1-Page Summary

After years of working as a salesman, copywriter, and adman, in 1949, David Ogilvy (1911-1999) started his own advertising agency. It became one of the most successful agencies in the world and in 1985, Ogilvy compiled his decades’ worth of experience into Ogilvy on Advertising, in which he covers marketing, crafting good advertisements, and an overview of the industry.

Marketing and Product Development

The ultimate goal of advertising is to sell products, but in fact, the best way to increase sales isn’t to advertise effectively—it’s to supply good products. To create good new products, or improve the products you already have:

• Use research. Research can predict which kinds of products will do well; what smells, colors, flavors, and recipes will be most popular; what features consumers think are most important; what package designs are most attention-grabbing; and what types of products people are no longer interested in.
• Improve product quality. If your research tells you consumers prefer your competitors’ products, you can ask your R&D to improve yours. Especially for food products, improving quality improves sales.
• Balance convention and novelty. Products can fail both because they’re too similar to something that already exists or because they’re too outside-the-box, and no one knows what to do with them. Products that are different versions of something that consumers are already familiar with tend to do well, such as disposable diapers or diet soda.
• Give the product a good name. People’s names (Ford) or descriptive names (Band-Aid) are effective. Make sure names aren’t hard to pronounce, hard to remember, or similar to other names.
• Choose an appropriate price and use promotions. People judge products by their price and think more expensive products are of better quality.
• Put your resources towards your successes. It’s better to spend your time and money on the products that do well, rather than trying to save flops.
• Put a lot of effort into the launch. According to an advertising expert at the London Business School, consumers alternate buying four or five different brands of a particular product. To get a new product into someone’s repertory, you need to convince her to buy it within a year of its launch.

The Craft of Advertising

The primary goal of advertising is to increase profit, which you can do either by attracting new customers or encouraging existing customers to buy your product more often. Effective advertising can be very effective—one copywriter found that a good ad sold almost 20 times as much as a bad one. Even if products sell well on their own, good advertising can increase profit.

• For example, Listerine sold perfectly well for 40 years. But when it was advertised as a cure for bad breath, sales exploded.

There are some steps to creating good ads regardless of the medium:

1. Learn about the product. It’ll be easier to make associations and come up with potential benefits when you have a solid knowledge base.

2. Study your competitor’s ads. When you come across effective ads, study and copy the techniques used. Particularly study direct-response ads (ads that encourage consumers to contact a company directly to make a purchase) because there’s a clear relationship between advertising and sales—the only factor that affected someone’s decision to buy a product was the ad, so the variables have been tested.

3. Engage in research. Use research to find out what customers think of your company and how much money you need to put into advertising to increase sales. Additionally, use research to find out what product promise will most appeal to consumers who might be your target audience, what promotions or premiums people might be interested in, and what media will get you the most response.

Later, once you’ve released some ads into the world, continue to use research to inform your next campaign. Study whether your existing ads are confusing, how many people read or view them, and at what point people get tired of the message and a new campaign is necessary.

4. Choose a brand image. “Image” is the personality of a product, which stems from its inherent qualities as well as marketing variables such as price, packaging, and advertising style.

• For example, Jack Daniel’s whiskey projects an image of quality because it’s expensive.

5. Come up with big, timeless ideas. Big ideas will hook consumers and make your competitors jealous. Induce ideas by doing your research and then letting your mind unconsciously connect ideas as you go for a walk, drink, or take a bath.

6. Spotlight the product and make it the star. If there’s nothing different or unique about your product compared to your competitors’ (for example, you sell table salt), make the advertising itself unique, or be extra clear and convincing.

7. Avoid working in committees. Committees tend to overcomplicate things and require compromise, and as a result, the final ad tends to say nothing of importance. Committees also slow down creation.

Print Advertising

Print advertising refers to ads that are placed on posters, in magazines, or in newspapers. There are five elements to consider when creating print ads:

1. Headline. The headline is the most important part of a print ad because 80% of people read only the headline, not the ad’s copy. Effective headlines name the product and brand, offer a benefit, offer information, contain news, use buzzwords, target the audience, are specific, appear in quotes, and mention the name of a city if advertising in a local paper.

• For example, the headline “How to take out stains: Use Rinso and follow these easy directions” was effective because it named the product and brand, and gave information (instructions on how to remove stains).

2. Imagery. Effective images make the reader curious or tell a story. They should be printed in color, focus on only one person, feature well-known characters from the brand’s TV commercials, feature people of the target audience, be culturally sensitive, and when food-related, show the final dish, not the ingredients. Use photos instead of drawings when possible, and use before-and-after photos.

• For example, the following image for the shirt manufacturer Hathaway was effective because it was a photo, not an illustration, it focused on one person who was a member of the target audience, and the eyepatch suggested a story. Additionally, it was printed in color.

3. Copy. Copy is the body text of your ad, and it’s most effective when it’s more than 350 words long. To write good copy, use the second person singular (“you”), keep the writing simple, be interesting and specific, write a story, use consumer or expert testimonials, include the price, write about sales or special offers, and sign the copy with the agency’s name.

• For example, a Zippo ad about a lighter that had been found in the belly of a fish and still worked was effective because it used the second person, told a story, was interesting and specific, and included a special offer.

4. Coupon. The coupon is the part of the ad that can be cut out and mailed to a company to request more information or to get a special price. Some people skip straight from the headline to the coupon and don’t read anything in between, so coupons should contain a small image, the promise, and the brand name. To encourage people to return coupons, create a sense of time pressure by writing in the coupon that a particular edition of the product is limited, the supply is limited, the price will be going up shortly, or that there’s a special price for responding quickly.

5. Layout. The layout is the placement of the above four elements on the page. The goal of layout is to make the ad as easy as possible to read and understand, not to create something that’s pretty.

To make text more legible and approachable-looking: Make your text block approximately 40 characters wide, set the text in black on a white background, include extra spacing between paragraphs, and use easy-to-read fonts, straight margins, subheads, short paragraphs and lines, drop-caps (the first letter is larger than the rest of the text), italic and bold for emphasis, bullets or numbering, and font size 11. Additionally, make the ad look like an editorial page to increase readership.

• For example, the following layout is effective because it includes a caption, uses black text on a white background, and uses a three-column layout that looks like an editorial page:

TV Advertising

TV advertising refers to commercials. There are six elements to consider when creating TV ads:

1. Structure. The following types of commercials are effective: “slice of life” (two actors argue about a product), expert or consumer testimonials, problem-solving product demonstrations, and “talking heads” (announcer talks about a product). Commercials that include unusual characters or that are funny, sentimental, fact-based, or newsworthy, are also effective.

2. Brand and product name. Mention your brand name early and often. It’s possible (and common) for people to remember commercials but not what they were for.

3. Visuals. Start strong with an imaginative, exciting, or unique scene, show someone using the product, and show the product and its packaging at the end. In food commercials, make the food look appetizing by showing food in motion (for example, pouring syrup over waffles) or using close-ups. Repeat an image in multiple commercials to associate it with your brand. This will help people remember your commercials, brand, and promise.

4. Sound. Use sound effects and avoid voiceovers. Music had no measurable effect, so take it or leave it.

5. Supers (text overlaid across the video). Use these to reiterate your message. Make sure that the titling matches the soundtrack word-for-word.

6. Costs. While Ogilvy hadn’t conducted any research on costs at the time of writing, he argues that the more money that’s spent on commercials, the less powerful they are. Reduce costs by cutting actors and unnecessary complications (like shooting on location).

Radio Advertising

At the time of the book’s publication, 6% of U.S. advertising was via radio and there was no way to measure the effectiveness of radio commercials. Ogilvy has the following five tips from a pilot study and his observations:

1. Make people listen and pay attention by being surprising, funny, or charming.
2. Talk to the audience as if you were having a conversation in person.
3. Mention the brand name and what the brand will do early in the commercial.
4. Repeat the brand name and the promise throughout the commercial.
5. Make multiple commercials because people typically listen to the radio for long periods and get annoyed when they hear the same thing over and over.

Specific Types of Advertising

There are four types of products, services, and companies that have some particular challenges:

1. Corporate advertising is advertising a company separately from its products or services, which can help companies improve their reputation, recruit talent, impress investors, and change legislation. Note that acquiring any of these benefits takes a longer-term commitment to advertising than product advertising does, and that legislative advertising isn’t considered a business expense by the IRS and many networks won’t run it.

2. Tourism advertising encourages travel to foreign countries. When advertising tourism, you’ll have to navigate politics (often the country that’s being advertised wants to present a different image than what tourists are most interested in) and misconceptions or stereotypes about the country.

3. Causes. Ads for causes or charities rarely bring in enough money to even pay for the space or time (though the government and some media outlets sometimes provide free space or time). Advertising for causes is more effective at raising awareness, which makes personal solicitation more likely to succeed.

• (Shortform example: If a person has already heard of the Red Cross, she’s more likely to donate when a volunteer comes to her door.)

4. Commodity products are industrial products, such as bolts or washers, that have nothing unique about them. The best way to advertise these is to differentiate your company rather than the product from your competitors—offer lower cost or better quality or service.

Industry Overview

Working in Advertising

First: If you’re not passionate about advertising, go do something else. Advertising pays well, but so do plenty of other professions that are easier and don’t require as much passion.

Ogilvy only ever worked in agencies, so this book only discusses agency work. Agencies hire for a variety of positions:

• Copywriters write the prose that appears in ads or the dialogue in TV commercials. They’re the most important (if not the most visible) people in agencies.
• Art directors are responsible for the images and visuals in advertising.
• Account executives act as a liaison with clients and make sure that everyone else in the agency is doing their jobs. Some of them mainly coordinate, but others are hands-on and come up with ideas.
• Researchers study what makes people read, watch, or remember ads, and what makes ads sell.
• People who work in the media department buy and negotiate for time and space in media outlets.
• Creative directors oversee the production of ads.
• CEOs are responsible for attracting new clients and running the day-to-day operations of an advertising agency.

Running an Advertising Agency

To run a successful agency, you need:

1. Talented, trained staff. Try to recruit people who are more skilled than you, smart, good at communicating in writing, and good at leadership. When considering your team as a whole, ensure you hire at least one person who will stir things up and challenge those who are more conventional, and ensure you hire people with a variety of talents so that your agency can produce different types of advertising.

2. A solid grip on office politics. Politics are common in advertising agencies because the atmosphere is so high-pressure. To keep politics from poisoning your agency, fire the worst offenders, force people to talk face-to-face, organize team-building opportunities, and be fair.

3. High standards of conduct. Demand that everyone be punctual, give top performance, meet deadlines, maintain client confidentiality, only buy clients’ products (it looks bad to use competitors’), and never complain about companies (they might remember your or your staff’s names and avoid your agency.)

4. A payment system. You can either charge fees for specific services or an overall commission (the agency is paid by the media outlet the client purchases advertising from).

5. Good investments. Ogilvy recommends you use your profit to open new offices, purchase your office building, or save for hard times. Investing in other companies or buying other agencies rarely pays off.

6. Clients. The best and easiest way to get new clients is to produce good advertising for the clients you already have. Then, you can show your successful work to other potential clients. There are three other ways to attract new clients:

1. Presentations. When a client is interested in your agency, give them a presentation to convince them they want to hire you. During the presentation, mix up the seating so that your team and the client’s team are integrated, don’t read off your notes (practice in advance), and admit your weaknesses before the client notices them (this will make it seem like you’re being honest about your strengths). The day after the presentation, send the clients a letter that summarizes why they should choose your agency.
2. Advertise your agency. The most effective way to advertise an agency is by mailing ads directly to clients. Space advertising can work too, but it needs to be done consistently to have any effect. (For example, Young & Rubicam advertised in Fortune for four decades.)
3. Sign up multinational accounts. If you can get an account that also advertises in foreign countries, you may have the opportunity to get the account worldwide.

Bad clients can do huge damage to your agency, so don’t take on just anyone, no matter how desperate you are. Be cautious of, avoid, or drop clients who can’t afford to pay you, have a different company culture, have potential but no current clout, are failing, or are bullies (your staff’s morale is more important than one client).

Finding an Agency

If you’re the leader of a company seeking an agency, start by looking through magazines and watching TV. When you encounter ads you envy, find out which agencies created them and start a list. Then, narrow down the list by striking off anyone who works for your competitors (they can’t take you on because it would be a conflict of interest).

Meet with the heads and creative directors of the remaining agencies and ask them to show you their six best print and TV ads.

Choose the agency whose campaigns are the most interesting. Offer to pay 1% more than the agency normally charges (this will get you better service) and sign a five-year contract (this will make the agency like you and prevent you from getting dropped if one of your competitors approaches the agency).

Public Opinion on Advertising

There are many critics of the advertising industry and adpeople. For example, Gallup found that in a survey of 24 professions, the public ranked adpeople as low as car salespeople and trade-union leaders when it came to honesty.

Here are some specific complaints about advertising and Ogilvy’s comments on their legitimacy:

1. Advertising is immoral and manipulative. Ogilvy argues that advertising is nothing more than a good way to sell and thinks its morality depends on what’s being advertised. He cited several examples of the positive effects of advertising, such as raising money for good causes. Additionally, at the time of writing, only two people had ever figured out how to manipulate audiences, and neither of them ever used their techniques.

2. Advertising is dishonest. Even if advertisers truly were as unscrupulous as the public seems to believe, it’s very hard to lie in advertisements. Ads are subject to many codes and go through several levels of approval before they’re allowed to run, including vetting by lawyers, the National Association of Broadcasters, and other organizations. Ads aimed at children are even more strictly regulated.

