoking a cigar. When the security officer entered the bedroom, Churchill looked up at him and said: “Codrington, I want to visit the bazaars.”

  Codrington said that he would have to consult his American colleagues, who were responsible for the security of both delegations. The Americans promptly vetoed the expedition as too dangerous. This placed poor Codrington in a ticklish position, because he knew from bitter experience that Churchill would not like being thwarted.

  However, he was an ingenious fellow, so he said to the Prime Minister: “The Americans don’t want you to go. German assassins have been parachuted around Casablanca, and there is no time for the Military Police to clear the streets where the bazaars are situated. The Americans think it would be most dangerous for you to go. Of course I have explained to them that you are indifferent to all considerations of personal danger. So I suppose that you may as well go.

  “However, Sir, there is one thing I would like to point out. The bazaars are full of disease. If you were to catch one of these diseases, it wouldn’t matter – you have the constitution of an ox. But I must remind you that your friend, Mr. Roosevelt, is extremely delicate and if he caught the disease from you, well, the consequences might be tragic.”

  Churchill winked, and said, “All right, Codrington, I won’t visit the bazaars. However, I would like you to know that I was not planning to visit the bazaars for the particular purpose you seem to have in mind; and even if I had been, and had I had the misfortune to contract one of those loathsome diseases to which you are evidently referring, I can assure you that I would not have transmitted it to the President of the United States.”

  I would like to speak in praise of Scotland, my native country. Last time a member of my family tried this he got into terrible trouble.

  My Ogilvy kinsman was talking to Oliver Goldsmith – and that repulsive old English bore Samuel Johnson. Here’s how it went, according to Boswell:

  “Mr. Ogilvy was unlucky enough to choose for the topic of his conversation the praises of his native country. He began with saying that there was very rich land around Edinburgh. Goldsmith, who had studied physic there, contradicted this, with a sneering laugh.

  “Disconcerted a little by this, Mr. Ogilvy then took a new ground, where, I suppose, he thought himself perfectly safe, for he observed that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects.”

  It was at this point that Dr. Johnson delivered his famous snub to my unfortunate ancestor:

  “Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious, noble, wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the highroad that leads him to England!”

  I kicked the bottom out of my cradle the first time I heard that story. But I couldn’t resist telling it again, because it shows the danger we Ogilvys run when we boast about Scotland.

  From a speech to the Life Insurance Agency Management Association delivered in 1965 – some years before direct mail became a major factor in selling insurance:

  … The time has come, I suggest, to test some revolutionary innovations.

  Murray D. Lincoln is fond of saying that what every big organization needs is a “Vice-President in charge of revolution.” Today I have elected myself as Vice-President in charge of your revolution.

  Here, then, is a revolution for you to test. Test direct mail.

  I suspect that your best prospect is your present policyholder. You know all about him – his name and address, his age, how many children he has, his occupation, his medical record, his wife’s name, and so on. It is time you made some use of this gold mine of intelligence.

  I believe that you can sell a lot of insurance, very cheaply, to your present policyholders by using direct mail – good direct mail …

  One insurance company I know spends sixty times as much on salesmen’s commissions as it spends on selling by direct mail. Many companies spend nothing on selling by direct mail. Goodness knows why not. Maybe they just never got around to it.

  I myself have life insurance policies with three companies. Not one of them has ever written me a letter suggesting that I buy more insurance from them. All they ever send me is premium notices.

  Bloody fools …

  From an ad-lib talk to the Direct Mail Advertising Association in Washington in October 1965, after Ogilvy & Mather’s five-page letter for Mercedes-Benz had won the Gold Mail Box Award for the best direct mail campaign of 1964:

  I have owned a few motor cars in my life … I have never received a selling letter from one of the factories whose cars I drive suggesting that maybe the time had come for me to get a new one.

  They simply don’t do it.

  I’m here to predict that in the next five years you are going to see the advertising agencies – the good ones – grow up into Direct Mail. You are going to see Direct Mail emerge as a medium we agency people use, and use professionally.

