David Ogilvy, the legendary marketing master, died July 21 at his home, Chateau Touffou, near Bonnes in France’s Loire Valley. He was 88.
Although best known in the world of general advertising, Ogilvy was a sympathetic advocate of direct marketing.
“Direct response was my first love,” he said, “and later became my secret weapon.”
On another occasion Ogilvy noted, “Nobody should be allowed to create advertising for press or broadcast until he has served his apprenticeship in direct response. The experience will keep his feet on the ground for the rest of his life.”
Graham Phillips, chairman of Burson-Marsteller and former chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, says: “He coined `We sell or else’ for Ogilvy Direct.”
According to Phillips, Ogilvy’s interest in DM stemmed from his background, which included working for George Gallup’s Audience Research Institute in Princeton, NJ.
“He was interested in measuring the results of advertising,” Phillips explains, adding that it is easier to measure results in DM than in general advertising.
Ogilvy also insisted on using research to create effective campaigns.
“He believed things that worked were the best kind of creative,” says Andi Emerson, founder of the John Caples International Awards.
Ogilvy was known for his business acumen, his convictions and for raising the standards of practice and professionalism in the industry.
However, his 50-year career in marketing didn’t even begin until he was in his late 30s.
The Early Years.
Born David Mackenzie Ogilvy in West Horsley, England in 1911, he attended Fettes, a public school in Edinburgh, Scotland, on scholarship. He also entered Christ Church College in Oxford with a scholarship in modern history, but he flunked out two years later.
After Oxford, Ogilvy held a succession of jobs, from chef at the Hotel Majestic in Paris and door-to-door salesman for Aga Cookers (a British oversized kitchen range) to his first job in advertising at Mather & Crowther, where his older brother worked.
He persuaded the agency to send him to the United States for a year. Ogilvy arrived in 1938 and resigned from Mather & Crowther a year later to become an associate director at Gallup. During World War II, Ogilvy worked for the British Embassy in Washington, mostly with British Security Coordination under Sir William Stephenson.
After the war, Ogilvy tried farming tobacco in the Amish country of Lancaster, PA. It was around this time he took a correspondence course in direct mail advertising from Dartnell.
With the financial backing of Mather & Crowther, he founded Ogilvy & Mather (as Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather) with some $6,000 in the bank. The agency soon produced such famous campaigns as “The Man in the Hathaway Shirt” and “Commander Schweppes.” Other accounts he won – and which his agency still holds – include Lever Bros., General Foods and American Express. His books on marketing, “Confessions of an Advertising Man” (1963) and “Ogilvy on Advertising” (1983), have become classics in the field.
Ogilvy remained chief executive until 1975, but stayed active on various boards despite having retired to France. He remained titular head of some Ogilvy operations until recently. A unit of WPP Group plc, the agency’s global billings now top $8 billion.
Visionary
“He was such a visionary on so many levels,” says Wendy Riches, president of global marketing and e-commerce at Hasbro Inc. and the former head of OgilvyOne. “He recognized early the value of direct marketing and never hesitated to use it on behalf of his clients.”
“It would not be an understatement to call David Ogilvy the advertising man of the century,” says H. Robert Wientzen, president and CEO of the Direct Marketing Association. “The advertising world has lost one of its best known and most respected professionals.”
Ogilvy was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1967 and won France’s Order of Arts and Letters in 1990. He was elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1977 and to the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame in 1986.
He is survived by his third wife, Herta Lans; his son, David Fairfield Ogilvy; a daughter-in-law and three stepgrandsons.
A memorial service is planned in New York for early fall.
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