• “Madison Avenue is to advertising as Hollywood is to movies or Fleet Street is to London newspapers, as much an identity as a place. It conjures images of gray flannel suits and two-martini lunches. For many years, Madison Avenue was the address of many advertising agencies. Even though most have since fled to less expensive office space, "Madison Avenue" is still shorthand for American advertising. World War II had been over for only three years when 39-year-old David Ogilvy, an English émigré with almost no experience in advertising, implausibly opened shop in 1948. Although his offices were, in fact, on Madison Avenue, the rulers of the realm at the time had no reason to take notice of him. Within a few years, Ogilvy was counted as one of them. By 1953, the trade magazine Printer's Ink was ready to declare that Ogilvy had "become at once the conscience and catalytic agent of Madison Avenue." By 1958, he was being described in breathless terms: "No single figure has come across the American advertising horizon in the past 50 years who has created the sensational impression which the puckish, fortyish Britisher, David Ogilvy, has. Only in the agency business here nine years, the colorful Ogilvy, practically a character out of Dickens, has been the most discussed and publicized ad-man in a generation. In 1965, Fortune magazine asked, "Is Ogilvy a Genius?" and concluded that he might be. (Ogilvy wondered if he should sue about the question mark.) Time magazine called Ogilvy "the most sought-after wizard in the advertising industry."… Ogilvy would later become by far the best-known advertising man in Asia as well as in Europe, Canada, and South Africa. In India, he was treated like a movie mogul; a magazine listed Ogilvy with Pope John Paul II and Princess Diana among those who made news in the country in 1982. At that year's thirteenth Asian Advertising Conference, the trade's bible, Advertising Age, reported Ogilvy "came as close to being anointed king of the Advertising World as it is possible for a mortal to come." - intro

David Ogilvy - A real-life Don Draper

• Never finished mentality: "He had a near-psychopathic hatred of laziness in all its forms," says a former copywriter. "He was the least lazy person I have ever encountered. His advertising philosophy was shot through with intolerance of sloth. Lazy people accept mediocrity, which he hated." No matter how good, everything had to be better.”
• Absolute persistence like Sam Zell: “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. An ordinarily purposeful person might follow up an idea with a second note or a call; the more dogged might come back several times before moving on. Ogilvy never gave up.”
• “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.”
• “One characteristic of geniuses, said Einstein, is they are passionately curious. Ogilvy's great secret was an inquiring mind. In conversation, he never pontificated; he interrogated. At dinner with a copywriter and her husband who worked in the oil business, Ogilvy quizzed the man at length about the oil situation in the Middle East. He queried the 15-year-old daughter of an executive about playing the flute in the school band. "How many flutes? How many piccolos? Why are there always so many more flutes than piccolos?" A woman who sat next to him at dinner said that by dessert, he knew more about her than her mother."

Driven by his Father’s Failures and Sibling Jealousy

• "My father's total income was less than $1,000 a year." His grandfather turned down an appeal from his father for a loan, and his father tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat. Although Ogilvy adored his father and thought him a great gentleman, he recognized he was a scholar, not a businessman. He saw his grandfather as the exact opposite. "He was hard as nails, but a very successful businessman. I couldn't make out whether I was going to be like my father or my grandfather." When fathers fail, their children are often driven to be successful. The son would always be motivated to achieve and obsessed with money.” - same with Bob Iger & Danny Meyer (Ogilvy’s mom was tough and pushed them)
• “There was a one-sided rivalry with David's elder (by eight years), high-achieving older brother. Francis would become by far the most important of the siblings in David's life, both fraternally and professionally. He was a star at school and established as an advertising agency executive in London when his young brother was still finding his way. Francis thought his brother was a genius and opened doors for him at every key juncture, a helping hand David barely acknowledged in his autobiography.” - like MJ competing with his older brother Larry
• A misfit and rebel at school: “He was perpetually late to classes. Once, when he came in during a lecture in a large amphitheater, the professor stopped speaking to draw attention to his tardiness. Ogilvy broke the silence: "If you insult me again, I will not return to this class." → he basically dropped out of Oxford after 2 years there, and was now motivated to turn things around after this failure: “He felt his life at school had been a failure and wanted to start fresh. His education was about to begin.”

Selling Aga Cookers Door to Door

• Started his career in a famous restaurant, where he was taught about leadership and standards of performance: “The Majestic was probably the last hotel in the world to have a kitchen in the grand old manner. I remember my first day there. I was peeling potatoes. And I was standing there like this [lounging against the wall]. Then this chap came by and told me, "Stand up straight: Everything you do here is important, be proud of everything you have to do." It made an impression.” → Bill Walsh standard of performance with 49ers jersey - “Champions behave like champions before they’re champions; they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners”
  • Handling 49ers gear “was similar to saluting the American flag: Show it respect, because it represents who you are and what you value. Respect for the emblem was important because it represented something very significant, namely, respect within the organization for one another.”
• Soon transitioned to being a salesman and managing the Aga Cooker account, a popular stove at the time: “He was promoted to become the company's first sales representative in Scotland, selling stoves door to door. The Aga was the most expensive stove on the market. Making cold calls on canny Scots in the depths of the depression could not have been easy, but Ogilvy made sales by showing cooks how to use the Aga, doing the cooking himself if necessary. He offered to give free cooking lessons with each stove, and found plenty of takers… Ogilvy learned about the power of the word FREE.” → Hopkins & Ariely “customers would respond to the allure of FREE! like starving people at a buffet”
• “The experience of door-to-door selling turned Ogilvy into a salesman. "Otherwise, I might have been something quite different. It made me think always in terms of selling things - and nothing else."… "No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That left a mark on me." → two fundamental ad beliefs were developed… “Ogilvy figured it took about a half hour to properly describe the features of the Aga, a lesson he transmuted into a lifelong belief in "long copy" - ads with several hundred words of text presenting informative explanations of a product's virtues. But the larger mark of the experience was a mistrust of flashy advertising and creative awards that have no clear relevance to selling a client's product or service. It led to his embrace of direct mail, with its counting of coupons to verify results. Sales became his measure of "good" advertising, an obsession that only grew over time in reaction to what he saw as ever-greater excesses in the name of "creativity.” (Following the footsteps of the great Claude Hopkins)
• Spitting wisdom: “Implicit throughout is the view that the worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore.”

An Obsession to Professional Research