Ogilvy on Advertising

perspective helps a man to separate the eternal verities of advertising from its passing fads?

research among consumers. Find out how they think about your kind of product, what language they use when they discuss the subject, what attributes are important to them, and what promise would be most likely to make them buy your brand.

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant.

Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret.

It is horribly difficult to recognize a good idea. I shudder to think how many I have rejected. Research can’t help you much, because it cannot predict the cumulative value of an idea, and no idea is big unless it will work for thirty years.

It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself five questions: 1 Did it make me gasp when I first saw it? 2 Do I wish I had thought of it myself? 3 Is it unique? 4 Does it fit the strategy to perfection? 5 Could it be used for 30 years?

Most campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of objectives, and try to reconcile the divergent views of too many executives. By attempting to cover too many things, they achieve nothing.

What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same. Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but does not influence them. Thus it is that you find more explicit sex in magazines and novels than in advertisements. The word fuck is commonplace in contemporary literature, but has yet to appear in advertisements.

The hallmarks of a potentially successful copywriter include: Obsessive curiosity about products, people and advertising. A sense of humor. A habit of hard work. The ability to write interesting prose for printed media, and natural dialogue for television. The ability to think visually. Television commercials depend more on pictures than words. The ambition to write better campaigns than anyone has ever written before.

Do not make the common mistake of regarding your clients as dopes. Make friends with them. Buy shares in their companies. But try not to become entangled in their politics.

A habit of graceful surrender on trivial issues will make you difficult to resist when you stand and fight on a major issue.

You are a human being writing to another human being. Neither of you is an institution. You should be businesslike and courteous, but never stiff and impersonal. The more your letter sounds like you, the more it will stand apart from the letters of your competitors. But don’t try to dazzle your reader with your sparkling personality. You wouldn’t show off in an interview, so why show off in a letter? If you make each sentence sound the way you would say it across a desk, there will be plenty of personality in your letter.

It is a tragedy of the advertising business that its best practitioners are always promoted into management.

Brains? It doesn’t necessarily mean a high IQ. It means curiosity, common sense, wisdom, imagination and literacy.

What you should worry about is not the price you pay for your agency’s services, but the selling power of your advertising.’

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.

The headlines which work best are those which promise the reader a benefit

If you are lucky enough to have some news to tell, don’t bury it in your body copy, which nine out of ten people will not read. State it loud and clear in your headline. And don’t scorn tried-and-true words like amazing, introducing, now, suddenly.

If you are advertising a kind of product which is only bought by a small group of people, put a word in your headline which will flag them down, like asthma, bedwetters, women over thirty-five.

if you need a long headline, go ahead and write one, and if you want a short headline, that’s all right too. The

Some copywriters write tricky headlines – double meanings, puns and other obscurities. This is counter-productive.

Your headline should telegraph what you want to say.

Do not, however, address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.

Don’t write essays. Tell your reader what your product will do for him or her, and tell it with specifics. Write your copy in the form of a story,

I believe, without any research to support me, that advertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.

Advertising people have an unconscious belief that advertisements have to look like advertisements. They have inherited graphic conventions which telegraph to the reader, ‘This is only an advertisement. Skip it.’

Good typography helps people read your copy, while bad typography prevents them doing so.

The copy in most corporate advertisements is distinguished by a self-serving, flatulent pomposity which defies reading, and agencies waste endless hours concocting slogans of incredible fatuity.

Notice that all these bromides are interchangeable – any company could

The most sensible way to set the budget is to ‘analyse the task.’ How much will it cost to achieve a specific goal among a specific audience?

If the issue is complicated, and it almost always is, simplify it as much as you reasonably can.

But watch out. Simplistic distortion can insult people’s intelligence and do you more harm than good.

Present your case in terms of the reader’s self-interest.

Admittedly an advertisement, however efficient, can seldom close a sale itself. Its function is to pave the way for salesmen, by pre-selling your product and attracting leads.

Make your promise specific. Instead of generalities, use percentages, time elapsed, dollars saved.

Headlines get five times the readership of the body copy. If your headline doesn’t sell, you have wasted your money. Your headline should promise a benefit, or deliver news, or offer a service, or tell a significant story, or recognize a problem, or quote a satisfied customer. Body copy is seldom read by more than 10 per cent of the readers of a publication. But that 10 per cent consists of prospects – people interested enough in what you are selling to take the trouble to read about it. What you say to them determines the success of your advertisement.

Body copy is seldom read by more than 10 per cent of the readers of a publication. But that 10 per cent consists of prospects

Captions should appear under all your photographs. Twice as many people read them as read body copy. And use your captions to sell.

Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough. They do not offer any perceptible point of difference – like better quality, better flavor, better value, more convenience or better solutions to problems. It helps if the point of difference goes hand-in-hand with a chord of familiarity that links the new product to the consumer’s past experience – a disposable diaper, a light beer, a diet cola, a paper towel.

Most marketers spend too much time worrying about how to revive products which are in trouble, and too little time worrying about how to make successful products even more successful. It is the mark of a brave man to admit defeat, cut his loss, and move on.

In the long run, the manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined image for his product gets the largest share of the market. The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.

Thirty-two per cent of beer-drinkers drink 80 per cent of all beer. Twenty-three per cent of laxative users consume 80 per cent of all laxatives. Fourteen per cent of the people who drink gin consume 80 per cent of all the gin. In everything you do, keep your eye glued to the heavy users. They are unlike occasional users in their motivations.

with every passing year my interest in the future declines.