Table Of ContentCONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
VIEW FROM TOUFFOU
1 CODETTA
2 THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
3 THE SHORT MARCH
4 THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM
5 TO BE OR NOT TO BE A MILLENNIAL
6 THE POST-MODERN BRAND
7 CONTENT IS KING; BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
8 CREATIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
“GIVE ME GOLD”
ART OR SCIENCE?
PERVASIVE CREATIVITY
9 DATA: THE CURRENCY OF THE DIGITAL AGE
10 “ONLY CONNECT”
11 CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY: THE SWEET SPOT
12 THE THREE BATTLEGROUNDS
PUTTING THE SOCIAL BACK INTO SOCIAL MEDIA
THE JOY OF MOBILITY
CONTINUOUS COMMERCE
13 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS
DIGITAL POLITICS
DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
DIGITAL TOURISM
DIGITAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
14 FIVE GIANTS OF ADVERTISING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
BOB GREENBERG
AKIRA KAGAMI
MARTIN NISENHOLTZ
MATIAS PALM-JENSEN
CHUCK PORTER
15 MY BRAIN HURTS
16 THE NEW SHAPE OF THE WORLD
17 CULTURE, COURAGE, CLIENTS AND CASTANETS
18 EPILOGUE
ENDNOTES
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PICTURE CREDITS
INTRODUCTION
VIEW FROM TOUFFOU
Unlike authors who have to worry about why they are writing at all, my purpose is
very narrow. The point of this book is to persuade people to read or re-read Ogilvy on
Advertising by David Ogilvy. It is still pure, pure gold. Yes, the cast has changed, the
scenery is different, the plumbing is new, but the tragic and comic plots, sub-plots
and counter-plots of this business remain persistently and defiantly unchanged. Of
course, this irritates some people who really would rather all had changed completely.
I am writing these words in Touffou, the home David retired to in South West
France, in the room he used as his study. The desk on which Ogilvy on Advertising
was partly written is still here, although in a different room. The shelves in the study
contain a range of books, which testify to his belief that the most productive people
read the most widely. There’s history, biography, architecture, travel – spines with
titles that sum up a man’s life. And, of course, there are the advertising books.
Touffou evolved over several centuries, but the original keep, built for defence, dates from the twelfth century.
The house nestles between some low wooded elevations and the banks of the River
Vienne as it winds lazily through the countryside of Poitou. David settled here in
1973 with his third wife, Herta. The couple spent the next decades restoring
Touffou, turning the grounds into a magnificent garden and creating a grand but
friendly home.
David and Herta in San Francisco, 1984.
David died here in 1999, and his ashes are scattered in the garden. Herta remains
Ogilvy & Mather’s materfamilias; and we continue to hold Board meetings, Executive
Committee meetings, client meetings and workshops here.
In 2013, I called our Digital Council to Touffou. This was a group of young
enthusiasts from around the world and from around the eco-system – mobile,
customer relationship management (CRM), social, creative, technology. Our
previous meetings had taken place in Palo Alto, CA, but there did not seem anything
incongruous in talking about the future of communication in a medieval setting. In
fact, it gave us something that we simply could not so easily get in California:
perspective. Well into Ogilvy & Mather’s own digital transformation, I wanted a
discussion of a more fundamental kind. What is digital? Is it an evolution or a
revolution? Is it so novel and specialized that we should treat it apart? Or it is
something that needs to be baked into the heart of the business, an integrator in
itself? We had guidance, in part, from a videotaped last testament that David left. He
called it “View from Touffou”. We still play it in training sessions. It makes a point
about press advertising, but one that helped us answer the questions.
David’s ‘View from Touffou’ video provides a posthumous take on digital. He would have viewed digital as a
channel not as a discipline, one that cries out for rich content, and always in the service of selling.
His argument provided a flash of illumination, bringing into high relief the primacy
of content over form. The meeting continued along a path divergent from the one
being followed by so many others. It led us to see “digital” not as a “discipline” but
rather as just a channel, a dramatic enhancer of “traditional” business, but not a
parallel universe.
1
CODETTA
A codetta is what ends a musical sequence.
Ogilvy on Advertising begins with a chapter called Overture. It is classic David
Ogilvy. Plainspoken, forthright and resonant with his concise prose, it includes his
famous line: “I hate rules.”
The book is a simple yet demonstrative expression of David’s breadth of
knowledge, containing illustrative references to, among other things, eighteenth-
century obstetrics and Horace. And it sparkles with his wit and good humour, ending
with this note: “If you think it is a lousy book, you should have seen it before my
partner Joel Raphaelson did his best to delouse it. Bless you, Joel.”
