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Inside The Mind of David Ogilvy

Source: https://outlierspodcast.substack.com/p/inside-the-mind-of-david-ogilvy I found a rare interview with David Ogilvy and Richard Heffner from June 11, 1982.

In advertising, you sometimes have celebrities in commercials. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

It depends what you want. When we average the research costs of all celebrity commercials,we find that celebrity commercials are far above average in being remembered, and being recalled. But they’re far below average in persuading people to buy the product. The celebrity commercials sell us celebrities, but not the product.

A common mistake is to set white type on a black background.

People sometimes set type…white on a black background, you know, we call it reverse plate. That’s done a lot in advertising. It is physically impossible to read it…it’s a mistake to make…any magazine you go through you find 20 or 30 advertisements where the type is set white on black. It’s impossible to read…even if you want to. It’s been done wrong…common mistake.

The soft purr of French advertising compared to the directness of American

I live in France, and there’s no research there in advertising. The advertising people do anything that appeals to them, and I watch it on my television at home. And their commercials would enchant you. They’re witty, they’re low pressure, they’re charming, and I watch them and I purr…and then I watch them and say to myself “I wonder if my cook understood that commercial. I bet she didn’t. It would be way over her head”. In the United States those commercials have to be researched, and you…they’re not so charming to people as well educated as you are, even as well educated as I am, they’re not so charming. They don’t have so much wit, but they hit more people that we want to hit…they’re understood by more people because they’re researched.

Is Advertising a Waste of Money?

I never thought of advertising as wasteful, because the word “wasteful” is a tricky word. Economists use it in a special sense. I suppose that most advertising is a waste of money and most advertising is a crashing bore and an intrusion and there is too much of it. And you can say all sorts of bad things about advertising. But people go on using it, you know, so it must have…perform some function.

I found this exchange on political advertising quite interesting.

Ogilvy: It’s so dishonest, isn’t it? Interviewer: Why? Ogilvy: I don’t know what it is. Because it’s impossible, I suppose to boil down issues to 30 second television commercials. The political advertising is the most dishonest advertising there is. If I wrote advertising as mendacious and crooked and misleading for products as those guys, those politicians get written for them in an election, I’d be put in prison. Interviewer: You say “mendacious” and “as misleading”. Ogilvy: Yes. Interviewer: Not quite so mendacious, not quite so misleading for products? Ogilvy: Oh, not nearly, not remotely. They have no rules, you see. And nobody can prosecute them. If you’re running for nomination or for election for any office and you go on the television, you can say anything you like. The stations and the networks can’t do anything about it. I forget why, there’s some Constitutional reason. And they have to take anything you give them. I remember saying to a federal, head of the Federal Trade Commission some years ago, I said, “Why don’t you prosecute Johnson and put him in prison for…”, because he would never allow me to do that thing…sort of thing.

[…]

Interviewer: Do you think that they’re effective? That’s a question that has always…I’ve always wondered about. Ogilvy: I don’t know. I’m told that there are people who study this…who come to the conclusion that elections are now won by whichever candidate spends the most money on television. Interviewer: What would you do about that? Ban political television? Ban political advertising? Ogilvy: I certainly would if I could, but I can’t. I won’t take it. I won’t handle it. Interviewer: You never did? Ogilvy: No. Hell, no. I always refused it. (Laughter) First off, it’s dishonest. Secondly, it takes, it’s so unfair for people in an advertising agency. If you take a Democratic candidate, and half our people are Republican, so then they’re miserable. Why should I make half my partners miserable? And there are other reasons against it. They’re so fascinating, those Presidential candidates. And when an advertising agency does one, it’s all it does. Their top people become riveted by it and they concentrate on it for six months, and not to the great advantage of their normal clients.

The conversation shifts away from politics;isn’t all advertising prone to exaggeration?

Ogilvy: Well, I don’t think advertising can be charged with being mendacious, which means lying doesn’t it? I don’t think that…that’s not what’s wrong with it. What’s wrong with it really is the volume of it. Someone said the other day, “The sound of selling is the dirge of our times”. I lived in the United States for many years and I didn’t notice it because I was part of it…I was part of it… […] I cannot believe the volume of advertising…the clutter….it is simply nauseating. I wonder how long people are going to go along putting up with it. I wonder if there’ll be any advertising on television 10 years from today. It’s an open question.

What about demand? Doesn’t advertising create demand?

Ogilvy: See, I’m not…when I’m writing an advertisement, I’m generally not creating demands for glasses of water, I’m trying to persuade people to buy Brand A-X of this kind of water. I’m not busy trying to create a demand for things. And…whether the highbrow say that advertising makes people want things they don’t need… Interviewer: And you don’t believe that? Ogilvy: …besides what people need or not… I claim the privilege, the prerogative of deciding whether I “need” a deodorant or glass of beer, of motor car, and I don’t want some bloody prophet at Harvard to tell me that I don’t need that. And I’d be much better living in the woods with a simple life. It’s a very aristocratic point of view. You don’t need…people don’t need these things…that we…wicked ad men are making them want. It’s ridiculous. Interviewer: “Aristocratic point of view”…what do you mean? Ogilvy: Well, I am an upper class, I’ve got a big income, I’m a professor of Economics at Harvard…my name is Galbraith, or whatever it happens to be, and I think you, David Ogilvy, are very wicked to persuade those unemployed coal miners in some town in Pennsylvania that they need deodorants, because they don’t really need them. He’s got them in his bathroom cabinet. What right has he to say…it’s an aristocratic point of view. The lower classes, the working classes don’t need these things at all. Interviewer: Question, aristocratic or otherwise…is it right or wrong? Is there a point that Galbraith is making that you could agree with? Ogilvy: I don’t deal in rights and wrongs. I’m not a philosopher and I don’t know what the Hell is right or wrong.

On the difference between Print and TV advertising

Print advertising is “skippable”, you know. If you’re reading a magazine or newspaper, you see advertisement and you don’t have to read it. It’s not anything…you turn it over. TV advertising is…TV commercials are much harder to skip, unless you’ve got one of these villainous machines in your hand that you can switch off the commercials.

On abolishing some advertising.

Ogilvy: I would like to see the amount of time devoted to advertising on television and radio, particularly radio, reduced. I think it’s too much. Interviewer: Not in print? Ogilvy: No, it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re strong enough to lift the newspaper on Sunday. I’d like to see the amount of commercials reduced. Secondly, I would like to see billboards, posters abolished.

On how technology changed where talent went in the industry

An interesting thing has happened in advertising since television became all the rage for advertising: The number of people who can make good advertisements in newspapers and magazines is disappearing. Everybody in my trade wants to dot the TV commercials. That’s the exciting, glamorous thing. And they’re forgetting how to make good advertisements for newspapers and magazines.

And perhaps the golden rule of advertising

The consumer’s not a moron, you know…she’s your wife, and you must try not to insult her intelligence.

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Source: https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/business/about-advertising/

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