In the early years of the advertising agency he had set up in New York in
1948, David Ogilvy affected a full-length flowing black cape with a scarlet
lining. A young employee thought he looked like Heathcliff coming off the
moors. Ogilvy wore woolly tweed suits (with lapels on his waistcoats) and
bow ties, which were replaced in later years by a scarlet-lined, dark blue,
double-breasted blazer and traditional striped tie, held in place by, of all
things, a Bulldog paper clip. Wavy, flaming-red hair, aristocratic features
and twinkling blue eyes completed his look.
To top it off, Ogilvy had the speech of an English gentleman. A maid named
Bridey Cummings served tea in his office every afternoon. Many photographs
show him with a pipe, which seldom left his lips; he also smoked (but seldom
bought) cigars and cigarettes.
Ogilvy was strikingly handsome. A friend who knew him as a student at Oxford
recalls, “He looked a tiny bit like Rupert Brooke, so he was always running
his hands through his forelock and showing his profile to advantage.” Not
surprisingly, women were intensely attracted to him. “He was very, very sexy
and incredibly charming,” says a former copywriter. Another agrees: “On my
second day in the office, David walked in suddenly. I was struck dumb. It
was as though a movie star was in my little office. I almost asked him for
his autograph.”
Like other large personalities, Ogilvy would have stood out in almost any line
of work he chose to pursue. In advertising, he found a field that rapidly
embraced his personality at a time business historians would later call its
golden age.
To understand the man, one has to understand first that he was an actor,
delivering centre-stage points with theatrical flourish. Often dressed for
the part, he might show up at black-tie events in a kilt. “Perhaps a bit of
self-advertisement,” he explained. “If you can’t advertise yourself, what
hope do you have of being able to advertise anything else?”
Instead of coming into a conference hall while the chairman of another agency
was speaking, Ogilvy waited until the man had finished and gone, so all eyes
would turn to him. A speech consultant considered his showmanship in so
little need of improvement that if he came to her for help, she’d tell him,
go home! Ogilvy was driven around New York in a Rolls-Royce before many were
around. It was quite a show.
Ogilvy was not above embellishing his picaresque life story. He famously told
the head of British American Tobacco that his first job was with BAT. A few
months later, he told another chief executive that his first job had been
with that man’s company. It was all part of selling himself. Like any actor,
he wanted to give himself better lines.
And like most snobs, Ogilvy loved to name-drop. According to him, one of his
friends in Chicago was a former king of Yugoslavia. “If there’s anything
David likes, it’s royalty,” said a friend, “and a king is best.” Yet in
business he was democratic. When he entered New York advertising circles, he
was shocked to find how separate the Jewish community was from the
non-Jewish. “I told our small staff that I wasn’t going to play that game. A
lot of our clients were Jewish — eg (Helena) Rubinstein (in cosmetics) and
later Seagram. And our senior executives were also a mixture.” It didn’t
occur to Ogilvy that race or religion should be an issue.
He put a high value on caring for people and practising good manners. “We
don’t take people to the elevator — we take them down to the street.”
When he heard a young writer had lost his parents in a plane crash, he
invited the man (whom he didn’t know) and his wife to his house for dinner. Ogilvy
cultivated and flaunted his eccentricities, not all of them attractive. The
worst was his appalling behaviour in restaurants, where he often seemed to
go out of his way to create a scene. He’d listen to a recitation of the
house specialities and order (the breakfast cereal) Grape-Nuts. Or a plate
of ketchup or a jar of jelly, as his entire meal. At a pre-Christmas dinner
with British clients, he asked for two small mince pies as a starter; for
the entree, again two mince pies; instead of dessert, two more mince pies.
A large part of Ogilvy’s success came from the energy he put into getting what
he wanted. He would start by mentioning an idea, more or less casually, then
follow up with a memo or letter, clips of articles, more memos — a tsunami
of communications. He never gave up. His ideas gained power from a terse,
compact writing style. “I believe in the dogmatism of brevity,” he
explained. He registered key thoughts with underscores in memos and letters,
verbal emphasis in conversation and speeches. His speeches were riveting;
audiences didn’t talk during them. He could film a talk in a single take.
He collected and repeated aphorisms to make his points. On compensation: “Pay
peanuts, and you get monkeys.” On checking expense accounts: “Even the Pope
has a confessor.” On leadership: “Search your parks in all your cities /
You’ll find no statues of committees.” Points were made memorable by vivid
metaphor. Discussing which of two commercials to show first to a client,
Ogilvy told the creative team: “When I was a boy, I always saved the cherry
on my pudding for last. Then, one day, my sister stole it. From then on, I
always ate the cherry first. Let’s play the best commercial first.” The
client liked the first commercial.
Walter Cronkite, who lived next door to Ogilvy in New York, said he could see
him working at his desk in the window, night after night, hour after hour.
In the morning, letters had been answered, plans outlined, staff memos
written. Ogilvy was indefatigable, routinely working until 7pm, then packing
his unfinished business into two briefcases to finish at home (which didn’t
help his second marriage). Weekends were for more work, not play. “This
weekend I went over 375 pieces of paper,” he wrote to his directors. “The
Duke of Wellington never went home until he had finished all the work on his
desk.”
Most of Ogilvy’s notable ad campaigns were made during a 10-year spurt early
in his career. He called them BIG IDEAS (always all capitals). “Unless your
advertisement is based on a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the
night.” His Big Ideas went beyond memorable advertisements. (He dismissed
the use of “ads” as not professional and deplored “creativity”, a word he
professed not to understand.) His goals were wildly ambitious, nothing less
than to change the business and make it more professional. One of his Big
Ideas was the now ubiquitous concept of brands.
His greatest legacy may have been an approach that assumed the intelligence of
the consumer. “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.” “You would
not tell lies to your wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”
Before he was finished, this immigrant Englishman would improbably rewrite
many of the rules of Madison Avenue and become a brand unto himself.
Extracted from The King of Madison Avenue by Kenneth Roman. Copyright ©
2009 by the author. Published on January 23 by Palgrave Macmillan at £17.99.
It’s available to Sunday Times readers through BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135
at £16.20 (incl p&p)