However, the one type of advertising that has no regulatory overview is political and governmental advertising. This is because political advertising is “protected speech” according to the First Amendment. Because there are no rules, political advertising can be dishonest.

3. Advertising convinces people to buy bad products. Perhaps advertising does occasionally convince someone to buy an inferior product, but it only works once. As soon as a consumer realizes that a product is bad, they’ll never buy it again.

4. Advertising is uninformative. Ogilvy agrees with this complaint—even though factual advertisements do better than ones caught up in slogan and design, at the time of writing, agencies were creating less informative ads.

5. Advertising interrupts. Ogilvy also agrees with this complaint. At the time of writing, the average U.S. household was exposed to 30,000 TV commercials a year and the Sunday edition of the New York Times had up to 350 pages of ads.

6. Billboards are dangerous and ugly. Ogilvy additionally agrees with this complaint. Billboards are distracting and cause vehicle accidents, and they clutter the scenery.

Part 1: Marketing and Research | Chapter 1: Marketing

After years of working as a salesman, copywriter, and adman, in 1949, David Ogilvy (1911-1999) started his own advertising agency. It became one of the most successful agencies in the world and in 1985, Ogilvy compiled his decades’ worth of experience into Ogilvy on Advertising.

In this summary, we’ll cover:

• Marketing and research
• Guidelines for creating effective print, TV, and radio advertisements
• An overview of the advertising industry
• Top advertisers

(Shortform note: Ogilvy on Advertising was originally written in 20 chapters. We’ve rearranged and combined chapters for concision and clarity.)

Selling Products

The ultimate goal of advertising is to sell products, but in fact, the best way to sell products isn’t to advertise them effectively—it’s to supply good products. In this part, we’ll look at how to set up products for success using marketing and research. In the next part, we’ll look at how to use this research to create effective advertising.

There are three considerations when it comes to marketing:

Product Considerations

Consideration #1: Quality. Improving the quality of your products (especially food products) will increase sales.

Consideration #2: Novelty. 80% of new products aimed at consumers fail. This is generally for two reasons:

1. They’re too outside-the-box. For example, when cold cereal first came out, it was too novel—people thought of cereal as a food that was hot.
2. They’re too similar to what already exists. If a new product has no distinguishable benefit from what already exists (whether that’s quality, price, convenience, and so on), people won’t be interested.

Products that are different versions of something that consumers are already familiar with tend to do well, such as disposable diapers or diet soda.

Consideration #3: Product names. Products that have good names sell better, and there are three kinds of names, each with its own advantages and disadvantages:

1. People’s names. These are hard to copy, are easy to remember, and imply that a person designed the product. For example, Ford and Veuve Clicquot are named after people.
2. Invented names. Since these made-up words are unfamiliar, it takes a long time to build up sales appeal. For example, Kodak and Kotex are invented names.
3. Explanatory names. These names describe what products are or do. They initially have sales appeal, but the disadvantage is that they’re too specific to be used for line extensions (creating new products under the same brand name). For example, Band-Aid is a descriptive name that only works for bandages. Dove, on the other hand, can be used for body soap, shampoos, dish soap, moisturizer, and so on.

Once you’ve chosen a name, do some further research on the following to determine the name’s effectiveness:

• Context. Names may not mean the same thing to consumers that you think they do, may be hard to pronounce, may be hard to remember, or may be similar to another name you’re not aware of.
• Packaging. If the name needs to be printed in large letters on the package, choose a short name.
• Meaning in other languages. If you’re going to use the same product name in all markets, make sure it doesn’t mean something offensive in a different language.

Audience Considerations

Consideration #1: Target audience. At the time of writing, it had become too expensive to aim brands at the public as a whole (for example, Tide is aimed at everyone) and easier to target more specific audiences (more and more cable channels were available). Even manufacturers with huge budgets started focusing on smaller audiences because it was more profitable.

Consideration #2: Top customers. A small percentage of customers is responsible for a large percentage of sales, so it pays to focus on these top customers. For example, 14% of gin drinkers drink 80% of gin.

Consideration #3: Consumer behavior. According to an advertising expert at the London Business School, consumers alternate buying four or five different brands of a particular product. To get a new product into a consumer’s repertory, the expert found that she needed to buy it within a year of its launch. Therefore, a successful launch is critical to sales.

The expert also discovered:

• People tend to buy things as a habit.
• Most brands have steady sales—people rarely add new brands to their repertory.
• People tend to ignore ads for things they aren’t already buying.

Therefore, you can increase your sales by convincing your current customers to buy your product more, even if you don’t get any new customers.

Sales Considerations

Consideration #1: Prioritization. It’s better to spend your time and money on the products that do well, rather than trying to save the products that are flopping.

Consideration #2: Promotions. Promotions only temporarily increase sales, and they rarely change brand preference. They can also set a precedent for future pricing and promotions. They’re not inherently problematic, but there are often more effective ways (such as advertising) to increase sales.

Consideration #3: Pricing. People judge products by their price and think more expensive products are of better quality. Ogilvy has seen evidence that people would rather have better products they have to pay more for. (This was contrary to popular belief at the time of writing, when marketers were scared to set their prices higher than their competitors’ and often created inferior products to keep costs down.)

• For example, during a study on inflation, the French government cut cheeses in half and sold one half for 37 centimes and the other half for 56 centimes. The 56 centime ones sold faster, even though they were exactly the same as the 37 centimes ones.

Consideration #4: Sales meetings. When holding sales meetings, book small rooms so that people have to crowd in and stand. This makes your meeting look popular and successful. Additionally in meetings, use as little technology as possible, because it’s prone to failing.

Chapter 2: Research

Now that we know the basics of marketing, we’ll look at using research to check if we’ve successfully applied them. We’ll also use this research to inform our advertising in Part 2.

Factors to Research

There are two things research can’t tell you, so you’ll have to use your judgment:

1. How to price your product. (At the time of writing, marketers just picked numbers and hoped they worked.)
2. Which campaigns will be most effective in the long term.

However, when it comes to other factors, research can tell you a lot:

Product Factors

Factor #1: Product development. Studying your competitors’ test markets, profit margin, and cost of goods can tell you what kinds of products do well.

Factor #2: Early consumer feedback. Research can tell you what people think of a product before you manufacture it. If there’s little interest, you can abandon the project before investing too much money into it.

Factor #3: Product quality. Once your product is available for sale, research can tell you what consumers think of it compared to the competitor’s products. If they don’t like your product best, you can ask your R&D to improve it.

Factor #4: Important features. Research will tell you what people consider when deciding whether or not to buy your product.

Factor #5: Extras. Research can predict which smells, colors, flavors, and recipes will be most popular.

Factor #6: Packaging. Research will tell you which package designs are likely to attract the most attention. Additionally, it can tell you if your package is so hard to open that it discourages people from buying it.

Factor #7: Vocabulary. Research can find out what vocabulary people use when talking about products in your category.

Factor #8: Line extension. Research will tell you what additional products might do well under the same brand name.

• For example, after Dove became a successful body soap, Lever Brothers considered what else they might associate the brand name with. Their research accurately discovered that dish soap was most likely to be successful.

Factor #9: Fall from grace. Research can alert you when customers lose interest in your product.

• For example, if you change an ingredient and public opinion of your product drops, research will alert you.

Company Factors

Factor #1: Reputation. Research will tell you what consumers, politicians, media, and groups think of your company.

Economic Factors

Factor #1: Projected sales and advertising expenses. Mathematical models can tell you how much you’ll need to spend on advertising to make the most profit.

Factor #2: Premiums. Research will tell you which premiums (promotional items) people prefer.

• For example, Shell considered 35 different premiums, and their research revealed that steak knives would be most popular.

Advertising Factors

Some adpeople dislike research because they think it stifles creativity. Ogilvy, on the other hand, found that it inspired good ideas and legitimized the most outlandish ones.

• For example, when Ogilvy wanted to write headlines that advertised France in French, everyone thought this would be a disaster, but research showed that it would be effective.

Here are the advertising factors to consider researching:

Factor #1: Promise. Promise is what people most want your product to help them achieve. It’s one of the most important parts of advertising, and Ogilvy believes determining it is the most valuable contribution research can make. You can research promise in two ways:

1. In a survey, show consumers a list of promises for new products and ask which they think are most important and unique.
2. Use a split-run test: Write two ads with two different promises. At the end of both, offer a free sample. Run the ad somewhere that allows you to show one ad to half the circulation and the other ad to the other half. Whichever promise results in more requests for free samples is the more effective one.

Factor #2: Target audience. Research can tell you if you’ve successfully predicted who will be most interested in your product.

Factor #3: Clarity. Research will tell you if your ads are saying what you think they are.

Factor #4: Readership and recall. Research will tell you what parts of your ads people read and remember.

Factor #5: Expiration. Research will tell you when consumers are tired of hearing about a particular theme.

• For example, for five years, Shell advertised good mileage. When research indicated people were no longer interested in mileage, Shell switched to giving testimonials.

Using Research

Research not only helps you create good marketing and advertising—it can also help you win arguments. For example, when Ogilvy was working with British Travel, the chairman wanted to feature trout fishing in a tourism ad. Ogilvy got him to change his mind by showing him research that had determined American tourists weren’t interested in trout fishing in the slightest.

Sometimes, however, people can be resistant to research, particularly if they don’t like what it says. (For example, one of Ogilvy’s clients spent $600,000 developing a product before having research done. Research revealed that the target audience wasn’t interested. The client called Ogilvy a “dry hole” and left the meeting). You can make research look more official and weighty by involving a graphic designer and printing a hard copy of the report rather than sending a typewritten memo listing the findings.

Finally, sometimes research falls victim to confirmation bias—people only pay attention to the research that supports their existing position.

Effective Surveying

Much marketing and advertising research comes from surveying, and there are three things to keep in mind to get accurate results:

Consideration #1: Sample Sizes

In some cases, small samples and ballpark findings are all you need. (Shortform example: If you want to know how many people understand the word “pyrrhic,” if the first five people you ask don’t, you’ve got your answer—you don’t need anything statistically significant to determine that you should choose a more common word.)

In other cases, particularly for trends, you do need large samples, strict methodology, and statistically significant results.

Consideration #2: Dishonesty

Some interviewers don’t like talking to strangers and instead fill out the surveys themselves. Other times, respondents lie to interviewers. To manage the second problem:

1. Ask a potential interviewee a question to judge their honesty.

• For example, Ogilvy always asked people what they’d rather hear on the radio, a Shakespeare play or Jack Benny. Anyone who answered Shakespeare wasn’t interviewed because she was likely a liar.

2. Frame the question in a way that doesn’t prompt a particular response.

• For example, when Gone With the Wind became a bestselling book, it was difficult to find out how many people had read it because almost everyone who was asked said yes because it was embarrassing to admit they hadn’t read it. Asking people if they planned to read it, however, made the results more accurate—anyone who answered that they planned to read it hadn’t already done so, and the people who had read it would say so.

Consideration #3: Children

Children can be difficult to survey and include in research because they don’t understand complicated questions, have trouble speaking articulately, and tend to give you the answer they think you want. There are three ways to more accurately get their opinions:

1. Use games. Show a commercial to children, and then ask them to play games that demonstrate what they understood from it. For example, ask them to act like the characters in the commercial or describe the commercial on a toy telephone. This will help you find out what they thought the commercial was trying to say and what they liked or disliked about the characters.

2. Compare the product and commercial. Show a commercial to children, and ask them what they liked about the product. Then, show them the physical product, and ask what they like. If the answers are wildly different, you probably have a communication problem.

• (Shortform example: Say you show children a water gun commercial and 10% of them say they like how far the gun can shoot. When actually given the gun to play with, 70% of them like how far it can shoot. Your commercial isn’t effectively communicating this attractive feature.)

3. Circle test. Give children a piece of paper that shows four toys and get them to circle the one they want. Then, show them your commercial. Then, tell them some children forgot to put their names on the first piece of paper, so you’d like them to redo the circling. If your product is circled more the second time, then you know your commercial is persuasive.

Nine Pitfalls

There are nine pitfalls to avoid when it comes to doing or directing research:

1. Taking too long. To be useful, research must produce data within days or weeks, not months. Don’t be so scared of making a mistake that your work drags on. For example, when Ogilvy ran the Audience Research Institute, statisticians wanted two months to complete a report. Ogilvy made them do it in two days because he needed the information fast.
2. Disputing methodology. This is a waste of time. For example, 21 agencies took two years to decide on the principles for copy-testing.
3. Getting distracted. Researchers tend to be intellectual and more interested in other subjects besides advertising. Keep them focused on advertising.
4. Bad filing. If people can’t find research that’s been conducted (or even remember it was conducted, if the players have left the company), then people waste time redoing the same research.
5. Focusing on fads. Fads can be useful, but they never last, so focus on information that will be useful long term.
6. Making reports too long and complicated. The average person can’t understand many researchers’ graphs.
7. Being perfectionists. Researchers tend to refuse projects they can’t do perfectly.
8. Not taking initiative. Most researchers need a constant stream of orders and directions to get anything done.
9. Use of jargon. Avoid words such as “sub-optimal” or “attitudinal paradigms.” Not only will people not know what you mean, but they’ll also be annoyed at the pretentiousness.

Part 2: The Craft of Advertising | Chapter 3: Creating Good Ads

In the previous part, we looked at how to make advertising easier for ourselves by producing a good product and doing research. In this part, we’ll look at how to create good ads. In this chapter, we’ll look at some general guidelines, and in subsequent chapters, we’ll look at instructions for specific media and specific types of products.

