A review of David Ogilvy’s book “Ogilvy On Advertising”

Who Is David Ogilvy And Why Should We Listen To Him?

• David Ogilvy is commonly called “The Father of Advertising”.
• He was referred to as “the most sought after wizard in today’s advertising industry”, Time Magazine, 1962.
• He started his company Ogilvy, Benson & Mather in 1948 with $6,000 and sold it in 1989 for $864 million.
• Adweek magazine asked people in the business “Which individuals—alive or dead—made you consider pursuing a career in advertising?” Ogilvy topped the list. And the same result came when students of advertising were surveyed. His best-selling book “Confessions of an Advertising Man” is one of the most popular and famous books on advertising.

A Foundation For Successful Advertising

1. Results Are More Important Than Trying To Be Original Or Creative
2. Make Decisions Based On Research Not Gut Instinct
3. Create Big Ideas That Sell
4. Better Is Not Enough
5. Let Your Winners Run
6. Write Headlines That Sell The Copy
7. You Can’t Bore People Into Buying Your Product

1. Results Are More Important Than Trying To Be Original Or Creative

• “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it “creative”. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said “How well he speaks.” But when Demosthenes spoke, they said “Let us march against Philip”.
• Good advertising results in people taking action i.e. People buy your product, service or idea.

2. Make Decisions Based On Research Not Gut Instinct

• “I am sometimes attacked for imposing “rules”. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate rules. All I do is report on how consumers react to different stimuli. I may say to a copywriter “Research shows that commercials with celebrities are below average in persuading people to buy products. Are you sure you want to use a celebrity?” Call that a rule? Or I may say to an art director “Research suggests that if you set the copy in black type on a white background, more people will read it than if you set it in white type on a black background”. A hint perhaps but scarcely a rule.”
• Research shows you what works and what doesn’t work, do what works, don’t do what doesn’t work.

3. Create Big Ideas That Sell

• “You can do homework from now until doomsday but you will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”
• Big ideas make people gasp when they see it, make people wish they had thought of it themselves, are unique, fit into the overall strategy and last for a long time.

4. Better Is Not Enough

• “If you and your competitors all make excellent products don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what is good about your product and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it.”
• Everyone says that their product is “better”, “better” is generic, specifics are what differentiate you from your competitors.
• Don’t just say that your product is better, prove it.

5. Let Your Winners Run

• “If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.”
• Often advertising is removed in favour of something fresh and new because of the appointment of a new advertising agency or managing director therefore replacing something that is potentially working very well with something that doesn’t work.
• It helps to test the new advertising against the old under similar conditions to be certain that the new advertising is actually better.

6. Write Headlines That Sell The Copy

• “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your products, you have wasted 90 per cent of your money.”
• People are busy, they rarely open a magazine or newspaper and read it from cover to cover, instead they skim through the major headlines until they come across something that interests them.
• People won’t read what you have to say if the headline doesn’t answer the question “what’s in it for me?”

7. You Can’t Bore People Into Buying Your Product

• “You can not bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them into buying it.”
• People are motivated by emotions and they justify with logic.
• Logic alone does not motivate people into taking action.

Examples Of Some Of David Ogilvy’s Best Performing Advertisements

• “Guinness Guide To Oysters”

• “Darling, I’m having the most extraordinary experience… I’m head over heels in DOVE!

• “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

Most People Ignore Advertising

• 80% of advertisements get ignored.
• When you create an advertisement that looks like an advertisement you are saying “I only want 20% of people to read what I have to say”.
• When you look closely at David Ogilvy’s advertisements what you will notice is that they don’t look like advertisements – they look like news, informational or editorial copy.
• The best marketing is not marketing but good quality content.

Cosmopolitan Magazine

• Pick up a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine and you will see that they have lots of articles which have provocative headlines e.g. “The 8 Pairs Of Shoes That Every Girl Must Have” and interesting editorial but that are actually advertisements for products such as books, CDs and movies.
• People who hate SPAM and normally would never touch a book in their life will happily spend hours flicking through pages and pages of advertising without even realising it.
• David Ogilvy wrote the “Guiness Guide To Oysters” back in 1950.
• That is the power of modern advertising.

Conclusion

• David Ogilvy’s “Ogilvy On Advertising” is a must read for anyone interested in advertising, marketing, communication or persuasion.
• It not only gives you a good understanding of successful advertising but also provides useful information for finding work in advertising as well as tips for managing people and running your own advertising agency.
• I got it from Amazon.com for around $20 and it’s easily one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

Image by Esoteric Desi at Flickr.Com

A Barrack Obama 2008 Campaign Case Study

Overview

In this presentation I want to answer two main questions:

1. Why Did Obama Win?
2. And What Is Social Media Marketing?

1. Why Did Obama Win?

1. Technology Implementation
2. Excessive Cash
3. Clear Vision

1. He Implemented Technology Effectively:

• YouTube didn’t exist in 2004 and podcasting was yet to become a word.
• Video compression was still struggling to make files smaller and easily available.
• It’s not that McCain’s people didn’t try – they did but his political avatar seemed artificial and forced.

2. He Raised Excessive Amounts Of Cash:

• Barrack Obama’s charisma combined with a competent team proved to be a fund raising machine.
• He did not attend any big ticket fundraising dinners because he did not have the connections that McCain and Clinton had, instead he used social media marketing to collect donations from the public (almost 50% of all funds raised were small donations of less than $200).
• He then used the excess cash to flood prime time TV with hyper effective, superbly produced infomercials.

3. He Had A Clear Vision:

• For the last 232 years, the United States of America has had more or less the same president – caucasian, prosperous members of the powerful political elite.
• Obama’s message was a simple one “Change Can Happen”.
• In the end, it was the catastrophic 8 year reign of the worst president in the history of the United States of America that decided the election long before it even started.

2. What Is Social Media Marketing?

Image by World Economic Forum at Flickr.Com

“The election of Barrack Obama would not have been possible without you, the empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power that has come with the Internet.”

- Al Gore at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, November 7, 2008.

Social Media Marketing is:

• Utilising social networking and user-generated content platforms to promote a product, service or content.
• Creating and participating in a dialogue with the target audience, rather than forcing an advertisement upon them.
• Creating and promoting viral content that is meant to be shared by users.

• The BarackObama.Com blog is updated daily and features comments from readers.
• $650 million was raised from 3 million donors with almost 50% coming from those donating $200 or less.
• BarackTV on YouTube currently has more than 20 million channel views so far.

• The My.BarackObama.Com platform allowed volunteers and supporters to collaborate online.
• The Obama Mobile platform encouraged subscribers to contact friends during off-peak periods when calls were cheap or in many cases free.

• The Obama FaceBook page currently has more than 3 million supporters.

• After the election Change.Org was established – a new social networking platform for political, social and environmental change.

The Technology That Was Used To Raise $650 Million In Funds For The Obama Campaign Is Available To You Today And At Little Cost!

Conclusion

• The Obama campaign had a clear, simple vision and implemented it well using current technologies to create a fund raising machine.
• The Obama campaign proved that it is possible to use Social Media in order to dominate Traditional Media.
• And last but not least…

The Obama Campaign Changed The Way In Which The Game Is Played And With It The RULES OF THE GAME Have Changed Forever!