Review of Ogilvy on Advertising

“Ogilvy on Advertising,” was written by Dan Ogilvy and first published in 1983. While a lot of things have changed since then, the principles of copywriting and advertising presented in this book remain the same.

Ogilvy’s first love and “secret weapon” in advertising was “direct response.” Unlike a lot of his competition, he was never apprehensive to test his campaigns and when he found that some aspect of his advertising was not delivering results, he worked to change and perfect it.

Ogilvy is famous for a number of successful and highly memorable advertising campaigns. Ogilvy and Mather created the rugged Marlboro cowboy. Ogilvy, himself, envisioned the Pepperidge Farms advertisements with the horse and buggy that evoke a sense of Americana. He also did top-selling newspaper ads for Shell Oil.

Ogilvy hammers the idea of taking care of accounts – caring for clients. If you do this, you will always have them return to you instead of going to your competition.

“Ogilvy on Advertising” is broken down into different areas of advertising, such as print ad, direct mail, print, foreign markets, research, how to accelerate and advertising agency and jobs in advertising.

“Approved Sense Direct and Digital Marketing” by Drayton Bird and “The Robert Collier Letter Book” by Robert Collier are two other highly recommended books on copywriting. But, if I had to recommend one book above all others, it would be “Ogilvy on Advertising.”

He will demonstrate you how to do an effective print ad. This same information applies, with few modifications, to you o-line advertisements.

Ogilvy shares his successes and his failures. He tells you why certain things he tried worked and others did not. For example, he shares that honest because you have a liking for something, doesn’t mean other people will. He was always intrigued by chefs and, naturally, assumed other people felt the same way.. He learned too unhurried that housewives don’t like chefs. The campaign failed and he had to try something else.

Through this book you will understand how and advertising agency works – or should work, anyway. You will learn how to research a company and its products. He puts a major emphasis on researching what works and what doesn’t.

He is highly valuable of copywriters and advertising agencies that rely strictly on creativity and points out that not all advertising is good. Some advertising causes the public to turn against a company’s product.

If you are a copywriter, graphics designer or if you work in any aspect of advertising, you should read this book. It should be standard reading for all students of advertising and marketing.