Increasing Profit

While advertising has many benefits, such as reminding the public of your company name and helping you get distribution, the primary goal of advertising is to increase profit. Effective advertising can be very effective—one copywriter found that a good ad sold almost 20 times as much as a bad one. (In contrast, bad advertising can be so ineffective it actually harms sales—for example, when Ford advertised in every second issue of Reader’s Digest, the people who had seen the ads bought fewer vehicles than those who hadn’t.)

To increase profit, ads must promise the consumer a benefit, and ads that don’t do this, regardless of how attractive or creative they are, will fail.

• For example, one agency that won an advertising industry Clio award for creativity went out of business, and another winner lost the account whose advertisement won the award.

Even if products sell well on their own, good advertising can increase profit.

• For example, Listerine sold perfectly well for 40 years. But when it was advertised as a cure for bad breath, sales exploded.

Steps to Creating Good Ads

There are some steps for creating a good ad regardless of the medium:

1. Learn about the product. It’ll be easier to make associations and come up with potential benefits when you have a solid knowledge base.

• For example, Ogilvy read about Rolls-Royce cars for three weeks before starting work on its campaign. As a result, he was able to write factual, informative ads and highlight special features.

2. Study your competitor’s ads. When you come across effective ads, study and copy the techniques used. Particularly study direct-response ads (ads that encourage consumers to contact a company directly to make a purchase) because these tend to be tested extensively.

3. Engage in consumer research. In particular, try to find out what product promise will most appeal to consumers.

4. Position your product. To “position,” determine what the product does and who the target audience is.

• (Shortform example: A pair of running shoes could be positioned as essential equipment for athletes, or a fashion accessory for teens.)

5. Choose a brand image. “Image” is the personality of a product, which stems from its inherent qualities as well as marketing variables such as price, packaging, and advertising style. Typically, cultivating a high-quality image works well, especially for products that are used in public. If your advertising is tacky or cheap, it will make your product look tacky and cheap, and people don’t want to be associated with these qualities.

• For example, Jack Daniel’s, Grand Dad, and Taylor whiskey all taste very similar. However, people who prefer one over the other do so because they like the image that’s associated with the brand. For instance, Jack Daniel’s projects an image of quality (it’s expensive).

6. Come up with big ideas. Big ideas will hook readers or viewers. They’re very hard to come up with—Ogilvy only had 20 throughout his entire career. Induce ideas by doing your research and then letting your mind unconsciously connect ideas as you go for a walk, drink, or take a bath.

In addition to being hard to come up with, big ideas are also hard to recognize, but if you can answer yes to the following questions, you’re on the right track:

• Is the idea idiosyncratic?
• Does it provoke gasps?
• Will it make other advertisers jealous?
• Does it mesh with the company’s growth strategy?
• Will it still be effective three decades from now? (Even running for five years is impressive.)

7. Spotlight the product and make it the star. If there’s nothing different or unique about your product compared to your competitors’ (for example, you sell table salt), make your advertising itself unique, or be extra clear and convincing. (You don’t have to convince people that your product is the best, you just have to convince them that it’s good. If you do this and explain yourself better than everyone else, it doesn’t matter if their product is better—people who are uncertain or confused will buy yours.)

8. Avoid working in committees. Committees tend to overcomplicate things and require compromise, and as a result, the final ad tends to say nothing of importance. Committees also slow down creation—it can take a committee up to half a year to come up with an agreed-upon campaign.

How Long Should You Run Your Ads?

Reuse your ads until they stop selling your product. You can usually repeat an ad at least four times without decreasing readership. This is because consumers aren’t all looking for the same product at the same time—the people who bought cars last year aren’t the same people looking for a car this year.

Two Audiences

In the following chapters, we’ll look at strategies for advertising products and services to two audiences:

• Consumers. When advertising to consumers, the goal is to make a sale.
• Businesses (called business-to-business, trade, or industrial advertising). When advertising to a business, ads rarely close sales, so it’s more effective to use them as a stepping stone to create interest and attract qualified customers. 60% of specifiers—the people who decide what to purchase—read ads to decide what’s available and what they require.

(Shortform note: Ogilvy writes that most of the strategies that work for consumers also work for businesses. We’ve denoted the ones he specifically mentions for both business and consumer advertising with asterisks (*).)

Chapter 4: Print Advertising

Print advertising refers to ads that are placed on posters, in magazines, or in newspapers. At the time of the book’s writing, print advertising had some advantages over other mediums:

• Cost-effectiveness. To reach one customer via print advertising, it cost 17 cents. (To reach one customer through a salesperson’s call, it cost $178.)
• Less competition. At the time of writing, TV advertising was becoming more popular and glamorous than print advertising. This meant that there was a shortage of people who really understood print advertising, so even if you only learned the basics, you could outcompete.
• Universality. Some companies, such as cigarette manufacturers, weren’t allowed to advertise on TV, but anything was permitted in print.

The effectiveness of print advertising is measured by how many people read and remember the ads.

There are five elements to consider when creating print ads:

Element #1: Headline

The headline is the most important part of a print ad because 80% of people read only the headline, not the ad’s copy. Headlines that don’t name the product or what it will do are recalled 20% less often than the average recall. To make your headline effective:

Tip #1: *Offer a benefit. Headlines that include a benefit are read by 400% more people than the ones that don’t.

• (Shortform example: If you sell face cream, use a headline that promises good skin, such as “Make Your Skin Softer.”)

Tip #2: *Offer information. Ads with helpful information get 75% more readers than ads that only talk about products.

• For example, an ad for the cleaning product Rinso gave instructions for how to remove a variety of common stains using Rinso.

Tip #3: *Contain news about a product. Ads with news are recalled 22% more often than ads without it. The news can be that there’s a new product, or that an old product has a new use or has been updated. News is especially effective for business advertising because people want to find out about new products. According to a McGraw-Hill study, ads about new products get better responses than articles about new products in journals.

• For example, baking soda, an old product for baking, was advertised with news about it also working as a fridge deodorizer.

Tip #4: Include your brand name. Otherwise, the 80% of people who don’t read the copy won’t know what the ad is for.

Tip #5: Use buzzwords. There are certain words, such as “amazing” or “suddenly,” that will always grab the reader’s attention.

Tip #6: Target your audience. If your product is niche, name your audience to attract their attention.

• For example, if you sell asthma inhalers, put the word “asthma” in the headline.

Tip #7: Mention the name of the city if you’re advertising in a local paper. People are interested in things that are happening in their region.

Tip #8: Make the headline only as long as it needs to be. The research on headline length is conflicting—some sources found the short headlines sold more; others found that headlines with 10 words sold more. Therefore, use whatever length is appropriate for your ad.

• For example, a Volkswagen ad about quality control used the one-word headline “Lemon” to describe the cars that didn’t pass inspection. “Lemon” made its way into popular usage and is commonly used to describe a bad car.

Tip #9: Be specific. Specifics are more persuasive and memorable.

• For example, when advertising Sears’s low prices, Ogilvy wrote that Sears’s profit was less than 5%, rather than “lower than you’d think.”

Tip #10: Put the headline in quotes. This makes people remember the ad 28% more often.

Tip #11: Use words that generate emotions.

• For example, one psychologist found that people reacted to the word “darling,” so Ogilvy used it in an ad.

Tip #12: Don’t use puns or wordplay. This can confuse readers.

Element #2: Imagery

Good imagery is more expensive, but it’s worth the investment because it sells more.

Tip #1: Choose a good subject for a photo or image. Ideally, pick something that makes a reader curious or starts a story. If readers have questions about a photo, or the story it starts, they’ll read your ad to find answers. If your product doesn’t suggest a story, make the product itself the central image. Either way, make sure it’s clear what the subject of the photo is.

• For example, an ad for shirt manufacturer Hathaway had the subject wearing an eyepatch, which created story appeal by making the viewer wonder what the story behind it was:

Tip #2: Focus the image on one person. People are more interested in close-ups than in crowd scenes.

Tip #3: Use before-and-after photos. When Gallup studied 70 campaigns that used these types of photos, all of them increased sales.

Tip #4: Use photos instead of drawings. Photos are more credible, easier to remember, and increase readership. There are two exceptions:

• If you’re advertising in a newspaper with low-quality printing, you might try a line drawing instead.
• If something is impossible to photograph (like a cross-section of a product), use drawings if the image is crucial.

Tip #5: Use photos of well-known characters from your TV ads. This will help people remember your print ads.

Tip #6: Don’t enlarge human faces. Readers find this creepy.

Tip #7: Don’t use historical subjects. Most readers find them boring.

Tip #8: Don’t assume everyone shares your interests. Your own experiences will make you think things are interesting that other people couldn’t care less about.

• For example, because Ogilvy was a chef, he thought everyone was interested in chefs, so he included them in an ad. It turned out that his target audience, homemakers, wasn’t interested in chefs.

Tip #9: For consumers, use universally loved images, such as images of cute babies or animals, or sexy images (but don’t be gratuitous). Don’t do this in business advertising—you don’t have to catch people’s attention in business advertising because they intentionally look at ads. While a business product may seem boring to a copywriter, it might be interesting to a company because it’s exactly what they need to solve their problem.

• For example, chemical company Hercules ineffectively used a photo of women dancing, when it should have focused on the copolymers it advertised:

Tip #10: Be culturally sensitive. Choose images that are appropriate for the target audience’s sensibilities. For example, few Parisians are offended by images of half-naked women, but a subway ad of a topless woman probably wouldn’t go over well in South Dakota.

Tip #11: Use images of the people who resemble your target audience. This will make people of that audience pay more attention because the person in the ad is relatable.

• For example, if your product is aimed at men, use an image of a man.

Tip #12: *Print in color. In consumer publications, printing in color is half again more expensive than black and white, but 100% more memorable. In business publications, color is only a third again more expensive and doubles your readership.

Tip #13: If the client doesn’t like your ad, first, try enlarging their logo. Next, use an image of their workplace. Only as a last resort use a photo of the client.

Tip #14: When using images of food, show the final dish, not the ingredients. More people will read the ad if the photo is of the finished product.

Element #3: Copy

Copy is the body text of an ad. On average, only 5% of consumers will read body copy. When it comes to businesses, around 10% of trade journal readers read the copy. These readers will be people who are interested in your product, or who you’ve successfully drawn in with your photo and headline.

To write good copy and maintain your readers’ interest:

Tip #1: Use the second person singular. People don’t want to be addressed as if they were in a crowd—when they read, they’re alone.

Tip #2: Be interesting. Bored people won’t buy a product. Toilet humor is fine, but don’t make fun of religious figures (some people will find it funny, but others will be shocked).

Tip #3: Keep the writing simple. Use short paragraphs, short sentences, and everyday diction. This is especially important for mail-order copy.

• For example, when Ogilvy was writing a soap ad, he first included the word “obsolete,” but few people in his target audience knew what it meant. He ultimately used “old-fashioned.”

Tip #4: Write a story, not an essay.

• For example, one Zippo ad told the story of a lighter that had been found in the belly of a fish and still worked.

Tip #5: *Be specific. Explain what the product does. Particularly when advertising to businesses, give stats such as percentages or cost savings.

Tip #6: Don’t use analogies. They confuse people.

• For example, if you try to compare your product to a Rembrandt because they’re both masterpieces, people will think you’re selling Rembrandts.

Tip #7: Don’t use superlatives. No one believes them.

• For example, if you claim your product is “the most popular in the country,” no one will be convinced.

Tip #8: *Use testimonials, ideally from consumers or experts. Readers remember ads with celebrity testimonials, but they remember the celebrity, not the product, and they’re usually suspicious that the celebrity has been paid to say nice things. Additionally, you can sometimes frame an entire ad around a testimonial.

• Consumer example: Ogilvy wrote an ad about how Austin cars had saved an anonymous diplomat so much money, he could afford to send his son to private school. (However, an editor eventually found out that the “anonymous diplomat” was Ogilvy, and he had to send his son to a different school.)
• Business example: Tugboat engineers were impressed by a testimonial from Bud Dacus because he was well-known in the industry and had been working on the Mississippi for 25 years.

Tip #9: Write about sales and special offers. Consumers remember these ads better.

Tip #10: Include prices. If you don’t, readers will be too shy to go to a store and ask, and they’ll never buy the product.

Tip #11: Sign the copy with the agency’s name. While many people oppose this, because a client is paying to advertise themselves, not their agency, Ogilvy has found that agencies make better ads when they’re forced to put their names on them.

Tip #12: *Use long copy (more than 350 words). Long copy allows you to include extra facts and suggests that you have important things to say. Long copy is especially valuable for business advertising (because there’s often a lot to talk about) or for expensive products. Make sure your first paragraph contains a hook.

• For example, Louis Engel wrote an almost 6,500-word ad for Merrill Lynch. It didn’t even include a coupon and it received 10,000 responses.

Element #4: Coupon

After reading the headline, many readers skip the copy and look for the coupon or special offer. Therefore, the coupons should contain all the important information including a small image, the promise, and the brand name.

To encourage people to return coupons (one survey found that twice as many people intend to mail the coupon as actually do), create a sense of time pressure by writing in the coupon that a particular edition of the product is limited, the supply is limited, the price will be going up shortly, or that there’s a special price for responding quickly.

Keep the coupon layout simple—Ogilvy has found that this increases response.

Element #5: Layout

The layout is the placement of the above four elements on the page. The goal of layout is to make it as easy as possible for a reader to understand your ad, not to create something that’s pretty. First, we’ll look at some general information about layout. Then, we’ll look at how it specifically applies to different print media.

