Who
is David Ogilvy?
He started his career doing door to door sales. It was there that he learned
how to listen to his customer and base a successful sales transaction
on what he heard.
He came to the United States in 1936 from the UK, where
he was born. One of his first employers, the George Gallup Audience Research
Institute, influenced his thinking about advertising and marketing strategy.
It was there that Ogilvy learned the importance of making decisions based
on qualified research.
He built an agency using his dog’s name, Mather, to position it as
a partnership. He founded his agency in 1948, with no clients and only
two staff members.
His agency endured and grew into both a direct response
agency and a general advertising agency...but during worldwide agency
functions, he sat with the DM crowd, feeling more at home with them than
the branding side of the agency he had spawned. In fact, he stated once,
“Direct response was my first love. Later, it became my secret weapon.”
Other well known Ogilvy statements include:
“It’s not creative unless it sells.”
“If you focus your advertising budget on entertaining
the consumer, you may not sell as much of your product as you like. People
don’t buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on
television last night. They buy it because it promises a benefit.”
“Every word of copy must count.”
DMA President Robert Wientzen stated,”It would not be an understatement to call Ogilvy the advertising man of the century.” But in spite of this fame and kudos, visionary Ogilvy never forgot the basis of the advertising business: “We sell, or else.”...representing the heritage of all of us in direct marketing.
