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David Ogilvy, the “father of advertising”, was a successful copywriter and founder of Ogilvy and Mather. His book, Confessions of an Advertiser, is a best seller and he believed in advising consumers on a product’s benefit. He insisted on using every product he wrote about and believed a copywriter must believe in and understand the product.
David Ogilvy, the “father of advertising”, is considered a genius and a pioneer in his field. His success has inspired many people to want to work in the advertising field. His book Confessions of an Advertiser is a best seller that has been translated into 14 different languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide. David Ogilvy is probably the most famous copywriter of all time. He is responsible for building one of the largest and most successful advertising agencies, Ogilvy and Mather, as well as some of the most successful advertising campaigns in the world.
Born on June 23, 1911 in West Horsley, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, David Ogilvy received a scholarship to Oxford but “made a mess of it” as he confesses in Confessions of an Advertising Man. As a young man, David Ogilvy had no clear direction and dabbled as a chef in Paris, a social worker on the streets of Edinburgh, an assistant to British intelligence, and a farmer in a Pennsylvania Amish community. He also sold stoves door-to-door and worked with the famous Dr. George Gallup as a research associate.
He finally ended up as an advertising executive on Madison Avenue. David Ogilvy worked as an advertising copywriter before owning his own agency. He was one of the few marketing “creatives” to remember that the purpose of advertising is not just to entertain, but to sell. David Ogilvy said of the ad, “The temptation to entertain instead of sell is contagious.”
David Ogilvy has pointed out that the correct way to sell a product through advertising is to advise the consumer on what the product’s benefit is for him or her. For example, its campaign for Dove soap emphasized that Dove “creams your skin as you wash,” to showcase Dove’s benefit of moisturizing skin, and the ads had a huge response rate.
Interestingly, David Ogilvy insisted on using every product he wrote about. As he notes in Confessions of an Advertiser, “For breakfast I drink Maxwell House coffee or Tetley tea and eat two slices of Pepperidge Farm toast. I wash with Dove, deodorize with Ban and light my pipe with a Zippo lighter”. David Ogilvy believed that a copywriter must believe in the product as well as know and understand it.
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