General Guidelines

To make your ads as legible as possible:

Tip #1: Don’t set your headlines or ads in all-caps. All-caps are hard to read because without changes in letter height, it’s hard to recognize words, and people tend to read letter by letter, which is slower.

• For example, this ad for ABN bank is very hard to read:

Tip #2: Don’t overlay your headlines on illustrations. This makes them hard to read.

Tip #3: Don’t put periods at the end of your headlines. This will make people stop reading.

Tip #4: Make your text block approximately 40 characters wide. This is how wide newspaper columns are and people find this width easy to read.

Tip #5: Use fonts that people are familiar with, such as Jenson, Baskerville, Caslon, or Century.

Tip #6: Use serif fonts (fonts that have small strokes attached to the end of larger strokes of letters). They’re easier to read because they help the eye distinguish between letters.

Tip #7: Keep your margins consistent. Don’t try to make shapes with the text because it makes the text less legible.

• For example, these ads are hard to read:

Tip #8: Set your text in black on a white background. The opposite, white on black, is hard to read. (The only exception is if your ad will be read in a dark place with a single light source, such as a theater, because in this case, white on black is more legible.)

Tip #9: If your copy is long:

• Put a two-line subhead between your headline and the copy. This will encourage the reader to continue on.
• Use drop-caps (the first letter is larger than the rest of the text). This increases readership by approximately 13%.
• Keep the first paragraph shorter than 11 words.
• Include a subheading every two or three inches to create some white space and make the text look more approachable. Subheads should contain enough information that if a reader only reads them and not the copy, the reader will still understand the gist of the story. Additionally, make some of the subheadings questions. These encourage the reader to continue reading.
• Don’t use justified alignment or try to have every column finish at the bottom of the page. Short lines improve readership.
• Emphasize important paragraphs by setting them in italic or bold.
• Use bullets, asterisks, arrows, or marginal marks to make the text look more accessible and therefore increase readership.
• Number lists of facts rather than trying to awkwardly link them together with connectives.
• Use 11-point text (font size 11).
• Include extra line spacing between paragraphs. This increases readership by approximately 12%.

Magazine and Newspaper Ads

To increase the effectiveness of magazine and newspaper ads specifically:

Tip #1: Put the elements of the ad in the natural reading order. Put the image at the top, the headline below it, and the copy below the headline. If you put these elements in any other order, reading feels unnatural and readership declines (for example, when the headline is above the image, 10% fewer people read the headline.)

Tip #2: *Include the brand name and what the product will do in the caption. More people read captions than the copy.

Tip #3: *Make the ad look like an editorial page. 600% more people read editorial pages than read ads. To do this:

• Prioritize text over images.
• Set the copy in a serif font.
• Use a three-column layout, with each column being 35-45 characters long.
• Include captions for all images.
• Use drop-caps.
• Use black text on a white background.
• If a publication insists you include the word “advertisement” on the ad, make it as hard to read as possible by setting it in all-caps, italic, and in reverse type.

Here’s an example of what looks like the front page of a newspaper but in fact is an ad:

Tip #4: *Don’t set the headline too large. It should be readable at 20 inches away.

Tip #5: Avoid two-page spread ads. Spreads cost twice as much as single-page ads and rarely get twice as much response—the Starch Readership Service found that spreads only got a 28% higher rating than single pages. Therefore, it’s almost always a better use of your money to buy twice as many single-page ads instead. Only use spreads if your product is long and you can’t fit a photo of it on a single page, or if your product is low interest—extra space benefits low-interest products more than high-interest ones because it makes low-interest products seem more enticing than they actually are.

• For example, this hammer is long and wouldn’t fit on a single page, so a two-page ad is appropriate:

Tip #6: Use call-outs if you have a lot of sales points. Call-outs are short blocks of text that are connected to a specific part of an image by a line or arrow.

• For example, Aspercreme communicated several sales points in this ad using call-outs:

Tip #7: Create templates. Once you come up with a layout that works, keep using it.

• For example, Ogilvy used one of the following two layouts in all his ads:

Tip #8: Don’t use trademarks. Trademarks were originally invented when everyone was illiterate and the only way people could recognize brands was by looking at symbols. Now that people can read, including symbols is a dead giveaway that the page is an ad, and it creates clutter.

Posters and Billboards

At the time of this book’s publication, there had been little research on posters, so Ogilvy only has a few general tips:

Tip #1: Create a “visual scandal” by using an image that’s intriguing or surprising.

• For example, an adhesive company glued a car to their billboard to show how powerful the glue was.

Tip #2: Use both the image and words to show what the product does.

Tip #3: Set the type as large as possible.

Tip #4: Use strong colors.

Tip #5: Don’t use more than three design elements.

Subway Ads

Ogilvy has one tip for subway ads: Use long copy. Only 15% of subway riders in New York bring something to read, so everyone else who didn’t bring material will read your copy. The average person spends 21 minutes on the subway, which gives them lots of time.

Exercise: Write an Effective Headline

Because 80% of people read only the headline of advertisements, not the copy, the headline must communicate well.

• Think of a product you’re about to start advertising (if nothing comes to mind, imagine you’re advertising a Volkswagen Beetle). What benefit could this product offer the consumer?

• What useful, product-associated information could your headline offer? (For example, an ad for the cleaning product Rinso gave instructions on how to remove stains.)

• Who is your target audience? What vocabulary could you use to catch their attention? (For example, if you sell asthma inhalers, put the word “asthma” in the headline.)

• How could you make your headline more specific? (For example, when advertising Sears’s low prices, Ogilvy wrote that Sears’s profit was less than 5%, rather than “lower than you’d think.”)

Exercise: Assess Ads

There are some universal guidelines for producing good ads.

• What does the ad below do well? Why? (Consider the headline, imagery, copy, and layout.)

  

• What does the ad below do poorly? Why?

  

Chapter 5: TV and Radio Advertising

Like print, TV and radio ads are effective for advertising to both consumers and businesses. (Many businesspeople watch sports and news.)

There are two specific things to keep in mind when advertising to businesses on TV:

1. If the product is too complicated to explain in 30 seconds, make a longer commercial and air it less frequently.
   • For example, one IBM computer ad was three minutes long.
2. Inexpensive commercials can be just as effective as expensive ones.

TV Advertising

In this section, we’ll first look at some effective and ineffective types of commercials before moving on to tips. There are two ways to measure effectiveness—Ogilvy uses the first because it’s more accurate:

1. Changes in brand preference (which brand someone chooses to buy). Ads that make people change their brand preference increase sales three times more than those that don’t.

2. Recall (how well someone remembers an ad). Most advertisers test for recall, but this measure has several flaws:

• Recall doesn’t affect brand preference or sales—people can remember ads but still choose not to buy a product.
• Copywriters can influence recall scores. For example, showing something outlandish, like a gorilla in a jockstrap, will probably make people remember the ad, but it may not encourage them to buy the product.
• Recall tests are better at measuring people’s ability to articulate their memories than measuring what they actually remember.

Effective Commercials

Ten types of commercials are more effective than average at changing brand preference:

Type #1: *Funny commercials. In the past, humor didn’t sell because people were more interested in what benefits they could get from a product, but at the time of writing, as long as humor supported the product’s promise, it was becoming effective. However, it’s very hard to write funny commercials, and botched attempts are so clumsy that if you’re not an expert, you shouldn’t try.

Type #2: “Slice of life.” In these commercials, two actors argue about a product, and by the end of the commercial, one has convinced the other that the product has merit. Slices of life are common and often cheesy, but they work.

Type #3: Testimonials. In these commercials, someone talks about how good your product is or how it has changed their life. The best testimonials are given by consumers who don’t know they’re being filmed, and you can encourage a vehement response by asking your actor to criticize your product.

• For example, in one Shell commercial, an announcer explains that an actor is going to discourage customers from buying Super Shell. Then, the actor bad-mouths Super Shell to a customer named Mrs. Longo. He says that she probably gets bad mileage, and she counters that she gets great mileage.

Type #4: *Demonstrations. These commercials show how well your product works. (Note: If you want to demonstrate that your product is better than competitors’, that’s fine, but don’t name their brands. People are less likely to believe your ad and more likely to be confused about which company the ad is actually for.)

• For example, in a commercial for paperboard, International Paper built a canyon bridge out of paperboard and drove a truck over it. This demonstrated how strong the board was.

Type #5: Problem-solve. These commercials show a problem and how your product will fix it.

• For example, in a commercial for Train matches, a man tries to strike “regular” matches in a humid climate and they don’t catch. Then, his wife gives him Train matches, and they strike perfectly.

Type #6: “Talking heads.” In these commercials, an announcer talks about how wonderful a product is. This type of commercial is especially good for introducing new products and while adpeople think they’re uncreative, they work.

Type #7: Unusual characters. Characters are recognizable people who symbolize your product.

• For example, the baker “Titus Moody” was once a recognizable character in Pepperidge Farm commercials.

Type #8: Fact-based. These commercials objectively explain the benefits of a product.

• For example, Maxim Instant Coffee used a fact-based commercial to explain that their coffee was excellent because it was freeze-dried. Freeze-drying intrigued many people.

Type #9: *News. These commercials share new or updated information, such as the release of a new product, or an update of an old one.

Type #10: Sentimentality. These commercials use charm and nostalgia and are especially effective for products that aren’t unique. However, they must be accompanied by a reason why a viewer should let their emotions make a decision.

• For example, one beer commercial talked about brewing in the traditional way and showed images of a traditional ranching lifestyle to create a positive feeling of nostalgia.

Ineffective Commercials

Three types of commercials are below average when it comes to causing people to change brands:

Type #1: Celebrity endorsements. In these commercials, celebrities talk about why they like products. These are ineffective for two reasons: 1) people remember the celebrity, not the product, and 2) people suspect that the celebrity has been paid to say nice things about a product, so they may not be objective.

• For example, when Ogilvy hired Eleanor Roosevelt to make a margarine commercial for $35,000, the public sent mail telling her she’d damaged her reputation.

Type #2: Cartoons. While animated commercials can work on children, they’re ineffective on adults because they’re less attention-grabbing and convincing than real people.

• For example, a fabric-softener company ran two commercials, one that was animated and one that used live-action. The live-action one increased sales while the cartoon one had no effect.

Type #3: Vignettes accompanied by music. These might be visually entertaining, but they don’t sell.

Fifteen Tips for Creating Effective Commercials

In addition to choosing an effective structure and format for your commercials, you can improve their reach and pull using the following tips:

Tip #1: Emphasize your brand’s name. It’s very possible (and common) for people to remember commercials but not what they were for. Often, they even think the commercial was for a competing brand. To emphasize your brand’s name:

• Mention it within the first 10 seconds of the commercial and repeat it. For example, one approximately five-and-a-half-minute commercial mentioned the brand name 20 times.
• Spell the brand’s name. For example, in a commercial for Cresta Blanca, a blind pianist spelled out the name as he played.

Tip #2: Show the package on-screen. At the end of the commercial, show the product.

Tip #3: In food commercials, make the food look appetizing. You can do this by showing food in motion (for example, pouring syrup over waffles) or using close-ups.

Tip #4: Start strong. Show something exciting in the very first frame to grab people’s attention.

• For example, if the commercial is for fire extinguishers, the first frame might show fire.

Tip #5: Music isn’t necessary. Background music has no measurable effect on changing brand preference, and while some consumers like jingles, research shows that they’re below average in effectiveness. If you do choose to use a jingle (perhaps you have nothing to say about your product), test it on people to make sure the enunciation is clear enough to understand.

Tip #6: Use sound effects. These increase effectiveness.

• For example, a Maxwell House commercial that used percolating sound effects was so successful it ran for five years.

Tip #7: Avoid voiceovers. People stay more engaged if actors talk on camera.

Tip #8: Use supers (text overlaid on the video). This reiterates your message. Make sure that the titling matches the soundtrack word-for-word.

Tip #9: Use images that stand out. Happy families and sunsets are overused, and people are exposed to so many commercials that if they don’t see something fresh, they’ll just tune it out.

• For example, one Merrill Lynch commercial featured a novel scene—a herd of bulls charging at the camera.

Tip #10: Don’t change scenes too often. This can confuse viewers.

Tip #11: Use a motif. Repeat an image in multiple commercials to associate it with your brand. This will help people remember your commercials, brand, and promise.

• For example, in Shell commercials, cars drove through paper barriers.

Tip #12: Show someone using the product, and ideally, the results that product will produce.

• (Shortform example: If you’re selling vacuums, show how well they clean up a mess.)

Tip #13: Use your imagination. You can do almost anything on TV because of special effects, so think big.

Tip #14: Be clear. One study of 25 commercials found that none of them was understood by more than 81% of viewers. Make sure your commercial says what you think it does.

Tip #15: Reduce costs by cutting actors, unnecessary complications, and things that won’t be visible to the audience. While Ogilvy didn’t conduct any research on costs, he believes that the more money that’s spent on commercials, the less powerful they are.

• Example #1: Cutting an actor will save between $350-$10,000.
• (Shortform Example #2: If a table isn’t quite right for a scene, don’t spend money on a new one—cover it with a tablecloth so it won’t be visible to the audience.)

Radio Advertising

At the time of the book’s publication, 6% of U.S. advertising was via radio, and there was no way to measure the effectiveness of radio commercials. Ogilvy offers the following five tips from a pilot study and his observations:

1. Make people listen and pay attention by being surprising, funny, or charming.
2. Talk to the audience as if you were having a conversation in person.
3. Mention the brand name and what the brand will do early in the commercial.
4. Repeat the brand name and the promise throughout the commercial.
5. Make multiple commercials because people typically listen to the radio for long periods and get annoyed when they hear the same thing over and over.

