Over the last few months, I have been zealously watching the TV show Mad Men. It has given me a different perspective on advertising, a profession which I previously looked down upon with disdain. I have come to realize that advertising at its finest is no different than art: a method of associating a material product with an instinct or an emotion. It is also a science: the goal of advertising is to sell, and ultimately, consumer spending patterns dictate the success of an advertisement, regardless of how creative it seems.
So, I turned to the voice of David Ogilvy, considered the father of modern advertising and one of the founders of the agency Ogilvy & Mather. In his book Ogilvy on Advertising, he provides a unique and qualified perspective on being successful in the field in various positions and through various media; the book includes countless examples of ads that have been run throughout history. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that his advice applies not just to advertising, but to design, HCI, the tech industry—any field where you must connect with and satisfy the needs of a consumer or user. Furthermore, Ogilvy is ruthless about using research to make sure that his advertising affects the bottom line of the client, the equivalent of making data-driven decisions at tech companies today. He even discusses the use of a precursor to the modern A/B testing called split-run, invented by Richard Stanton.
Ogilvy’s book can roughly be broken down into a few sections:
- An introduction to the different cogs in the well-oiled machine that is the world of advertising (Chapters 1-8). Ogilvy lays down his basic principles of advertising, navigates the common positions in an advertising agency, illustrates how to attract clients, and enumerates tactics for success in both print and television.
- Advice on advertising in particular sectors (Chapters 9-13). Ogilvy discusses advertising corporations and travel to consumers as well as enterprise and philanthropic advertising. In particular, an advertisement written by Ogilvy encouraging passengers of the New York subway to donate money to the United Negro College Fund is one of the most poignant and actionable pieces of short writing I have ever read. He also spends a great deal of time discussing direct-response advertising, whose modern equivalent is A/B testing with calls to action. This has become so prevalent in our everyday interactions with the web that we sometimes forget that we are the collective guinea pig of high-scale social experiments.
- Reflections on the position of an agency in the commercial world (Chapters 14-16). In particular, he talks about taking on Proctor & Gamble, the Goliath of consumer goods. Because of their consistency, they have achieve marked success; however, this also makes their strategy quite predictable. He goes on to extoll the values of research much like a modern-day tech company would praise data-driven decision making. Lastly, he connects the roles of advertising and marketing.
- Reflections on the place and responsibility of advertising in society (Chapters 17-20). Ogilvy discusses the rising competition of agencies in foreign countries (Ogilvy is himself British but made a name in the United States) and six particularly influential figures in the history of advertising that were deceased at the time of writing. He also touches upon a point which is still frighteningly relevant today: the lack of regulation in political advertising as opposed to commercial advertising and the staggering amount of public deceit henceforth (Chapter 19). Lastly, he predicts 13 changes for the future of advertising, some of which are poignant (“The quality of research will improve, and this will generate a bigger corpus of knowledge”), and some of which are horribly naive (“Billboards will be abolished”).
I found this book tremendously useful in understanding how consumers think and how to appeal to the human instinct of actionable impulse. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in such human connections.