Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy
When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
I run the risk of being denounced by the idiots who hold that any advertising technique which has been in use for more than two years is ipso facto obsolete.
Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on. All over the world.
Research shows that commercials with celebrities are below average in persuading people to buy products. Are you sure you want to use a celebrity? Call that a rule?
Research suggests that if you set the copy in black type on a white background, more people will read it than if you set it in white type on a black background. A hint, perhaps, but scarcely a rule.
I have seen one advertisement actually sell not twice as much, not three times as much, but 19½ times as much as another. Both advertisements occupied the same space. Both were run in the same publication. Both had photographic illustrations. Both had carefully written copy. The difference was that one used the right appeal and the other used the wrong appeal.
First, study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it.
If you are too lazy to do this kind of homework, you may occasionally luck into a successful campaign, but you will run the risk of skidding about on what my brother Francis called ‘the slippery surface of irrelevant brilliance.’ Your next chore is to find out what kind of advertising your competitors have been doing for similar products, and with what success. This will give you your bearings. Now comes research among consumers. Find out how they think about your kind of product, what language they use when they discuss the subject, what attributes are important to them, and what promise would be most likely to make them buy your brand.
Robert Townsend, the eccentric head of Avis, asked me to do his advertising. When conflict with another client forced me to refuse, Doyle Dane Bernbach created one of the most powerful campaigns in the history of advertising. ‘When you’re only Number 2, you try harder. Or else.’ This diabolical positioning made life miserable for Hertz, who was Number 1.
Researchers at the Department of Psychology at the University of California gave distilled water to students. They told some of them that it was distilled water, and asked them to describe its taste. Most said it had no taste of any kind. They told the other students that the distilled water came out of the tap. Most of them said it tasted horrible. The mere mention of tap conjured up an image of chlorine.
Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.
It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself five questions:
Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?
Do I wish I had thought of it myself?
Is it unique?
Does it fit the strategy to perfection?
Could it be used for 30 years?
A problem which confronts agencies is that so many products are no different from their competitors. Manufacturers have access to the same technology; marketing people use the same research procedures to determine consumer preferences for color, size, design, taste and so on. When faced with selling ‘parity’ products, all you can hope to do is explain their virtues more persuasively than your competitors, and to differentiate them by the style of your advertising. This is the ‘added value’ which advertising contributes, and I am not sufficiently puritanical to hate myself for it.
In the past, just about every advertiser has assumed that in order to sell his goods he has to convince consumers that his product is superior to his competitor’s. This may not be necessary. It may be sufficient to convince consumers that your product is positively good. If the consumer feels certain that your product is good and feels uncertain about your competitor’s, he will buy yours. If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it. If this theory is right, sales will swing to the marketer who does the best job of creating confidence that his product is positively good.
You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.
I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ‘your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?’
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
PERFECTIONISM is spelled PARALYSIS.
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
Brains? It doesn’t necessarily mean a high IQ. It means curiosity, common sense, wisdom, imagination and literacy.
I do not believe that fear is a tool used by good leaders. People do their best work in a happy atmosphere.
The easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising.
At the meeting when you make your presentation, don’t sit the client’s team on one side of the table and your team opposite, like adversaries. Mix everybody up.
Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points.
No manufacturer ever hired an agency because it increased market-share for somebody else. The day after a new business presentation, send the prospect a three-page letter summarizing the reasons why he should pick your agency. This will help him make the right decision.
On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 per cent of your money. The headlines which work best are those which promise the reader a benefit
On average, helpful information is read by 75 per cent more people than copy which deals only with the product.
Do not, however, address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.
You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it. It pays to write short sentences and short paragraphs, and to avoid difficult words.
Copy should be written in the language people use in everyday conversation,
I advise you to avoid analogies.
Stay away from superlatives
Testimonials from celebrities get high recall scores, but I have stopped using them because readers remember the celebrity and forget the product. What’s more, they assume that the celebrity has been bought, which is usually the case.
Until you’ve got a better answer, you copy.
Readers look first at the illustration, then at the headline, then at the copy. So put these elements in that order – illustration at the top, headline under the illustration, copy under the headline.
On the average, headlines below the illustration are read by 10 per cent more people than headlines above the illustration.
More people read the captions under illustrations than read the body copy, so never use an illustration without putting a caption under it. Your caption should include the brand name and the promise.
Advertising people have an unconscious belief that advertisements have to look like advertisements. They have inherited graphic conventions which telegraph to the reader, ‘This is only an advertisement. Skip it.’
With public opinion on its side, nothing can fail. With public opinion against it, nothing can succeed.
Admittedly an advertisement, however efficient, can seldom close a sale itself. Its function is to pave the way for salesmen, by pre-selling your product and attracting leads.
Make sure that what you promise is important to your customer.
If you make your ads look like editorial pages, you will get more readers. Far more.
Headlines get five times the readership of the body copy. If your headline doesn’t sell, you have wasted your money. Your headline should promise a benefit, or deliver news, or offer a service, or tell a significant story, or recognize a problem, or quote a satisfied customer.
Long copy sells more than short copy, particularly when you are asking the reader to spend a lot of money.
Here are four ways to keep your prospects on the hook:
Limited edition
Limited supply
Last time at this price
Special price for promptness
The ‘right kind’ are those which set up a problem and demonstrate how your product can solve it; give a money-back guarantee; include the price; and ask for the order, explicitly and urgently.
They always promise the consumer one important benefit. When they perceive that there is an opportunity to increase sales by promising more than one, they sometimes run two campaigns at the same time – often in the same medium. They believe that the first duty of advertising is to communicate effectively, not to be original or entertaining, and they measure communication at three stages: before the copy is written, after the commercials are produced, and in test markets.
Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever.
There is common agreement among researchers that testing for recall is for the birds. Yet, for reasons which escape me, most advertisers still insist on using it. It has four shortcomings:
Nobody has been able to demonstrate a relationship between recall and sales.
Some commercials which score about average on recall, score below average on their ability to change the viewer’s brand preference.
Celebrity commercials, for example, usually score above average on recall and below average on changing brand preference.
It is too easy for the copywriter to cheat. When I want a high recall score, says my partner David Scott, all I have to do is to show a gorilla in a jock strap.
It is open to question whether recall tests even measure recall. I believe they measure the viewers ability to articulate what he or she recalls, which is a very different thing.
Consumers judge the quality of a product by its price.
Sales are a function of product-value and advertising. Promotions cannot produce more than a temporary kink in the sales curve.
I have come to regard advertising as part of the product, to be treated as a production cost, not a selling cost.
Resist the usual.
In advertising, the beginning of greatness is to be different, and the beginning of failure is to be the same.
There is an inherent drama in every product. Our No. 1 job is to dig for it and capitalize on it.
When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either
Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.
If we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, we are not completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others.
The quality of the idea and the excellence of its execution was the alpha and omega of successful advertising.
Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion years. Only the superficial things have changed. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man – what compulsions drive him, what instincts dominate his every action, even though his language too often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man, you can touch him at the core of his being. One thing is unchangingly sure. The creative man with an insight into human nature, with the artistry to touch and move people, will succeed. Without them he will fail.