Exercise: Brainstorm an Effective TV Ad

Some types of commercials are more effective than others.

• Think of a product you’re about to start advertising (if nothing comes to mind, imagine you’re selling a Volkswagen Beetle). What type of commercial (for example, talking heads or a celebrity testimonial) would you use? Why?

• How could you emphasize your brand’s name in the commercial? (For example, mention it often or spell it out.)

• Would you use music or sound effects? Why or why not?

• How could you reduce costs? (For example, consider cutting actors or filming in a studio rather than on location.)

Exercise: Assess Ads Again

There are some universal guidelines for producing good TV ads.

• What does this Federal Express commercial do well? Why? (Consider the format, imagery, use of supers, and so on.)

• What does this Aveeno commercial do poorly? Why?

Chapter 6: Specific Types of Advertising

In the previous chapters, we looked at some general guidelines for advertising in different media. Now, we’ll look at advertising some types of products, services, and companies that require a special touch.

Type #1: Corporate Advertising

Corporate advertising is advertising a company separately from its products or services. This type of advertising can help companies:

• Increase employee morale. People like it when other people have heard of the company they work for.
• Improve public opinion. People who know more about companies are likely to have better opinions of them.
• Recruit top talent. People need to know your company exists to want to work for it.
• Win takeover bids. Companies with good images are more likely to be chosen.
• Impress investors. For example, a Northwestern University study found that on average, corporate advertising improved stock prices by 2%.

Getting these benefits requires a long-term commitment.

• Example #1: When public opinion of Texaco dropped because someone accused them of selling to Nazis, they ran radio ads that told people they sponsored the Metropolitan Opera. It took a long time to change their image from conspirators to arts supporters.
• Example #2: DuPont has been advertising itself for 47 years.

When creating corporate advertising, use the guidelines in previous chapters, and avoid the following specific pitfalls:

• Bad crafting. Many companies choose interchangeable slogans and place them at the bottom of ads, where no one looks.
  • For example, the slogan “THE company” could refer to any company in the world. (It belonged to Textron.)
• Underfunding. Often, the CEO is the only person at a company who supports corporate advertising, and everyone else wants to spend its budget for advertising products instead. The best way to allocate funding is to first figure out a goal and then figure out how much it will cost to achieve.
• Under-researching. Many corporate campaigns don’t receive the same amount of research as product campaigns.
• Limited media. Some companies don’t use TV, and this decreases their reach.
• CEO appearances. CEOs aren’t trained announcers and may not be as well-spoken as an actor.
• Use of initials. If you reduce your company name to initials, people won’t know what the letters stand for or might mistake your company for someone else.
  • For example, both Brown Boveri and British Broadcasting use BBC.

Influencing Legislation

It’s possible to use corporate advertising to influence the public to support legislation, but it’s difficult for two reasons:

1. People don’t trust companies. In TV shows, two-thirds of businesspeople are portrayed as bad people (greedy, stupid, selfish, and so on).
2. Many businesspeople aren’t aware of the opinions of non-businesspeople. For example, some businesspeople didn’t realize that some people don’t like capitalism.

Additionally, there are limitations on advertising that aims to change legislation:

• It’s not considered a business expense by the IRS.
• Many TV networks won’t run this type of advertising, so you have to use local television.

To successfully influence public opinion:

Tip #1: Simplify the issue (but don’t distort it). When there’s too much complicated information, people feel lost and don’t know what to do.

• For example, in 1981, when there was conflicting, confusing information about how to eat healthily, General Foods wrote an ad with simple advice.

Tip #2: Harness self-interest. Tell the reader why your position would benefit them.

• For example, when the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway and the Nickel Plate Road wanted to establish transcontinental service at Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans, they ran an ad that explained that a hog could cross the U.S. without changing trains, but people had to stop in one of three cities. The ad explained that if the rules changed, people’s travel would be less inconvenient.

Tip #3: Be honest. Acknowledge mistakes and explain how your company is fixing them. If applicable, present both perspectives.

• For example, ARMCO was known as a major polluter. They ran an ad that explained how they were cleaning up the environment.

Tip #4: Target everyone. There’s little point in advertising to Congresspeople or the government because they’ll ignore you if they don’t think you have their constituents on your side. Additionally, while some people think that they only need to reach influential members of the public, who will then influence their followers, influential people are hard to identify and target.

• For example, when oil companies were trying to avoid a windfall profits tax, they advertised to members of Congress. The politicians were more pressured by social and political factors and the bill went through.

Tip #5: Use TV advertising. Most people form their opinions based on the information they get from TV, particularly from folk heroes.

• For example, when Jane Fonda referred to “the black shadow of oil,” people took a stance against oil.

Tip #6: Commit for the long term. It takes a long time to change people’s opinions.

Type #2: Travel Advertising

Like corporate advertising, advertising travel to foreign countries requires navigating some specific pitfalls and opportunities.

Travel advertising has the following challenges:

Challenge #1: Politics. Advertising travel can be fraught with politics because often the country that’s being advertised wants to present a different image than what tourists are most interested in.

• For example, when Ogilvy was advertising Britain to American tourists, his research found that Americans were most interested in culture and history. To entice them, he created ads that showed Westminster Abbey and the Changing of the Guard. However, the British press criticized the ads for presenting the country as behind the times—they would have preferred to see new nuclear power stations in the advertising.

Challenge #2: Underfunding. Even though tourism is a huge source of income for many countries, often tourism departments aren’t given a large enough budget to operate effectively.

Challenge #3: Misconceptions. Some places have negative connotations or stereotypes associated with them. Often these are inaccurate, so the advertising must show the place as it really is to overcome these preconceptions.

• For example, in the past, Americans who had never been to Puerto Rico thought it was squalid. Ogilvy’s advertisements showed that in reality, the region was beautiful.

To create effective tourism advertising:

Tip #1: Advertise exclusivity. Feature attractions that don’t exist in the country being targeted by the ads.

• (Shortform example: If you’re advertising Switzerland to Canadians, don’t tell them about ski resorts, tell them about the medieval-era attractions.)

Tip #2: Target the type of tourists the country wants. Some countries are rightly concerned that increasing tourism will affect their culture.

• For example, Bermuda targeted its ads at young American couples. Had it been less specific, it could have attracted all sorts of tourists and turned into an overcrowded Miami Beach.

Tip #3: Feature culture. Most travelers are educated and interested in culture.

Tip #4: Provide instructions, especially for less well-known countries.

• For example, when advertising Singapore, Ogilvy’s ad featured an appealing photo and information about how much it cost to travel there, the weather, the food, and so on.

Tip #5: Soothe fears. After cost, fear is the main reason people choose not to travel. In your ads, reassure people that they will be able to communicate, the country is safe, the locals are nice, and the food isn’t too unusual.

Tip #6: Be strategically timeless or newsworthy. Most travel advertisements should be timeless, but there are cases where newsworthiness can be effective.

• For example, in 1974, there were electricity shortages in Britain, which discouraged Americans from visiting. When the shortages ended, Ogilvy reported this news in ads (the press didn’t report it at all), and people were no longer anxious about traveling to Britain.

Tip #7: Position the country as a trend. People tend to travel according to fashion.

• (Shortform example: Use a headline like, “The island everyone’s visiting in 2005.”)

Tip #8: Use both magazine and TV advertising.

Tip #9: Use charm or be unique. This will make your ads stand out.

• For example, when advertising France, Ogilvy wrote a headline in French (which was very unconventional) with a translation underneath.

Type #3: Causes

When advertising for causes or charities, ads rarely bring in enough money to even pay for the space or time (though the government and some media outlets often provide free space or time). Advertising for causes is more effective at raising awareness, which makes personal solicitation more likely to succeed.

• (Shortform example: If a person has already heard of the Red Cross, they’re more likely to donate when a volunteer comes to their door.)

Type #4: Commodity Products and B2B

The last type of specialized advertising is for commodity industrial products, such as bolts or washers, that have nothing unique about them. The best way to advertise these is to differentiate from the competitor’s versions by offering the product or service at a lower cost and providing better quality.

• For example, when fuel prices went up in 1972, Owens-Corning advertised their insulation as the insulation of choice for lowering the fuel costs of old houses.

To effectively advertise commodity products:

Tip #1: Make it as easy as possible to contact your company. To do this:

• Include a toll-free number in your ads.
• In your print ads, include both a coupon for requesting additional information and a business reply card (a postcard with prepaid postage).
• Put your offer, phone number, and address at the end of your ad. Business publications are read by more than one person, so this ensures that even if someone has already sent off the coupon or reply card, your contact information is still available for the next reader.

Tip #2: Keep data on who responds to your ads. To do this:

• Ask responders why they got in touch—do they want your product right now, in the future, or do they want a salesperson to contact them?
• Ask the salespeople who speak with the respondents whether they ultimately made a sale or think they’ll make a sale in the future. Also ask how many respondents are existing customers, or new customers who are likely to become regulars.
• Keep track of where the responses are coming from so you can better manage your advertising budget. (Shortform example: If you’re receiving many response cards from a magazine ad, but none from a newspaper ad, consider skipping the newspaper advertising, and put the money towards something else.)

Tip #3: Consider creating two sets of advertising, one targeted at specifiers and one targeted at the executives who will approve the purchases. These groups of people have different interests—specifiers want the details about a product, while executives have bigger-picture concerns, such as cost savings.

Exercise: Influence Legislation

Corporate ads can change public opinion on issues, which creates pressure on legislators.

• Think of an issue that affects your company (if nothing comes to mind, imagine you’d like the government to provide all companies with a free lunch once a year). How could you simplify this issue?

• How could you frame this issue in a way that benefits the public’s self-interest?

• How could you present both sides of the issue?

Chapter 7: Direct-Response Advertising

Now that you know the basics of creating good ads, how can you check if you’ve successfully applied them? And where and when should you display the ads?

To answer all of these questions, consider experimenting with direct-response advertising (ads that encourage consumers to contact a company directly to make a purchase) because there’s a clear relationship between advertising and sales—the only factor that affected someone’s decision to buy a product was the ad. (Companies that advertise in multiple media and sell products via wholesalers and retailers don’t know if people are buying their products because the advertising is good, or if it’s for some other reason.)

Experimenting With Variables

Direct-response advertising allows you to individually test advertising and product variables. The most important variables are positioning, premiums, pricing, terms of payment, and format (for example, a page and a reply card, versus simply a page).

• For example, one magazine created three ads, each offering different payment terms for subscriptions. The ad that offered $29.95 for 29 issues received more response than higher numbers of issues for higher prices, so the magazine ran this offer exclusively.

Ogilvy experimented for years and offers the following tips on variables:

• Free premiums (such as free samples or cash prizes in sweepstakes) create a good initial response but don't always attract long-term customers.
• Asking for cash and full price will reduce response, but the people who do respond may become long-term customers.
• Long letters are more effective than short ones.
• If one testimonial seems to be creating a good response, try including a second one.
• Gimmicks can be effective, but they need to be tested before rolling them out on a large scale. For example, one of Ogilvy’s campaigns was to send live homing pigeons to people who might buy a business jet. If interested in a free ride in the jet, the recipients were to tie their addresses to the pigeon’s leg and then release it. Some people ate the pigeons, but some people returned them, and at least one person bought the $600,000 jet.

Even once you create a profitable campaign, keep testing variables to try to come up with something even more profitable. You can do this both by adding new elements to your campaigns (such as adding a personalized letter from the head of the company to your direct-mail campaign), or eliminating elements (such as no longer including a brochure with your letters).

Testing Media

Direct-response ads can also help you figure out the most effective media outlets in which to place your ads. For example, if you get low response from your ads in one publication, you might stop advertising there and put the money towards advertising in a different publication.

When considering media:

• Look at where your competitors place their ads. Likely, they get good responses from the outlets they use on a regular basis.
• Be aware of editorial changes in magazines. This may change audience and readership.
• Note that people buy less when TV programming is good because their minds aren’t free to wander—they’re focused on the show, not the commercials.
• On TV, advertise in January, February, and March, and on weekends, late evenings, and early mornings, because these are usually effective time slots.
• Remember that it’s normal for response rates to drop when you advertise regularly in the same media. Experiment to find out which publications can run your ads for longer before the response stops, and use these long-lived publications more often.

Direct-Reponse Mail Advertising

At the time of writing, direct mail was responsible for a hundred-billion dollars of sales a year. Its main users were record and book clubs, food and department stores, catalog houses, and magazines. Direct mail was becoming easier due to computers, which allowed advertisers to more easily create targeted mailing lists by filtering by demographic, purchasing history, and so on. However, in spite of its effectiveness, direct mail was unpopular and regarded as low-brow. (This may be due to the fact that direct mail is the easiest entry point for scammers, but for the most part, scammers are few and far between)

To create good mail-order copy, follow the guidelines for creating good print ads in Chapter 4.

Direct-Response TV Advertising

To create good direct-response TV advertising, such as infomercials, follow the guidelines for creating good TV ads in Chapter 6 and additionally:

• Use a demonstration that promises more than one benefit.
• Include the price.
• Include a money-back guarantee.
• Ask for the sale.
• Last longer than two minutes. People find fewer, longer commercials less annoying than lots of shorter commercials.
• Budget at least 20 seconds explaining how to order. Give the phone number at least twice and include the address. Additionally, use supers.

Measure and test the effectiveness of your commercials by the number of orders you receive after the commercial plays, rather than the number of viewers reached. (It doesn’t matter how many people you reach if none of them buys anything.)

