Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age PDF
Preview Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION VIEW FROM TOUFFOU 1 CODETTA 2 THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION 3 THE SHORT MARCH 4 THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM 5 TO BE OR NOT TO BE A MILLENNIAL 6 THE POST-MODERN BRAND 7 CONTENT IS KING; BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN? 8 CREATIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE “GIVE ME GOLD” ART OR SCIENCE? PERVASIVE CREATIVITY 9 DATA: THE CURRENCY OF THE DIGITAL AGE 10 “ONLY CONNECT” 11 CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY: THE SWEET SPOT 12 THE THREE BATTLEGROUNDS PUTTING THE SOCIAL BACK INTO SOCIAL MEDIA THE JOY OF MOBILITY CONTINUOUS COMMERCE 13 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS DIGITAL POLITICS DIGITAL GOVERNMENT DIGITAL TOURISM DIGITAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 14 FIVE GIANTS OF ADVERTISING IN THE DIGITAL AGE BOB GREENBERG AKIRA KAGAMI MARTIN NISENHOLTZ MATIAS PALM-JENSEN CHUCK PORTER 15 MY BRAIN HURTS 16 THE NEW SHAPE OF THE WORLD 17 CULTURE, COURAGE, CLIENTS AND CASTANETS 18 EPILOGUE ENDNOTES INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PICTURE CREDITS INTRODUCTION VIEW FROM TOUFFOU Unlike authors who have to worry about why they are writing at all, my purpose is very narrow. The point of this book is to persuade people to read or re-read Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy. It is still pure, pure gold. Yes, the cast has changed, the scenery is different, the plumbing is new, but the tragic and comic plots, sub-plots and counter-plots of this business remain persistently and defiantly unchanged. Of course, this irritates some people who really would rather all had changed completely. I am writing these words in Touffou, the home David retired to in South West France, in the room he used as his study. The desk on which Ogilvy on Advertising was partly written is still here, although in a different room. The shelves in the study contain a range of books, which testify to his belief that the most productive people read the most widely. There’s history, biography, architecture, travel – spines with titles that sum up a man’s life. And, of course, there are the advertising books. Touffou evolved over several centuries, but the original keep, built for defence, dates from the twelfth century. The house nestles between some low wooded elevations and the banks of the River Vienne as it winds lazily through the countryside of Poitou. David settled here in 1973 with his third wife, Herta. The couple spent the next decades restoring Touffou, turning the grounds into a magnificent garden and creating a grand but friendly home. David and Herta in San Francisco, 1984. David died here in 1999, and his ashes are scattered in the garden. Herta remains Ogilvy & Mather’s materfamilias; and we continue to hold Board meetings, Executive Committee meetings, client meetings and workshops here. In 2013, I called our Digital Council to Touffou. This was a group of young enthusiasts from around the world and from around the eco-system – mobile, customer relationship management (CRM), social, creative, technology. Our previous meetings had taken place in Palo Alto, CA, but there did not seem anything incongruous in talking about the future of communication in a medieval setting. In fact, it gave us something that we simply could not so easily get in California: perspective. Well into Ogilvy & Mather’s own digital transformation, I wanted a discussion of a more fundamental kind. What is digital? Is it an evolution or a revolution? Is it so novel and specialized that we should treat it apart? Or it is something that needs to be baked into the heart of the business, an integrator in itself? We had guidance, in part, from a videotaped last testament that David left. He called it “View from Touffou”. We still play it in training sessions. It makes a point about press advertising, but one that helped us answer the questions. David’s ‘View from Touffou’ video provides a posthumous take on digital. He would have viewed digital as a channel not as a discipline, one that cries out for rich content, and always in the service of selling. His argument provided a flash of illumination, bringing into high relief the primacy of content over form. The meeting continued along a path divergent from the one being followed by so many others. It led us to see “digital” not as a “discipline” but rather as just a channel, a dramatic enhancer of “traditional” business, but not a parallel universe. 