David Ogilvy was born in 1911 in England. His family struggled financially, but he won scholarships to top schools, including Oxford. He left Oxford without a degree, and what followed looked like a string of detours. He worked as an apprentice chef in a Paris hotel kitchen, then sold AGA cooking stoves door to door in Scotland. He was so good at it that he wrote a sales manual for other salesmen, which Fortune magazine later called one of the best sales manuals ever written.
In 1938, he moved to America and went to work for George Gallup’s research institute, where he learned how to study what people actually think and want. During World War II, he worked for British intelligence. Afterward, he tried tobacco farming in Amish country in Pennsylvania. Every one of these experiences would later shape his approach to advertising.
In 1948, at age 37, Ogilvy started his own agency in New York with no clients and very little money. On day one, he wrote down five major companies he wanted as clients. Within twelve years, he had landed all five. His campaigns became legendary, from the Hathaway shirt man with an eye patch to his famous Rolls-Royce ad about the loudest noise in the car being its electric clock.
Ogilvy believed in research, strong headlines, facts over fluff, and respecting the customer. As he famously put it, “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.” His book Confessions of an Advertising Man is still required reading for marketers today. He died in 1999 at his château in France.
David Ogilvy’s story is covered in Deeply Driven Episode #37.
Source Book
Confessions of an Advertising Man
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