Part 3: Industry Overview | Chapter 8: Advertising Jobs

In the previous part, we looked at the craft of advertising. Now we’ll zoom out and look at the domestic advertising industry as a whole from the point of view of employees, heads of agencies, clients, and the public. Then, we’ll look at international advertising.

At the time of the book’s writing, fewer than 100,000 people worked in advertising in the U.S. and 15,000 in Britain, but the industry wasn’t as unstable as newspapers would have you believe—papers reported only on accounts that moved, not the ones that stayed. Only 4% of accounts changed agencies per year, and of the 25 biggest agencies in 1972, 24 were still the biggest agencies in 1983.

Employees

First: If you’re not passionate about advertising, go do something else. Advertising pays well, but so do plenty of other professions that are easier and don’t require as much passion.

If you’re sure you want to work in advertising, it’s important to consider education, employers, positions, how to properly apply for a job, and how to keep it once you have it.

Education

At the time of the book’s writing, 87 U.S. universities offered undergraduate courses in advertising and some offered degree programs. However, many of the instructors didn’t have practical experience in advertising and didn’t do research, and the textbooks were bad. Therefore, the big agencies preferred to hire smart people with degrees in other fields, such as economics, and the people who studied advertising ended up at smaller firms.

Employers

There are four types of employers in advertising:

1. Media outlets, such as radio stations that sell advertising space or time.
2. Retailers, such as Sears, that have their own marketing departments and hire for jobs such as art director or copywriter.
3. Manufacturing companies, such as Proctor & Gamble, that need brand managers.
4. Advertising agencies, such as Ogilvy & Mather, that hire for a variety of positions.

Ogilvy only ever worked in agencies, so this is the only category his book covers in detail. Agencies tend to be interesting places to work—you can move internally, the culture is stimulating, and agencies often have an international presence, so you can work anywhere in the world (it helps if you speak the local language).

When you start your career, prioritize learning opportunities over salary. Look for an agency at which the top people teach interns, and the established employees are still open to professional development.

Positions

Advertising agencies hire for a variety of positions:

Copywriters

Copywriters write the prose that appears in ads or the dialogue in TV commercials. They’re the most important (if not the most visible) people in agencies, but at most agencies, there are half as many copywriters as account executives. (Copywriters usually dislike account executives, and the feeling is mutual. Copywriters think account executives are bullheaded and stupid. Account executives tend to think copywriters are divas.)

To be a successful copywriter, you need the following:

• Curiosity about advertising, psychology, and products
• A sense of humor
• Interest in advertising
• Good writing skills
• Good visual skills (for writing for TV)
• Ambition to succeed (Ogilvy believes most copywriters don’t try hard enough)
• Ability to work hard
• Ability to see an ad as both an art form and a means to selling something
• Ability to manage deadlines and pressure (copywriters have to come up with good ideas quickly)

Art Directors

Art directors are responsible for the images and visuals in advertising. Art director is both a rising and dying job. Rising, because art director skills can transfer to creative director or television production skills, and dying because print is less popular.

To be an art director, you need:

• Formal training in graphic design, photography, and/or film
• Good taste (a bonus)

Account Executives

Account executives act as a liaison with clients and make sure that everyone else in the agency is doing their jobs. They travel and entertain clients (which is less fun than it sounds when they have to deliver bad news).

There are two types of account executives:

1. Custodians. These types mainly coordinate—they don’t write ads, do research, find new clients themselves, or come up with ideas.
2. Contributors. Contributors are hands-on and come up with ideas.

To be a good account executive, you need the following skills:

• Ability to write and deliver good presentations
• Ability to write clear, concise memos—clients are busy, and if your memos are long and confusing, they might go unread
• Ability to give good, honest advice but let the client make their own choices
• Ability to strategically surrender—let your clients have their way on small things so that, when something big comes up, it’s your turn to get your way
• Respect and keep your distance from your clients—be their friends and buy their companies’ shares, but stay out of their companies’ politics
• Be discreet—maintain confidentiality and don’t talk about your clients in public places
• Resist anxiety—when the agency makes a mistake, clients blame the account executive; when the client make outrageous demands, the agency blames the account executive

It takes years to reach the position and very few people achieve it before they’re 30. To become a successful account executive, Ogilvy recommends the following progression:

• Work for P&G in brand management for two years.
• Work for a consumer research company for a year, aiming to learn how to influence people.
• Join an agency. Learn everything you can about your account. For example, if your account is oil and gas, read books and trade journals, tour facilities, and talk to people in the field.
• Use your knowledge at the opportune moment. For example, when Lever Brothers asked its agencies for a paper on how to use television, most agencies submitted five- to six-page papers, but one account executive prepared a detailed 170-page report. He was quickly elected to the agency’s board of directors.

Researchers

Researchers study what makes people read, watch, or remember ads, and what makes ads sell.

To be a successful researcher, you need the following:

• Formal training (probably a degree) in psychology or statistics
• An analytical mind
• Report-writing ability
• An ability to work with people who don’t like you (creative people tend to dislike research)
• Honesty—your reports can’t be biased

Media Buyers

People who work in the media department buy and negotiate for time and space in media outlets.

To succeed in the media department of an agency, you need:

• An analytical mind
• An ability to negotiate
• An ability to make data accessible
• Resilience

Creative Directors

Creative directors oversee the production of ads.

To be a good creative director, you need the following:

• Psychology skills
• Administrative skills
• Strategic skills
• HR skills
• Good presentation skills
• Graphic design skills
• Proficiency in all media
• Ability to work fast and hard
• Ability to use research
• Ability to maintain composure
• Ability to share credit and take blame
• Enthusiasm
• High standards

Applying for a Job

When you apply for a job in advertising, mail your resume and letter to agencies (don’t phone them). Here are some tips for writing a strong letter:

• Type it.
• Spell the agency’s name right.
• Write clearly and lucidly.
• Right at the beginning of the letter, state the position you’re applying for and whether you’re responding to a help-wanted ad or recommendation.
• Talk about your qualifications (Shortform example: Cite your degree in graphic design) rather than abstractions (ambition).
• Be polite but personal. Your letter should have the same tone you would use if speaking to someone in a professional context.
• End the letter by saying that you’ll call the agency to set up an interview if they’re interested. Don’t make the agency get in touch with you—people are busy. Make it as easy as possible for them to interview you.

Keeping Your Job

Previously, it was very easy to get fired from an advertising agency. For example, one year, Stirling Getchel had a turnover rate of 137%. At the time of writing, however, most people who left agencies did so voluntarily.

Chapter 9: Starting or Managing an Agency

In the previous chapter, we looked at how to get a job with an advertising agency. Now, we’ll look at how to run one.

To successfully start or manage an agency, you need to develop CEO skills, consider human resources, and manage your money.

CEO Skills

Agencies are run by the CEO, which is the most difficult and stressful position in an agency (one study found that senior advertising executives are more likely to die from stress-related causes than executives in other fields). To be a successful CEO, you need:

• Leadership skills, especially when it comes to stressed, anxious people
• Oration skills. If you struggle to write good speeches, hire speechwriters and take public speaking lessons.
• Business acumen
• Ability to delegate (the more leaders your agency has, the more powerful it will be)
• Ability to attract new clients (if you don’t do this well, your staff will lose faith in you)
• Ability to work long hours
• Ability to retain morale
• Ability to make the workplace fun and safe (people do their best work when they’re comfortable)
• Ability to listen
• Ability to learn (most agencies represent clients in different fields, and you have to be knowledgeable about all of them)
• Ability to take ownership of and recover from mistakes
• Availability to travel and entertain
• Resilience (popular belief suggests that advertising attracts neurotics—Ogilvy thinks it produces them)
• Courage to fire people and make hard decisions
• Commitment to the work
• Enthusiasm and optimism
• Honesty
• Charm
• Momentum
• Self-confidence (you shouldn’t need to feel liked)

Additionally, CEOs should visit people in their offices (if you never leave your office and summon people there instead, you’ll turn into a hermit) and meet the needs of their followers.

Human Resources

An important part of running an agency is managing the people who work for it.

Hiring

To run a successful agency, you need talented, trained staff. Try to recruit people who are:

• More skilled than you. Ogilvy had good luck with graduates of Harvard and St. Paul’s.
• Smart. Understand that being smart means more than IQ—it includes common sense and curiosity.
• Literate. Make sure everyone can communicate in writing—most communication in advertising is on the page.
• Good at leadership. Look for people whom you could see running your agency. Look at what they did in college—if they held leadership positions, they’ll probably hold them again.

Be cautious of or don’t hire any of the following:

• Your friends. If they don’t do their job well, you’ll have to fire them, and your friendship is unlikely to survive.
• Your clients. Your clients might be good at their business, but their skills are unlikely to transfer to the advertising business.
• Your clients’ children. If there’s conflict, you might lose the client.
• Your children or your partners’ children. Your most ambitious staff will be turned off by the nepotism and leave.
• People from other fields. Even if their skills are transferable, they may not have enough of an interest in advertising.

When considering your team as a whole:

• Make sure you hire at least one person who will stir things up and challenge those who are more conventional.
• Don’t use more people power than necessary. If a job can be done by one person, only assign one person to do it.
• Hire people with a variety of talents so that your agency can produce different types of advertising. For example, a corporate account can’t be advertised the same way as a power tool company.

When hiring partners, executives, or leadership:

• Don’t be concerned with formal education—academic achievement and leadership require different motivations.
• Consider unorthodox leaders or leaders who don’t fit your culture. The best leaders are unconventional because leadership requires innovation.
• Don’t always promote from within. Ogilvy had success hiring from outside because when he first started his company, he couldn’t pay well, so he couldn’t attract top talent, and the people he already had wouldn’t have done well in senior positions. Even if you do have strong internal talent, it can be useful to get fresh ideas and an outside perspective in the form of a partner from outside.
• Look for the same qualities required in a CEO.

Agency Size

There are advantages and disadvantages to both big and small companies. Small companies have trouble attracting big accounts because they don’t have the same resources a big company could offer. If small companies do manage to secure a big account, they might become so scared of losing it that they pander instead of offering the impartial judgment clients need.

Big companies, on the other hand, tend to be more bureaucratic and hierarchical. The staff don’t all know each other, and the company is harder to control.

Office Politics

Politics are common in advertising agencies because the atmosphere is so high-pressure. People compete for offices, lunch dates, and promotions, and if the politics get out of hand, they can severely damage the business. For example, the culture at Milton Biow’s agency became so cutthroat he had to shut the agency down.

To manage this:

• Fire the worst offenders. You probably already know who they are—the people who BCC you on their passive-aggressive emails to their enemies.
• Force people to talk to each other face-to-face. If someone comes to you to criticize her rival, invite the rival into the conversation, and ask the criticizer to repeat their criticism in front of her. If people try to fight in writing, force them to talk to each other in person instead.
• Organize lunch activities. This will encourage everyone to get to know each other and become friends.
• Don’t let people take credit for others’ ideas.
• Be fair. Don’t have favorites.
• Stay out of politics yourself.

Maintain Standards of Conduct

Demand that everyone:

• Be punctual.
• Give top performance.
• Answer the phone promptly.
• Maintain client confidentiality by never speaking about clients in public, never leaking unreleased ads, and being careful with untested freelancers.
• Meet deadlines by working overtime if necessary. All-nighters improve morale as long as the leader also participates in the all-nighter.
• Meet goals. Set goals at the beginning of the year and then see how many have been completed by the end. Otherwise, you and your people might waste time on ideas or projects that don’t produce results.
  • For example, the McKinsey agency links salary to accomplishments.
• Only buy clients’ products. It looks bad to use competitors’.
  • For example, Ogilvy managed the American Express account, so he only used American Express travelers’ checks.
• Never complain about companies. They might remember your or your staff’s names and avoid your agency.
  • For example, Ogilvy complained about a Cunard ship he traveled on. Three months later, Cunard was looking for an agency and chose a competitor instead.

When you need people to do something, attend meetings and communicate verbally.

Money

Agencies typically make less than 1% profit after taxes, and Ogilvy estimated that the richest agency heads held fortunes of $20 million. (The size of your company doesn’t have anything to do with profit. In 1981, Ogilvy’s company was more profitable than one that billed 200% more.)

Payment Methods

There are two ways to get paid in advertising and while Ogilvy pioneered the fee system, he didn’t have a preference or recommend one over the other:

1. Commission. In the commission system, the agency is paid by the media outlet the client purchases advertising from. This is the traditional payment model.

• For example, if a client buys a print ad in a newspaper, the newspaper adds a certain percentage to the bill it sends to the client; then it passes the extra percentage on to the ad agency as a commission when the client pays the bill.

2. Fees. In the fee system, the client pays for the specific services they want.

How to Use Profit

Ogilvy recommends not spending your money on:

• Investing in other companies. Ogilvy has only ever seen this strategy lose money.
• Buying other advertising agencies. Agencies usually only go up for sale until they’re in trouble. Additionally, if you keep the current staff there will be friction between their company culture and yours, but if you replace the staff, you’ll lose clients who liked the old staff. (Some people try to avoid this by buying an agency but leaving it alone, even letting it compete with their agency.)

Ogilvy recommends that instead, you do spend your money on:

• Opening new offices. This is advantageous because you can maintain your company culture and don’t inherit other companies’ problems. The downside is start-up costs.
• Purchasing your office building. This will save you money on leasing.
• Saving money for hard times. In economic downturns, some people cut their advertising budgets even though studies have found that companies that keep advertising see greater profit during recessions than those that stop. (For example, during World War II, no one was allowed to sell margarine under a brand name. Unilever advertised its brand-name margarine throughout the war, even though no one could get it. When the war ended, Unilever became the top brand.)