  From “Ten Bees in My Bonnet,” a talk at a dinner at Colby College in June 1966. David was a Colby Trustee. Here are his introductory remarks, and five of his ten “bees”:

  What I am going to say does not in any way reflect the views of your Board of Trustees. I speak only for myself.

  I am not an alumnus of Colby – or indeed of any other American college. I went to Oxford, 3,500 miles away. This places me at some disadvantage. If anyone wants to say that I don’t know what I am talking about, I can only plead that my relative detachment helps me to see things through an objective eye.

  What I know about Colby and other colleges derives from four sources:

  First, from listening to the talk at meetings of the Colby Board of Trustees during the last four years.

  Second, from reading a good deal about education in general, and other colleges in particular.

  Third, from observing my son’s experiences at the University of Virginia.

  Fourth, from being married to a Barnard undergraduate.

  I have come to some general conclusions, and this is my opportunity to ventilate them. They are more than conclusions – they are veritable bees in my bonnet.

  1. First, I agree with Professor Nathan Glazer that “A very large part of what students and teachers do in the best colleges and universities is sheer waste.”

  I will now prove this.

  Dr. Gallup tested a cross section of college graduates of all ages, all over the country. He found that 62 percent cannot identify Immanuel Kant.

  Two thirds cannot translate the word sister into French or German or Spanish.

  Less than half can name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Only half know that elections for seats in the House of Representatives are held every two years.

  One third have not read a single book of any kind during the last year.

  If Dr. Gallup had confined his poll to Colby graduates, instead of interviewing a cross section of all college graduates, the results might have been somewhat more encouraging.

  However, I am inclined to think that the present system of college education, even here at Colby, needs improvement …

  * * *

  HEADMASTER

  When Dave McCall was Associate Copy Chief at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, he had dinner with David and his teenage son, David Fairfield Ogilvy. Much of the talk centered on the prep school David’s son was going to and how, if David were headmaster, he’d run things there.

  After a while his son said, “Well I sure wouldn’t want to go to any school where you were headmaster.”

  David’s fatherly response: “That’s a rather rude thing to say in present company. Mr. McCall goes to such a school.”

  * * *

  3. I would like to see tenure abolished.

  The tenure system is imposed on coll
eges by the American Association of University Professors – which is one of the most powerful trade unions I have ever encountered.

  The pity is that the students don’t have a trade union of their own, to protect them against the all-powerful professors’ union.

  The case for tenure revolves around the protection of teachers who advocate unorthodox theories. Such protection is, of course, very desirable indeed. But I believe that it is even more desirable to protect students from poor teachers …

  Incidentally, it is preposterous that tenure should be a one-way contract. If a professor cannot be sacked, he should also be unable to quit in search of richer pastures in another college …

  5. Next I come to psychiatry.

  A lot of people still regard psychiatry as new-fangled nonsense – until their children drop out of college, or are sent to the Menninger Clinic with a serious breakdown.

  There are now eleven psychiatrists on the medical staff at Harvard. How many at Colby? None – not one.

  This is silly. A psychiatrist could do a great deal for students who get mixed-up – and a lot of students do, nowadays.

  No Colby student should be flunked out until he has had a few sessions with a psychiatrist. This would save a lot of students – and it is our duty to save them, if we possibly can.

  6. A college of limited resources cannot achieve the same degree of distinction in all its academic departments.

  There is a hue and cry to add new departments at Colby. I would prefer to concentrate on increasing the excellence of some of our present departments; we have some excellent departments. I agree with the Oxford don who said, “The strength of a college can be measured by the number of subjects it refuses to teach.”

  7. I believe that one of the most useful things we can teach our students is to write lucid reports. If you are going to be a businessman, you won’t get far unless you can write lucid reports – and very few college graduates can. If you are going to be a doctor, it will help if you can contribute lucid articles to medical journals. Knowledge is useless unless you know how to communicate it – in writing.