1 CODETTA A codetta is what ends a musical sequence. Ogilvy on Advertising begins with a chapter called Overture. It is classic David Ogilvy. Plainspoken, forthright and resonant with his concise prose, it includes his famous line: “I hate rules.” The book is a simple yet demonstrative expression of David’s breadth of knowledge, containing illustrative references to, among other things, eighteenth- century obstetrics and Horace. And it sparkles with his wit and good humour, ending with this note: “If you think it is a lousy book, you should have seen it before my partner Joel Raphaelson did his best to delouse it. Bless you, Joel.” A codetta, or “little tail” in its native Italian, is a brief conclusion in music. It leads back into an exposition or recapitulation of the work before, or occasionally, to a section that develops the piece further. My codetta does the latter – building on David’s book by adding some fresh notes on the nuances of the digital age. My codetta rounds off what David began, though it will not be the last word. Ogilvy on Advertising was written in the 1980s. Joel, David’s literary amanuensis, recalls the speed with which it was produced: David posted a chapter to Joel every week. Joel was on sabbatical in Colorado, but his job was to edit it and make suggestions. Written partly in Touffou, at David’s desk in his study, and partly in a chalet in Switzerland, it is a polemic. David did not think it was his best book, and he was right. Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) deserves that appellation. It is more literary: while many copywriters have found it difficult to extend short form into book form, David had a natural gift for book writing. But Ogilvy on Advertising was something else: a most elegant rant against what he believed to be a legion of misconceptions about our business; a primer for anyone interested in advertising; an expression of some very dogmatic views, skillfully excused as brevity; and a showcase for the work he admired most (including a sizeable chunk of his own oeuvre). Within months of publication, Ogilvy on Advertising was a storming success. It has become an advertising classic, remaining in print for over three decades, translated into multiple languages, and featured in legions of syllabi around the world. More than that, many people I meet, whether they’re in the industry or not, tell me that the book is the first or only point of contact they have had with the agency he founded. I first met David in 1982, as a young Account Director in our London advertising agency. I was working in my small office there in the early evening. He happened to walk past, saw there was someone new inside, retraced his steps, came in and flopped in a chair. “Who are you?” Then, “What are you doing?” I was full of our recent win of the Guinness business, what wonderful work we were doing. He just looked at me and asked: “But are they gentlemen?” Some months later, their CEO, Ernest Saunders, “fell like Lucifer”. David had a prescience that was often uncanny. David produced the original manuscript for Ogilvy on Advertising with characteristic efficiency, sharing a chapter every week with his friend and literary confidante, Joel Raphaelson. This is the cover of David’s original book, first published in 1983 – from which I’ve drawn inspiration for this version, and wisdom throughout my entire career. He did not, however, predict the Digital Revolution, which has transformed what we think and do in so many ways, creating new concepts, new languages and new techniques. Nor, I sense (judging by his reaction to then the current phrase “creative revolution”), would he have liked the description very much. David’s appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in 1983 for the launch of Ogilvy on Advertising. But it would be childish to criticize him for that, especially since he had spent much time since his retirement working on his “first and last love”, direct marketing. When I started working in our Paris office, in 1994, to consolidate the IBM account in Europe, I discovered there were two offices: the “posh” advertising office just off the Avenue George V, and the “down and dirty” direct marketing office in the decidedly un-posh Rue Brunel. This was where my team was based, and also where David in retirement chose to have his office. It was a very deliberate gesture. He was cocking a snook at the self-indulgence, distaste for accountability and snobbishness of what was then seen to be the senior discipline. As a refugee from that discipline myself, I could feel some sympathy with the point. One of the last working meetings David attended was a summit of our direct marketing leaders in the Château d’Esclimont, a turreted pile outside Paris. David was there as a treasured icon rather than as an active contributor, and played a passive role for most of the meeting, apparently peacefully somnolent at the rear of the room. Then the head of the Austrian office started a presentation of unprecedented complexity. It was a small triumph of process over content. After five minutes, the explosion happened. “STOP!” David bellowed. “FOR GOD’S SAKE, STOP.” And then slightly softer and more pained: “I cannot understand or see the usefulness of what you are saying.” And then, with acute pain: “And from the land of Mozart!” It was a mortifying and terrifying moment which no one in the room will easily forget, least of all that hapless Austrian colleague. He shouldn’t feel bad about it if he’s reading this now. But this is a clue for me about how David would respond to much of the verbiage, hype, redundancy, over-complication and ungrounded optimism that surrounds the Digital Revolution, observing and undermining the enormous gifts it brings. A rather analogue picture from my early days in advertising. The last 30 years have witnessed a period of immense digital transformation, yet many of the principles drummed into me early on are as important as they ever were.
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