Chapter 10: Finding Clients

In the previous chapter, we looked at some basics of how to manage an agency. Now, we’ll look at how to make the agency successful by finding new clients. You used to be able to get clients by bringing them along when you left your job to start a new agency. At the time of writing, however, this was no longer possible because you would get sued.

Now, to get clients, you have to find new ones.

How Clients Look for Agencies

At the time of publishing, companies were starting to change how they looked for agencies. This was their process:

• Send a long questionnaire to the agencies they’re interested in.
• Short-list agencies based on the questionnaire.
• Visit the agencies and ask about the commission.
• Invite the agencies to make a commercial for them.
• Compare the commercials and choose the agency that makes the best one.

This process is flawed for several reasons:

• The questionnaires ask irrelevant questions. For example, one asked how many people worked in the print production department.
• Commission shouldn’t be given so much weight—an agency’s competence is more important.
• The process doesn’t consider past work or track record.
• Skilled agencies that don’t have the time and money to jump through hoops don’t win accounts, which is bad for both the agency and the client.
• It doesn’t consider the leader. There aren’t that many differences between agencies—most of them successfully increase their clients’ sales and have competent staff—so the leader is often the major factor. For example, many accounts chose Foote, Cone & Belding because they liked Fax Cone.

Winning Clients

The best and easiest way to get new clients is to produce good advertising for the clients you already have. Then, you can show your successful work to other potential clients.

• For example, during a seven-year period, Ogilvy got every single account he competed for just by showing them the campaigns he’d done for his other clients. In fact, clients even came to him—one day, a man came into the office and offered him the IBM account.

There are three other ways to attract new clients:

Option #1: Presentations

When a client is interested in your agency, give them a presentation to convince them they want to hire you.

Here are some tips for a successful presentation:

• Keep the presentation budget reasonable. Some agencies spend up to half a million dollars presenting to clients, and they’d need to keep the account for 20 years to recover this.
• Mix up the seating so that your team and the client’s team are integrated.
• Practice your presentation.
• Don’t read off your notes.
• Listen to the client. You’re evaluating the client as much as they’re evaluating you—you don’t want to take on someone who will be difficult.
  • For example, Ogilvy was lectured for two hours by a Magnavox head and decided he didn’t want to work with him.
• Admit your weaknesses before the client notices them. This will make it seem like you’re being honest about your strengths.
• Don’t talk too much about stats—they won’t interest your client.
• The day after the presentation, send a three-page letter that summarizes why the client should choose your agency.

Option #2: Advertising Your Agency

Interestingly, few advertising agencies actually advertise their own services. (Ogilvy thought that this might be because the partners have conflicting ideas of what to emphasize.)

The most effective way to advertise an agency is by mailing ads directly to clients. Space advertising can work too, but it needs to be done consistently to have any effect. (For example, Young & Rubicam advertised in Fortune for four decades.)

Remember that your existing clients will see these ads, and if your house ads are better than what you produce for them, you’ll hear about it.

Option #3: Multinational Accounts

If you can get an account that also advertises in foreign countries, you might be able to get it worldwide.

• For example, when Ogilvy got the Shell account, the president of Shell asked if he wanted the Canadian account. Ogilvy didn’t have an office in Canada but started one.

However, some countries don’t allow foreign agencies to operate in order to protect their culture from foreign influence. (For example, Nigeria once expelled all foreign agencies.) This logic is unsound, according to Ogilvy, because many of the people who work for foreign agencies are locals, not Americans, so there’s no chance of them projecting American culture.

If All Else Fails

If you struggle to win clients, you can try buying accounts by buying agencies, but this doesn’t always lead to results. For example, Lennan & Newell bought enough agencies to increase its billings by 500%, but the company became so unwieldy and combative that it went bankrupt.

No matter how many difficulties you have attracting clients, don’t give outsiders commissions for getting you clients—you’ll lose too much money. For example, when Ogilvy’s agency was just starting out and he was desperate, he offered a man 10% of the company’s stock if he could get a vacuum-cleaner account to sign with his company. The man didn’t accept the offer, which was fortunate for Ogilvy, because by the time of writing, 10% of his stock was worth $19 million.

Dealing With Bad Clients

Everyone wants good clients, such as “first-class” businesses, but when you’re first starting your agency or in a dry spell, you might feel like you can’t be picky. However, bad clients can do huge damage to your agency, so don’t take on just anyone, no matter how desperate you are.

Be cautious of, avoid, or drop the following types of clients:

• Those who won’t be able to pay you. Profit margins in advertising are slim, so you can’t afford to not be paid.
• Those with different company cultures that would be incompatible with yours.
• Those with potential but no current clout. These accounts could take off, but few of them do.
• Those who make the people working on their account miserable. Your staff’s morale is more important than one client.
• Those who are failing, because they sometimes switch agencies often. For example, when Pan American started to struggle, they switched agencies five times in approximately 10 years. (Most major accounts keep their agencies for decades. For example, General Motors used the same agency for 70 years.)

Public Opinion on Your Agency

No one’s going to say anything negative about you or your agency to your face, so pay a research organization to do a survey and find out what companies think of you. If the survey turns something up, even if you fix the problem quickly, it will take some time for your reputation to change.

Conflicts of Interest

It’s common practice that agencies don’t take on more than one client in one category. (Shortform example: If you already advertise for a shoe company, you wouldn’t sign up Keds.)

However, conflicts of interest can become complicated quickly. For example, if you have two clients in different businesses but one decides to expand, do you have to drop one of them? If you have two clients in the same business but in different cities, is that a problem? Additionally, some clients don’t want their agencies to represent anyone who might even indirectly affect their sales.

McKinsey’s Marvin Bower thinks that there’s no harm in advertising agencies representing competing clients. He says that even if the agency staff responsible for competing accounts shared all their knowledge, it wouldn’t negatively impact the sales of either company because companies are so different.

Whether or not representing more than one client in a category will actually affect either’s sales, don’t do it because it will make your clients unhappy.

Chapter 11: Clients and the Public

The previous two chapters looked at the advertising industry from the points of view of employees and managers. Now, we’ll look at the industry from the point of view of clients and the public.

Clients

If you are the leader of a company seeking an ad agency, follow these 10 steps:

1. Conduct the search yourself. Choosing an agency should not be delegated to a committee.
2. Look through magazines. When you see ads you envy, find out what agencies produced them and start a list.
3. Watch TV for three nights. When you see commercials you like, find out what agencies produced them, and add them to your list.
4. Narrow down your list by striking off anyone who works for your competitors. They can’t take you on because it would be a conflict of interest.
5. Meet with the heads and creative directors of the remaining agencies. If you lack chemistry or rapport, strike them from the list.
6. Don’t meet with people who will be working on your account. You won’t be working with them directly, and you won’t be able to judge their competence, so you risk meeting someone you dislike and striking a good agency off the list. For example, a client once passed on Ogilvy’s company because he didn’t like that a copywriter had long hair.
7. Ask the remaining agencies to show you their six best print and TV ads.
8. Choose the agency whose campaigns are the most interesting.
9. Offer to pay 1% more than the agency normally charges. This will get you better service. (Don’t haggle for a lower rate or choose a company because it can buy circulation cheaper. Quality people are worth paying more for.)
10. Sign a five-year contract. This will make the agency like you, and it will prevent you from getting dropped if one of your competitors approaches the agency.

Once you’ve signed with an agency, treat them as follows:

1. Don’t interfere with their work. For example, when Ogilvy was showing a campaign to the chairman of Sears, the comptroller came in and tried to edit the copy. The chairman shut him down.
2. Give them an annual performance report. This will nip problems before they grow too big.
3. Don’t set up more than two approval processes. Otherwise, it will take a long time to get ads approved.
4. Be nice to copywriters—if you don’t like their work, be gentle; if you do, be effusive.

If your company is too small to be taken on by an agency, you might try recruiting a retired copywriter. Retired copywriters tend to miss the work and appreciate money.

(Shortform note: In the book, this chapter is presented as an “open letter” advising a company that wants to hire an agency. We’ve summarized it from the point of view of a client.)

The Public

While clients probably have a favorable view of adpeople, there are many critics of the industry. Some people think it’s manipulative, insincere, subversive, evil, trivializing, and one professor at the New School of Social Research referred to it as “intellectual and moral pollution.” Left-wing economists accuse ads of encouraging people to spend money on unnecessary things.

Public opinion on adpeople isn't much better—Gallup found in a survey of 24 professions, the public ranked adpeople as low as car salespeople and trade-union leaders when it came to honesty.

Here are some specific complaints about advertising and comments on their legitimacy:

Complaint #1: Advertising Is Immoral

According to Ogilvy, advertising is nothing more than a good way to sell; its morality depends on what’s being advertised. Advertising can have positive effects, such as raising money for good causes like the World Wildlife Fund. Additionally, some agencies even refuse to advertise products that conflict with their principles, such as liquor or cigarettes.

Accusations of manipulation are unfounded. At the time of writing, only two people had come up with ideas for manipulating audiences, and neither was ever put into practice:

1. Market researcher James Vicary came up with the idea of “subliminal” advertising—flashing orders on TV screens so quickly that only the unconscious could pick them up. Vicary never tested it, no one used it, and the British Institute of Practitioners in Advertising banned it even though it didn’t exist.
2. Ogilvy wondered if hypnotism might be effective in advertising and hired a hypnotist to make a commercial. When Ogilvy watched the commercial, it was so powerful that he burned it.

Complaint #2: Advertising Is Dishonest

Even if advertisers truly were as unscrupulous as the public seems to believe, it’s very hard to lie in advertisements. Ads are subject to many codes and go through several levels of approval before they’re allowed to run, including vetting by lawyers, the National Association of Broadcasters, and other organizations.

If an ad is accused of breaking a code, authorities such as the Better Business Bureau, National Advertising Review Board, and Advertising Standards Authority review the ads. If they turn up a violation, the Federal Trade Commission will prosecute.

Advertising to Children

There are even more regulations that advertisers must adhere to when targeting children. Ogilvy mentions several prohibitions at the time of the book’s publication. Ads weren’t allowed to:

• Tell children to ask their mothers to buy a product.
• Tell or imply that having the product makes them better than other children, or that other children won’t like them if they don’t have it.
• Show war, violence, danger, or anything too frightening.
• Show props or costumes that don’t come with the toy that aren’t common household items.

Ads had to:

• Disclose if additional products (such as batteries) were needed to make a product work the same way it did in an advertisement.
• Show a realistic play environment.
• If the product was breakfast food, there had to be both an audio and video explanation of how it fit into a balanced diet.

Political Advertising

Interestingly, the one type of advertising that has no regulatory overview is political and governmental advertising (such as for government bonds). This is because political advertising is “protected speech” according to the First Amendment. Networks were forced to run all the political commercials they received, regardless of whether they broke the codes consumer commercials have to adhere to.

As a result, political advertising could be dishonest. For example, in the 1964 presidential campaign, Lyndon Johnson made commercials that attacked his opponent Barry Goldwater. The commercials made Goldwater seem trigger-happy and dishonest by purposely taking some of Goldwater’s remarks out of context.

Ogilvy argues that this kind of advertising is evil.

Complaint #3: Advertising Convinces People to Buy Bad Products

The third myth about advertising is that it convinces people to buy lousy products. Perhaps advertising does occasionally convince someone to buy an inferior product, but it only works once. As soon as a consumer realizes that a product is bad, they’ll never buy it again. This isn’t in a company’s best interests—repeat customers are a lot more important to profit than new ones.

Complaint #4: Advertising Is Uninformative

Ogilvy agrees with this complaint—though factual advertisements do better than ones caught up in slogans and design, at the time of writing, agencies were tending to create less-informative ads.

• For example, when Ogilvy was looking at car ads, he found slogans and general language rather than any concrete information that would help him choose what to buy.

Complaint #5: Advertising Interrupts

Ogilvy also agrees with this complaint. At the time of writing, the average U.S. household was exposed to 30,000 TV commercials a year. The Sunday edition of the New York Times had up to 350 pages of ads. Some radio stations devoted two-thirds of their airtime to advertising. While Ogilvy believes too much time and space is being devoted to advertising, he doesn’t expect it to decrease because it makes media outlets so much money.

Complaint #6: Billboards Are Dangerous and Ugly

Roadside billboards are a notoriously unpopular method of advertising because they’re distracting and cause vehicle accidents, and they’re ugly and clutter the scenery.

• For example, in 1958, when vigilantes sawed down billboards in New Mexico, citizens supported them. One citizen said they should have taken out more billboards (they’d cut down seven), and another had been frustrated that the vigilantes had beaten them to the punch—there had been a plan to burn a bunch of billboards later in the month.

Ogilvy considers billboards a scourge and wants to see them outlawed. They weren’t even a particularly significant facet of advertising—at the time of writing, billboards were responsible for only 2% of the advertising in the U.S.

However, he predicted billboards wouldn’t go away because:

• The billboard lobby attacked unsupportive politicians by spreading rumors, donating free space to their opponents, and creating political trouble.
• The Highway Beautification Act stated that Congress should promote outdoor advertising, and the government used billboards.
• Removing billboards could be interpreted as denial of free speech.

Chapter 12: International Advertising

In the previous chapter, we looked at domestic advertising—at the time of writing, approximately half of the world’s advertising was in the U.S., and the best agencies in many countries were American. Things were starting to change, however—foreign advertising was starting to compete with and in some cases surpass America’s.

