Business Management Blog

The son of a stockbroker, David Ogilvy was born in 1911. Despite the family’s reduced financial circumstances Ogilvy was dispatched to Fettes School, a prestigious private school near Edinburgh, Scotland. What Ogilvy lacked in natural academic ability he made up for in scholarly application, securing a scholarship to study history at Christ Church College, Oxford University.

When he left university, the young Ogilvy sought adventure, trading the Cotswold stone of the Oxford colleges for the boulevards of Paris. In France, he worked in the kitchens of the Hotel Majestic. His first assignment was to prepare meals for customers’ dogs. When Ogilvy had tired of la vie Parisienne he returned to England to sell a new type of cooking stove, the AGA.

As a salesman Ogilvy proved a great success. So much so that he was asked to write a manual on how to sell the cooker for the AGA sales force (thirty years later the editors of Fortune magazine announced that it was probably the best sales manual of all time).

Ogilvy sent his manuscript, “The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA cooker”, to his brother who was working at London-based advertising agency Mather & Crowther. His winning way with words earned him a place as a trainee at the agency.

To make the story short, the 1960s was a big decade for Ogilvy. In 1963 he published his book Confessions of an Advertising Man, which sold well over half a million copies and cemented his position as an advertising guru. In 1965, his firm merged with Mather & Crowther, to form Ogilvy & Mather. It was a deal that created a company with total billings of $120 million.

Ogilvy took a back seat, preferring to concentrate on the creative side and leaving the administrative chores to others. Then in 1966 Ogilvy & Mather became a publicly-listed company, only the sixth advertising agency to do. Ogilvy sold 61,000 shares of his 161,000 becoming a wealthy man in the process.

In 1975 Ogilvy & Mather was one of the top five advertising agencies in the world with 1000 clients, offices in 29 countries and billings of some $800 million.

David Ogilvy said the secret to success was simple:

1. Make a reputation for being a creative genius.
2. Surround yourself with partners who are better than you are.
3. Leave them to get on with it.

But most important ingredient in any agency is the ability of the top man to lead his troops. Ogilvy was a brilliant advertising “creative”. He came up with some of the most memorable copywriting of his times. Yet he was also a brilliant leader. He knew when to lead from the front and when to take a back seat, how to motivate, how to cajole and how to get the best from his workforce.

Ogilvy is also a shining example of a man who made it to the top in spite of several so-called handicaps to success. He once measured his IQ: expecting a genius score of 145 he found it was a disappointing 96.

He was afraid of the sea, of heights, and of flying, suffered asthma until middle age and didn’t enjoy any of the usual executive pastimes such as golf or tennis. He was also a late-starter in advertising at 39. Yet he still made it to the top of his profession -– and made an indelible mark on that profession.

Source: Business Strategy Review, Autumn 2005