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San Francisco
December 2006
Two
weeks ago I was doing some research for a new product and I
needed authoritative quotes to set the stage early on. The
first name that popped to mind was the great
David Ogilvy, one of my few heroes who has made a mark in
traditional, big-agency advertising.
The
link on his name, above, will lead you to an interesting Wikipedia
article on his legendary life and times. This special issue of
The World Copywriting Newsletter is focused completely on his
wisdom.
I
decided to call Mr. Ogilvy "The Bard of Advertising" because he was
far more than a technician. Influences like John Caples
and Claude Hopkins understood and passed along the techniques
brilliantly, but there was a certain poetry and appreciation of life
beyond advertising that I never saw in their work.
Mr.
Ogilvy was different. He had worked as a chef. He
knew the nuances caused by tiniest shades of spices, the relative
effect of one part of the meal on the experience as a whole, and the
importance of managing, motivating and inspiring the team that
cooked the meal.
He
truly tasted life and he saw the big picture.
For
that reason, I believe, his quotations were more profound and
eternal than anyone else's I have ever read, when the subject is
advertising and copywriting.
So for
this edition, I have picked five quotes and offer you a New
Millennium perspective on them. But don't be surprised if you
find in my commentary that things have changed over the last few
decades less than you thought they had.
Oh, by
the way: As an added bonus to this tribute, I was able to get
some personal reminiscences about Mr. Ogilvy from Drayton Bird,
a former partner about whom Mr. Ogilvy once said, "[he] knows more
about direct marketing than anyone in the world."
That
section comes after the five quotes and my commentary. Now, here
it is:
"A good
advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing
attention to itself."
This sounds odd,
because if you don't get a prospect's attention, how are you going
to sell anything?
Here's the
underlying point: I was guest-speaking a few years ago at a
local college about advertising, the day after the Clio awards
(the advertising industry's warm personal gesture to itself,
where they acknowledge each other for the print ads and commercials
that lost the largest amounts of money for their clients, I think).
I mentioned to the
students that some of the ads were interesting, but none had any
emotional impact on me except one, which made me hungry.
A kid in the back
of the room who looked like he had been sleeping suddenly sprang to
life.
"You mean the
McDonald's commercial?" he said.
I nodded.
Apparently he had had the same experience.
Oh, here's
the kicker: The McDonald's ad wasn't an award winner.
It was one of the commercials sponsoring the show itself.
And here's the
point:
It wasn't clever.
It wasn't
hilarious.
It wasn't even
memorable. (Today, I can't remember what it was about. )
All it did was
sell.
Not good enough for
the Clios. But...
... say what you
will about trans fats...
... in the last
five years, McDonald's' stock is up 35%.
And people keep
buying those Big Macs.
"If it
doesn't sell, it isn't creative."
Hmm.
I wonder if people
at agencies have ever taken a deep breath, focused, and asked
themselves this question:
What is it that we're trying to create here?
If the answer is
something besides sales and profits, then advertising starts to look
like an expense rather than an investment.
The kind of
copywriting I preach and practice involves getting results --
measurable, tangible and always leading towards a sale.
To me, that's what
Mr. Ogilvy had in mind with this quote.
"The
headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down
readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are
advertising."
That's brilliant.
In its simplicity.
What you're really
doing with your headline, then, is separating out the readers who
would be interested in what you are selling from those
wouldn't.
If they aren't
prospects for what you sell, you don't want them reading your ad.
Period.
Too many
advertisers try to be all things to all people.
Their ads don't
make any money.
"I
don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade
people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should
use their language, the language they use every day, the language in
which they think. We try to write in the vernacular."
Easier said than
done, but highly important.
Why is it so hard
for so many of us to write the way we speak?
Because we've had
it beaten out of us repeatedly, from kindergarten, through high
school, college and sometimes grad school.
We've been
criticized so many times for not following an artificially rigid
writing format that we've internalized the critic.
But... that critic
has been working overtime. The critic needs to go on vacation
when you're writing copy.
"Never
stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving."
This comes down to
elementary common sense.
If one headline
gets you twice the response as the other, which headline do you want
to use?
If one price
increases your gross profits and your profit margin by more than 30%
each, which price do you want to use?
Now. Now that
you know which kind of headline and which kind of price you want to
use, how are
you going to find out which ones they are?
Only one way.
Testing.
Special Bonus:
Drayton Bird Remembers
Drayton
Bird sold his business to Ogilvy and Mather, David Ogilvy's
agency, and became head of Ogilvy Direct Worldwide.
I asked
him to share some memories of Mr. Ogilvy, and he emailed me
these:
1.
Suffering no fools
At
a meeting in Barcelona somebody showed him an ad he hated - and
he said so.
The
man (unwisely) said, "Well, it did very well."
David
said, witheringly, "Imagine how much better it would have sold
if you'd done it properly."
He was terrifying if he thought
people were
a) stupid or
b) brown-nosers.
2.
Taking it as well as dishing it out
My first working contact was
when a director at O & M asked me to comment on a piece
of copy for the World Wildlife Fund.
I said it was good, but lacked
a call to action.
I wrote: "David says ads
without headlines are headless wonders. This is a
tail-less wonder."
Next day David rang me from
Switzerland, where they had a house.
"I wrote that ad, and you were
quite right. I'll revise it."
He knew I would have shaded
my views if I'd known it was his copy.
3.
Endless Room For Improvement
21 years
ago I wrote the attached ad. Please note the PS.
The job was
a bit of a nightmare because after drafting it I had
a flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Toronto,
where I got off the plane to do a seminar to our
staff there.
That is
some flight - halfway round the world from south to
north.
So I was
half dead, but I had to drop my bags, shower,
then get talking. Before I began London called:
Could I change the ad to say we also needed creative
people?
"I have to
do a seminar now - but I'll call you back
afterwards."
Somehow my
unconscious mind came up with the P.S. while I was
teaching.
Eye camera
studies show people always look to see who's
advertising, just as they look to see who signs a
letter.
It was a
50th of the space, but got 16% of the responses -
and the ad attracted three people who all became
directors of the agency, and later
multi-millionaires when they set up on their own.
I showed
D.O. the ad with some pride.
He just
said: "You should have said how many people
you wanted - then people would see how fast your
agency is growing."
An Indian
colleague of mine who David called "the most able
man" in O & M worldwide used to say, "The obvious is
always overlooked."
That is
a good example, because I certainly knew all about
the virtues of precision, but hadn't thought of
applying them there.
Nevertheless I'm quite pleased with that ugly little
ad.
click on ad to see
larger image
That wraps up this edition of
the World Copywriting Newsletter.
Until next time,
David Garfinkel
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