David Ogilvy was a bright star in the advertising solar system and is well known to advertising scholars and practitioners alike. His advertising career started quite late in life, at an age when most men had already settled into careers. Ogilvy led a storied life before his turn to advertising. Before advertising took its hold on him, British-born Ogilvy was expelled from Oxford (for his indifference"), worked as a social worker in Edinburgh, became a chef's apprentice in Paris and sold Aga ovens door to door in England.
Then, in 1936, his older brother Francis got David an internship at the London ad agency Mather & & Crowley.
David Ogilvy immigrated to the United States in 1938. He became associate director of George Gallup's Audience Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey.
During World War II, he worked with British Security Coordination and served as second secretary to the British Embassy in Washington. After the war, Ogilvy lived among the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and worked as a farmer.
But he thought he could never earn his living as a farmer, so at the age of 38, he decided to start his own advertising agency.
Once again, he went to brother Francis for assistance. S. H. Benson Ltd., another London shop, also invested $45,000, but insisted that Ogilvy, who had been out of advertising for 10 years, hire someone who knew how to run an agency. Ogilvy chose Anderson Hewitt, an accountant he had met briefly in 1941. The business opened as Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather (HOB&M).
One of the first ads he wrote as the head of his own agency was "Guinness Guide to Oysters".
Ogilvy always stressed that "every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol which is the Brand Image".
Brand Image meant the personality of the product — a combination of its name, packaging, price, its advertising style, the nature of the product, etc.
An ad campaign, Ogilvy said, must always revolve around a sharply defined personality — a coherent image that you must stick to year after year.
In 1951, a small shirtmaker, C. F. Hathaway, came asking for help. This led Ogilvy to create the image of a man with the black eye patch, and "The Man in The Hathaway Shirt" campaign was born. This narrative, creative campaign ran for 25 years.
For Schweppes, Ogilvy persuaded the client, Commander Whitehead, to appear in his own advertisements. The campaign featuring the distinguished looking, bearded Brit in various ads and commercials ran for eighteen years.
For Rolls-Royce, he used the headline, "At 60 Miles An Hour The Loudest Noise In This New Rolls-Royce Comes From The Electric Clock". This remains the most famous automobile advertisement of all time.
By 1960 he had achieved his ambition to run a great agency that spread around the globe and firmly in place as one of the top agencies in all regions.
In 1965, Ogilvy dropped his title of chairman of what had become Ogilvy & Mather's U.S. operations (remaining chairman of O&M International — OMI) to become creative director — a position he kept for nearly 10 years, before "retiring" to Touffou, in 1973.
Ogilvy came out of retirement in the 1980s to serve as Chairman of Ogilvy&Mather in India. He also spent a year acting as temporary chairman of Ogilvy&Mather Germany. He visited branches of the company around the world and continued to present Ogilvy&Mather at gathering clients and business audiences.
When in 1989, Ogilvy group was brought buy WPP, two events occurred simultaneously: WPP became the largest Marketing communications firm in the world, and David Ogilvy was named the company's non-executive chairman, a position he held for 3 years.
Ogilvy died on July 1999 at his home in Touffou, France.
En reklammans bekännelser: Confessions of an Advertising Man