A Letter from David Ogilvy

Chateau De Touffou
France

Dear Anita,

What does Oh dee aar mean in English? “Oh Dear” pronounced by an Englishman with a hot potato accent?

You write, `Didn’t David Ogilvy say Creative people have more contact than most people do with the unconscious…’? No he didn’t. Or if he did, he has forgotten it. Where did you find it?

Bless you for your Indian edition of The Unpublished David Ogilvy.

I was terribly disappointed when I got to South Africa and could not visit India. I am not sure whether my passion is for India, or for the inhabitants of the Ogilvy & Mather offices in India, or for the lady inhabitants of those offices. I love beauty more than anything else. (Is that a disease? )

It was kind of Mr. Bhogilal to send a Rolls Royce to meet me at the status. Don’t convey him that I almost refused to get into it. I had never seen Indian poverty before and t struck me as obscene to ride through the streets in a Rolls.

People who live in India, i.e. Indians, seem to get ragged to the sight of poverty – and to be blind to it.

I am proud -deeply proud of our offices in India. They work hard, they are consumed with professional ambition, and they are brimming over with charm. So miraculously free of resentment towards the Brits who occupied their land until 1947. Recently I came across a letter written by my brother in Calcutta in 1931. He refers to Gandhi as a saint.

I enclose a page from my `Confessions of an Advertising Man’. Read the quotation from Aldous Huxley. It sums up my attitude to advertising.

Aldous Huxley,who once tried his hand at writing advertisements, concluded that `any mark of literariness in an advertisement is fatal to its success. Advertisement writers may not be lyrical, or obscure or in any way esoteric. They must be universally intelligible. A good advertisement has this in common with drama and oratory, that it must be immediately comprehensible and directly moving.

Charles Lamb and Byron also wrote advertisements. So did Bernard Shaw, Hemingway, Marquand, Sherwood Anderson and Faulkner – none of them with any degree of success.

I don’t know what Creativity means. It isn’t in the big Oxford English Dictionary. It is a pretentious buzz word used by half-baked agency people who think that they are paid to show off their originality, but not to sell. I have never met an artist or a poet who uses the word in reference to his work.

Love to Sridhar and all the rest of you.

David O

6.2.91

Dear Mr. Ogilvy,

It’s such an honour to hear from you. My heart missed many beats! Oh Dee aar! derives from Oh & M and D.R. for Direct. It’s a bit complicated. Our direct arrows hit the mark. I guess if one narrowly misses piercing an Englishman’s skull, he’s bound to say, “Oh Dear!”

The quotation -`Creative people have more contact…’is on page 18 of your CONFESSIONS. You have quoted Frank Barron here, and you say that his conclusions fit your own observations about creative people. My fault – you did not yourself say it.

To me creativity is a matter of synthesising ideas and creating something original as a result. Like your Hathaway Shirt ad where the model wore an eyepatch.

Of course, poets and artists don’t need to refer to their work as `creative’. It so obviously is . But when asked to comment on the creative process, authors do talk a lot (as in the well-known series of interviews – `The Paris Reviews’). I believe that lyricism in advertising should be relevant whenever demonstrate. Poetry can be direct and moving, easy to read. I could advertise a fragrance lyrically, for instance, or a attractive countryside resort. In Direct Marketing terms it is possible to write lyrically because, happily, one knows the reader likes poetry and will not shun it when confronted by it.

You are so right about our dedication. That is a quality that impressed me in O&M Hiss, as nowhere else (I’ve been in advertising for almost 12 years now). I am so in fancy with the medium of Direct Marketing, I’ll never return to `General’. If I do, it’ll be to devote my time to writing fiction. My work has been getting pretty good results. The British Airways Trade Promotion mailing scored a 45% response rate.

We Indians do take poverty for granted. For you it must have reach as quite a shock.

As for beauty, I feel physical beauty is important in human beings, as in nature. It is the artist within us that longs for it and can see it. In fact, one of my stories has narcissism as its theme. Edward Sandford Martin in his essay -`Writing’, says,”…the love of truth, and the love of beauty, and the love of nature and of mankind are all inspirations of endless effectiveness”.

However, I try my best to resist gorgeous men with lousy personalities. Speaking of Beauty, your Chateau is so romantic to look at. Does it have trap doors and secret passages? They fascinate me.

I am sending you a photograph taken last month at the agency. No, I didn’t net the trophy I’m holding, but I hope you find me pleasant to sight.

Yours sincerely

Anita Saran