A codetta, or “little tail” in its native Italian, is a brief conclusion in music. It leads back into an exposition or
recapitulation of the work before, or occasionally, to a section that develops the piece further. My codetta does the latter
– building on David’s book by adding some fresh notes on the nuances of the digital age.
My codetta rounds off what David began, though it will not be the last word.
Ogilvy on Advertising was written in the 1980s. Joel, David’s literary amanuensis,
recalls the speed with which it was produced: David posted a chapter to Joel every
week. Joel was on sabbatical in Colorado, but his job was to edit it and make
suggestions. Written partly in Touffou, at David’s desk in his study, and partly in a
chalet in Switzerland, it is a polemic.
David did not think it was his best book, and he was right. Confessions of an
Advertising Man (1963) deserves that appellation. It is more literary: while many
copywriters have found it difficult to extend short form into book form, David had a
natural gift for book writing.
But Ogilvy on Advertising was something else: a most elegant rant against what he
believed to be a legion of misconceptions about our business; a primer for anyone
interested in advertising; an expression of some very dogmatic views, skillfully
excused as brevity; and a showcase for the work he admired most (including a sizeable
chunk of his own oeuvre).
Within months of publication, Ogilvy on Advertising was a storming success. It has
become an advertising classic, remaining in print for over three decades, translated
into multiple languages, and featured in legions of syllabi around the world. More
than that, many people I meet, whether they’re in the industry or not, tell me that the
book is the first or only point of contact they have had with the agency he founded.
I first met David in 1982, as a young Account Director in our London advertising
agency. I was working in my small office there in the early evening. He happened to
walk past, saw there was someone new inside, retraced his steps, came in and flopped
in a chair. “Who are you?” Then, “What are you doing?” I was full of our recent win
of the Guinness business, what wonderful work we were doing. He just looked at me
and asked: “But are they gentlemen?” Some months later, their CEO, Ernest
Saunders, “fell like Lucifer”. David had a prescience that was often uncanny.
David produced the original manuscript for Ogilvy on Advertising with characteristic efficiency, sharing a chapter
every week with his friend and literary confidante, Joel Raphaelson.
This is the cover of David’s original book, first published in 1983 – from which I’ve drawn inspiration for this
version, and wisdom throughout my entire career.
He did not, however, predict the Digital Revolution, which has transformed what
we think and do in so many ways, creating new concepts, new languages and new
techniques. Nor, I sense (judging by his reaction to then the current phrase “creative
revolution”), would he have liked the description very much.
David’s appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in 1983 for the launch of Ogilvy on Advertising.
But it would be childish to criticize him for that, especially since he had spent much
time since his retirement working on his “first and last love”, direct marketing. When
I started working in our Paris office, in 1994, to consolidate the IBM account in
Europe, I discovered there were two offices: the “posh” advertising office just off the
Avenue George V, and the “down and dirty” direct marketing office in the decidedly
un-posh Rue Brunel. This was where my team was based, and also where David in
retirement chose to have his office. It was a very deliberate gesture. He was cocking a
snook at the self-indulgence, distaste for accountability and snobbishness of what was
then seen to be the senior discipline. As a refugee from that discipline myself, I could
feel some sympathy with the point.
One of the last working meetings David attended was a summit of our direct
marketing leaders in the Château d’Esclimont, a turreted pile outside Paris. David was
there as a treasured icon rather than as an active contributor, and played a passive role
for most of the meeting, apparently peacefully somnolent at the rear of the room.
Then the head of the Austrian office started a presentation of unprecedented
complexity. It was a small triumph of process over content. After five minutes, the
explosion happened.
“STOP!” David bellowed. “FOR GOD’S SAKE, STOP.” And then slightly softer
and more pained: “I cannot understand or see the usefulness of what you are saying.”
And then, with acute pain: “And from the land of Mozart!” It was a mortifying and
terrifying moment which no one in the room will easily forget, least of all that hapless
Austrian colleague. He shouldn’t feel bad about it if he’s reading this now. But this is
a clue for me about how David would respond to much of the verbiage, hype,
redundancy, over-complication and ungrounded optimism that surrounds the
Digital Revolution, observing and undermining the enormous gifts it brings.
A rather analogue picture from my early days in advertising. The last 30 years have witnessed a period of immense
digital transformation, yet many of the principles drummed into me early on are as important as they ever were.
