Confessions of an Advertising Man By David Ogilvy Jacob Shelton July 18 2006 About the Author David Ogilvy is known as the father of advertising in many advertising circles He attended Christ Church College Oxford but did not graduate Instead he moved to Paris and became a chef at the Majestic Hotel Later he became a door to door salesman where he wrote a Manual advising other salesman on how to increase sales After the success of the manual his brother who was working for Mather Crowther convinced the agency to hire Ogilvy as an account executive After a working for the agency for a while Ogilvy convinced them to send him to America for a year After in America for a few years and working various jobs Ogilvy started his own agency in America with Mather and Crowther Soon Crowther left and it was just Ogilvy and Mather It was hard for him to get clients in the beginning but he soon built a clientele that was very respectable including Hathaway shirts Schweppes and Rolls Royce In 1989 Ogilvy Mather was bought out by WPP for a large profit Ogilvy served as WPP non executive chair for three years Ogilvy died in 1999 Ogilvy published several books while during his career including Ogilvy on Advertising and Confessions of an Advertising Man Abstract In Confessions of an Advertising Man David Ogilvy explains the rules in which he has used to create one of the most successful advertising businesses in the world He goes through different areas with their own set of rules He talks about all areas of advertising from how to get the clients that you want to how to write creative advertisements to how to take a small company and turn it into a powerful entity Not only does he go through and explain all the rules which he has used he also uses real life experiences to prove that he has implemented the rules and that is why he has risen to the top of the advertising world This is basically a how to guide as to what it takes to make it in the business and tactics that have proven to work in business situations Summary The story behind this book Before the actual book begins Ogilvy takes time to explain where he was coming from when he wrote the book and to make a few adjustments to the context He corrects three points made later in the book place a coupon on the bottom right of an ad there is a correlation between people liking an ad and its selling power and that 200 words a minute on television commercial sells more than an ad with 90 words a minute He explains the type of people that he looks for when hiring into the company and the set of standards on which he expects his employees to follow He admits that there are currently four problems that the advertising industry faces today 1 Manufacturers of package goods are now spending too much money on price off deals instead of producing good advertising 2 Many advertising agencies are only interested in winning awards and producing original ads not in selling a product 3 There is a rise of Megalomaniacs whose only interest is in the economic gain of the company not on being creative 4 Agencies are still making the same mistakes that they have always been making and it s costing the clients a lot of money Ogilvy ends the section with a brief overview of what he has learned but all the points he make are present in the main section of the book Background Ogilvy tells about his childhood and growing up He talks about his father being against religion but that people should still act like a gentleman He talks about a conversation he once heard between a husband and wife in which the man said My dear nothing in this world is worth buying Ogilvy disagrees with this and thinks that almost everything advertised is worth buying and he hopes that he can make people happy buying the products that he advertises because he enjoys making the advertisements Chapter 1 How to Manage an Advertising Agency Ogilvy starts out by talking about his former job as a chef at a Hotel in Paris He talks about his former boss and the ways in which he inspired his employees to be the best they could be His boss hardly ever complimented his employees so that when there was a compliment given it was respected more than if he gave compliments out all the time He also learned that you should always come through on your promises otherwise you will lose the respect of your clients The most important thing he learned from working as a chef was the work ethic that the leader of a company must express As long as the boss is doing the most work no other employee can argue about the amount of work he has to do Ogilvy then goes on to again talk about the characteristics that he looks for in an employee that he hires Basically this includes having high moral character and integrity with the work that you do Chapter 2 How to Get Clients In the beginning of this chapter Ogilvy talks about the importance of youth and gusto in the individuals who write the ads He comments on the fact that when a business starts out it is full of ideas and create very creative ads but after years they are out of creative ideas and soon start making ads that do not uphold the integrity of the company He continues to talk about his own personal experiences and the struggles and opposition that he faced when first starting out According to Ogilvy the first clients are the hardest to get but after you get a reputation of doing good work companies start to seek you Another big rule introduced in this chapter was the concept of never work for competing companies He talks about gaining the Shell account and by doing so he had to let go of the Standard Oil account He talks about how to always use the products that you are advertising and to never use competing companies because one will always feel shorted by the other s advertising Finally he gets into the rules for obtaining and selecting new clients 1 Only advertise products which you are proud to be associated with never advertise a product that you don t respect and don t like 2 Never advertise for a company that you feel has better advertising than you can offer 3 Never advertise for a company that has had failing sales for a long period of time This normally means that the advertising will not help the sales 4 Make sure that the client understands that the advertising agency has to make money as well don t make the client money while losing money from your own company 5 Question any account that would not be very profitable If it gives you a chance to show