In this chapter, we’ll look at some of the trends, laws, and conditions surrounding advertising in a variety of regions at the time of writing:

• Britain. British commercials rarely used slice-of-life and talking heads and were usually less brash than American commercials. They also tended to be more entertaining and low-key. No one treated buying a product like a life-or-death decision, so advertisers had more freedom to make trendy or funny commercials. According to Bill Taylor, Ogilvy’s partner, Britain produced the best advertising in the world. As a result, British copywriters were valuable in the U.S.
• France. French advertising tended to be enchanting, smart, and beautifully illustrated. French advertisers didn’t use research, so they could create work that appealed to the upper classes rather than the general public.
• Germany. German advertising tended to focus on magazines because there was limited television time. Germany also faced an additional challenge: a shortage of qualified professionals. When Ogilvy visited Germany, he found the agency atmosphere similar to New York’s, but he thought some of the ads were ugly.
• Belgium and Sweden. These countries didn’t allow advertising on TV, so the only options were magazines and newspapers. Despite this focus, the advertising quality wasn’t high.
• Latin America. Brazil’s José Fontoura was up-and-coming.
• South East Asia. South East Asia was also quickly improving its advertising. For example, when Ogilvy offered a prize to the best Ogilvy & Mather office, Bangkok won by using a bamboo flute instead of a Western jingle in a Thai advertisement.
• Australia. Australian advertising was improving. It was more influenced by the U.S. than Britain.
• New Zealand. Most of the top talent in New Zealand had left and gone to work in other countries.
• India. Indian agencies knew a lot about advertising but with some exceptions, didn’t seem to be able to apply it. They had some unique challenges—they needed to advertise in 12 languages, most of the population was illiterate, and the average person earned $5 a week so was unlikely to buy products even if advertising reached them.
• Kenya. Like India, Kenyan ads had to be written in multiple languages (nine) and much of the population was illiterate. Additionally, people earned $10 a week so didn’t have a lot of disposable income to spend on the products they see in ads. Most advertising was via radio (there were only 30,000 TV sets in the country) and contests and scholarships worked well. Also, advertising needed to be tribally appropriate—for example, the Kikuyu see fish as snakes, so advertising cooking supplies with a fish recipe would be ineffective.
• The Soviet Union. There wasn’t much advertising in the Soviet Union besides campaigns for causes, but there was a state-owned advertising agency. Foreign companies were permitted to advertise industrial products.
• Hungary. Hungary had several agencies that advertised on TV, in magazines, and in newspapers.
• Czechoslovakia. There were two Czech agencies and they used TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers.
• Poland. Poland had an agency that was mainly made up of bureaucrats.
• Romania. Romania had one agency and consumer products were heavily advertised.
• China. There was no advertising in China until 1978 (until then it was considered evil). Radio was the most important medium—there were communal speaker systems that broadcast ads twice a day and reached 75% of the population. Chinese print ads looked like specification sheets and local newspapers contained less than a quarter of ad content. TV ads were mainly for industrial products. There were also magazines and billboards in certain areas. There were 67 agencies, some of which advertised Chinese products in other countries, and some of which advertised foreign products in China.

International Campaigns

There’s often conflict between multinational headquarters and local agencies about campaigns. Multinational advertisers often want to use the same materials worldwide. Local agencies usually want the opposite.

There’s some merit to both approaches. Often, while the local agencies claim that their market is different and they don’t want to give the impression they’re just puppets, their real concern is their self-respect—they don’t want to use a campaign they haven’t come up with themselves.

The best way to determine what will work best is by testing. (If you can’t test in a particular country, extrapolate from nearby or similar countries you have tested.) Usually, international campaigns do just fine worldwide—for example, the Esso tiger worked in over 30 countries. Just make sure to adapt the campaign to the local culture if necessary.

Part 4: The Greats | Chapter 13: Procter & Gamble

In previous parts, we looked at how to be successful in the advertising industry. Now, we’ll look at some examples of companies and individuals who were successful in the industry and made fortunes.

In this chapter, we’ll look at Procter & Gamble (P&G). At the time of the book’s writing, P&G had huge market shares in many home products, a $700 million advertising budget, an expert marketing team, and $12 billion worth of sales.

P&G was successful because:

• Most importantly, they made better products than anyone else.
• They believed that the primary purpose of advertising was to communicate.
• They were strategic about what market categories they entered—they didn’t enter anything small and unlikely to grow, and they aimed to dominate everything they did enter. This domination allowed them to access large-volume manufacturing deals, which in turn allowed them to either sell their products at a lower price or have a higher profit margin.
• They sometimes had more than one product in a particular category.
• They advertised new brands aggressively.
• They had large budgets for existing brands.
  • For example, Crest’s budget was $29 million.
• They used market research and extensively tested their marketing. Once they found something that works, they stuck with it. They continued to test executions of good strategies.
• They promised only one benefit per ad. If a product had multiple benefits, they ran separate campaigns for each benefit, often simultaneously and in the same medium. (This was contrary to Ogilvy’s suggestion to promise multiple benefits per ad.)
• Their commercials included a “moment of confirmation” in which an actor reiterated the product’s benefit.
  • For example, in one commercial, a woman squeezed Charmin toilet paper and talked about how soft it is.
• They used good commercial crafting: they used demonstrations in 60% of their commercials, familiar language and settings in their commercials (for example, kitchen products are shown in a kitchen, not a lab), they mentioned the brand name early and often, stated and repeated the promise, used supers, avoided celebrities, created characters, and never named the competing brand—they just called it “the other leading” product. They were starting to use music and humor.
• Their commercials used a lot of words, often 100+ in even 30-second commercials.
• They didn’t explain why products worked—they found that their consumers were more interested in results than the behind-the-scenes workings.
• They promised emotional benefits.
  • For example, they promised that using Dash detergent would make you more appreciated.
• They spent 45% of their TV budget on daytime, 45% on fringe, and 30% on prime time.
• They used 45-second commercials as well as 30-second ones because the extra time gave them more opportunities to set the scene and hook the viewer.
• They advertised throughout the year rather than flighting (alternating periods of six weeks on and off). This reduced costs.
• They delivered free samples to people’s homes.

While P&G was a powerhouse, they weren’t invincible. Some of their products failed, such as Big Top peanut butter. Additionally, because they were so consistent, they were easy to predict. The best way to compete with P&G was to have a better product. For example, the home-perming product Rave, which was marketed by Ogilvy, beat out P&G’s ammonia-containing Lilt because an ammonia-free product was better.

Chapter 14: Six Pioneers

In the previous chapter, we looked at a powerful company. Now, we’ll look at biographies of six advertising pioneers.

Bio #1: Albert Lasker (1880-1952)

Albert Lasker entered the workforce as a reporter for Galveston Morning News. When he was 18, he got a job with the Lord & Thomas agency, which at the time was the third biggest agency in the U.S. but only had one part-time copywriter. Lasker bought the agency when he was 20.

Lasker felt that all an agency had to do was write copy good enough to sell a product. He thought research was a waste of time and resisted using images in ads. This saved him a lot of money in researcher and art director salaries, and his agency made a 7% profit (1% was impressive at the time of writing). He amassed a greater fortune than anyone in the business.

While Lasker was successful, he wasn’t always easy to work with. He was a dictator and wasn’t interested in anyone else’s opinion. He could also be ruthless—during the Depression, he cut everyone’s salary by a quarter and fired 50 people at once, even though his own salary was $3 million a year. He hated committees and talking on the phone, he never joined an advertising club, he avoided competitors, and he dropped huge accounts, such as General Electric, when they annoyed him.

However, he had some positive qualities too. While there was a lot of turnover, he put a lot of effort into training people and paid well. His staff appreciated his detail-orientation tempered by his ability to see the big picture, his magnetism, his ability to anticipate consumers, and how hard he worked.

He worked at Lord & Thomas for 44 years until, in 1942, he decided to retire. He gave the company to three of his employees for $100,000 and told them to change the name.

Bio #2: Stanley Resor (1879-1962)

Like Lasker, Stanley Resor held other jobs before getting into the advertising industry. While he attended Yale, he worked as a tutor and bookseller. Later in life, he started working for J. Walter Thompson.

Unlike Lasker, Resor didn’t think much of copywriters. He focused on his account executives and valued research. Every month, he asked the same 5,000 consumers what they bought, he built a test kitchen in the agency, and he experimented with TV before it was even viable for advertising.

Also unlike Lasker, Resor treated his staff very well. He was very interested in other people’s opinions—he believed in consensus and hated hierarchies—and his company had no formal structure or job descriptions. He was good at attracting and keeping top talent.

Resor was responsible for some firsts in the industry—he was the first person to set up international offices and the first to employ a woman copywriter when he hired his wife, Helen.

Resor worked long hours and adhered to his principles. He refused to advertise liquor or patent medicine accounts, and he turned down the opportunity to work with Camel.

Resor led J. Walter Thompson for 45 years, until he was 80. Staying so long was a mistake—by this point, his ideas were outdated and many of the people who could have succeeded him had already retired themselves. However, when he retired, the agency was the largest in the world.

Bio #3: Raymond Rubicam (1892-1978)

Like all the greats, Raymond Rubicam didn’t get into advertising right away. He left school at 15 and did a variety of odd jobs for almost 10 years. When he was 24, he got a job as a copywriter for a Philadelphia agency that he stayed with for three uncomfortable years (the office politics were unpleasant). Next, he spent four years writing for N.W. Ayer, which was the largest agency in the U.S. at the time.

By this point, Rubicam was ready to go his own way and he started Young & Rubicam with John Orr Young, who had been an account executive at Ayer. They had only $5,000 worth of capital. Their first big account was General Foods.

Rubicam most valued copywriters and creative people and didn’t think much of account executives. He came to value art directors too—Rubicam and Young’s earliest advertisements featured good copy but amateur layouts, and when Rubicam realized this shortcoming, he hired a top art director. From then on Rubicam cultivated a reputation for good taste.

Like Resor, Rubicam was responsible for some firsts in the industry—he was the first to use research, which he started by hiring Gallup to measure advertisement readership.

Also like Resor, Rubicam had principles. He believed that advertising shouldn’t be sleazy, shouldn’t lie or attempt to bamboozle the public, and should not only sell a product but be a work of art. He dropped accounts when they were bullies.

Rubicam retired from his agency after 21 years when he married for the second time. At the time of writing, his agency billed around $3 billion a year.

Bio #4: Leo Burnett (1891-1971)

Leo Burnett’s first jobs were writing show cards for a department store and reporting for the Peoria Journal. Then, he worked for Cadillac’s advertising department, and for 10 years for an Indianapolis agency. Burnett started his own agency in 1935 in Chicago but it didn’t take off until he was 60 years old.

Burnett was most interested in print but didn’t believe in long copy. He was responsible for the “Chicago school” of advertising, which he believed was more down-to-earth, connected to the land, vernacular, and resonant with the public. He believed the following about the creative process:

• All products have drama—find it and use it.
• Aim high. Even if you don’t hit your goal, you’ll still get more done than if your goal had been smaller.
• Work hard, trust your instincts, and research.

Unlike some of the other greats, Burnett had no problem advertising cigarettes and his most successful campaign was for Marlboro. When the company first signed up, it was obscure, and after he was done, it was the best-selling cigarette worldwide.

He believed that agencies had a responsibility to put their clients first. Once, he saw someone on his staff using a competitor’s product and sent out a memo about it.

Bio #5: Claude C. Hopkins (1867-1932)

Claude C. Hopkins worked as a lay preacher and bookkeeper before getting into advertising and sales with Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company. He worked in advertising for two other companies before getting a job as a copywriter for Lord & Thomas, where he stayed for 18 years.

Hopkins was the first to use test marketing, coupon sampling, copy research, and force distribution. He also believed in the power of brand images before they were even invented.

Additionally, he believed in the hard sell and wrote about it in his book Scientific Advertising.

Rubicam hated Hopkins because he thought Hopkins deceived the public.

Hopkins eventually started his own agency but died five years later.

Bio #6: Bill Bernbach (1911-1982)

The final great, Bill Bernbach, earned a degree in English Literature from New York University. After graduating, he worked for Schenley (a now-defunct liquor company) in the mailroom and as a speechwriter. Later, he joined the Weintraub agency, the army, and the Grey agency. A few years later, he started Doyle Dane Bernbach with two colleagues and $1,200.

Bernbach was good at combining copy and images. He believed that good ideas and good execution were critical for good advertising. He was also a good salesman. He was very stubborn, but also carried a card around that said, “Maybe he’s right,” which reminded him to consider that clients’ opinions might occasionally be more valid than his.

He was good at getting the best work out of people, but he hated research because he thought it stifled creativity.

Unlike all the other greats, he didn’t let his work take over his life. He never worked past 5 p.m. or on weekends.

At the time of writing, Doyle Dane Bernbach agency billed more than $1 billion.

Appendix: Predictions About Advertising

In this chapter, Ogilvy predicts 13 trends in advertising from his vantage point in 1985.

1. Research capabilities will improve and advertisers will more effectively be able to generate sales.
2. Print advertising will come back into fashion.
3. Advertising will become more factual.
4. Billboards will go extinct.
5. Someone will regulate or impose control on radio and TV commercials so that they bombard people less.
6. Governments will advertise more, especially for health education.
7. Advertising will be used to try to control overpopulation.
8. Politicians will stop lying in their advertising.
9. Foreign advertising will become as high quality or even surpass U.S. advertising.
10. Foreign agencies will move into the U.S. and be successful.
11. Multinational companies will increase their advertising and sales worldwide. Campaigns will be adjusted to be appropriate locally.
12. Direct-response advertising will become a general technique rather than a specialty.
13. TV commercials will become more economical.