I suspect you are like me, and like most marketers, you're always looking for better ways to improve your ROI. I've read at least a dozen of the top marketing, ad writing, copywriting books out there. Scientific Advertising, Copywriting That Sells, and Ogilvy on Advertising are superior.
Ogilvy on Advertising is the best. Written in David Ogilvy's British sense of humour it is enjoyable. This is not a textbook. Every point of advice (and there are many) is well-founded in fact and is time-tested. The book is jam-packed with illustrations of the tips and opinions on how to write/design better ads. And even on what bad ads look/read like.
The only two chapters not useful to me were on Getting a Job in the industry and building an agency (these would certainly be profound for any individual pursuing either of these ends nonetheless.) Other than that, I'd stop reading my review and buy this book today. Within 30 minutes of reading Ogilvy on Advertising you'll be sketching out better ads - as I did.
You'd have to be a brain-dead advertising or marketing moron not to learn a thing or two from Ogilvy's abundant war stories.
Ogilvy's wit abounds. A few of his gems:
"There have always been noisy lunatics on the fringes of the advertising business. Their stock-in-trade includes ethnic humor, eccentric art direction, contempt for research and their self-proclaimed genius. They are seldom found out, because they gravitate to the kind of clients who, bamboozled by their rhetoric, do not hold them responsible for sales results..... I comfort myself with the reflection that I have sold more merchandise than all of them put together."
"In saying this, I run the risk of being denounced by idiots who hold that any advertising technique which has been in use for more than two years is ipso facto obsolete. They excoriate slice-of-life commercials, demonstrations and talking heads, turning a blind eye to the fact that those techniques still make the cash register ring."
"I sometimes wonder if there is a tacit conspiracy among clients, media and agencies to avoid putting advertising to such acid tests. Everyone involved has a vested interest in prolonging the myth that all advertising increases sales to some degree. It doesn't."
"Do I practice what I preach? Not always. I have created my share of fancy campaigns, but if you ask which of my advertisements has been the most successful, I will answer without hesitation that it was the first ad I wrote for industrial development in Puerto Rico. It won no awards for 'creativity', but it persuaded scores of manufacturers to start factories in that poverty-stricken island. Sad to say, an agency which produced nothing but this kind of down-to-earth advertising would never win a reputation for 'creativity', and would wither on the vine."
"On an airplane not long ago, I overheard the following conversation:
'What business are you in?''Engineer. You?''I'm an account executive in ad agency.''You write the ads?''No, copywriters do that.''That must be a fun job.''It's not easy. We do a lot of research.''You do the research?''No, we have research people for that.''Do you bring in the new clients?''That's not my job.''Forgive me, but what is your job?''Marketing.'"You do the marketing for the clients?''No, they do it themselves.''Are you in management?''No, but I soon will be.'"
That's not all! There are reprints of many of David Ogilvy's classic print ads. Including some that aren't Ogilvy's (for example, Volkswagen "Think Small".) Ogilvy's Rolls Royce ad, which sold out Rolls Royce North American inventory, is also reproduced. Along with Ogilvy's print ads for Schweppes, Hathaway Shirts and Puerto Rico.
A gold mine of ideas.
As David Ogilvy writes at the end of the book's overture: "If you think this is a lousy book, you should have seen it before my partner Joel Raphaelson did his best to de-louse it. Bless you, Joel."
And bless you, David Ogilvy!
1) "The wrong advertising can actually reduce the sales of a product" (pg 9)
2) "If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling." (pg 19)
3) "If it does not sell, it is not creative." (pg 24)
4) Hire "gentlemen with brains." (pg 48)
5) Communicate verbally. Attend the right meetings. Remember the French saying, "He who is absent is always wrong." (pg 56)
6) "Any fool can write bad advertising, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one." (pg 67)
7) People read headlines 5 times as often as they read the body. People remember ads with news 22% more than ads without news. (pg 71)
8) Ads in four colors cost 50% more, but are 100% more memorable. (pg 79)
9) In TV ads, use the name it the first 10 seconds. Show the package.
10) Learn from P&G: They are disciplined. They only enter categories they think will grow. They have multiple brands that compete against each other. They invest heavily to launch a brand. They never change a successful strategy. 60% of the ads show a demonstration. They communciate the name of the products repeatedly. The names fo the products are easy and simple. They don't use celebrities. (pg 155)
