Books: Ogilvy on Advertising

I just finished the wonderful book "Ogilvy on Advertising." I was first inspired to read about advertising from my favorite television show, Mad Men. The book I started with was "Kings of Madison Avenue." This book profiles the inimitable David Ogilvy who was an advertising God during the 1950's and on. Ogilvy at one point envisioned a school to teach advertising, and wrote a few books on the subject. The one that I happened to find at my local library was "Ogilvy on Advertising." Despite a few outdated opinions, Ogilvy imparts a wealth of knowledge about advertising in an abbreviated format with wonderful examples. Knowledge about advertising should not be discarded as a science of manipulation or other degrading profession--it really has many things to teach about the business world and how to communicate with people.


What really struck me from reading Ogilvy on Advertising was that advertising is not necessarily about being overly clever or artistic, but actually selling a product. Ogilvy notes that most ads that win Cleo industry awards are not actually very good at selling! The main point is to differentiate one's product and to give people persuasive information on why they should buy.

A few of Ogilvy's tenants:

• Reverse type should be avoided (white text on black background)
• Women are generally interested in other women in advertising and vice versa
• Long copy (the body of the advertisement) is good---only 5% of people who read a headline will read the long copy, so giving more information than less is the best tactic
• Always put the product name in the headline
• Company slogans and logos can be avoided--they usually clutter up an advertisment
• Differentiate!
• Do not use all caps
• Impress a sense of quality on the reader
• Sex sells, but do not use irrelevant sexual images
• Do your research!
  

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