Today is November 29th, which is neither the birthday nor the deathday of David Ogilvy. Still, I thought it might be a good idea to take a moment and remember the great man.
Because, as with another copywriting legend, Gary Halbert, the greatest promotion that David Ogilvy ever did was in promoting himself.
Today, more than 50 years after his heyday, Ogilvy remains the most famous ad man in history, and is really the only copywriter that a normie off the street might have heard of.
Why is that?
What lies behind Ogilvy’s enduring fame?
The way I figure, it comes down to three things.
Some part of it secret personal charisma.
Some part of it is luck.
And some part is the actual work Ogilvy produced.
Charisma and luck cannot be taught. Well, they can, but this is not that kind of newsletter. This is a newsletter which focuses on work — and how to make the work that you do more impactful, influential, long-lasting.
So what exactly did Ogilvy do? When I think of the man’s work, three snapshots come to mind:
1. The Rolls-Royce ad, “At 60 miles an hour…” That campaign shows you the value of being associated with a top-tier product, which largely writes its own advertising.
2. The man in the Hathaway shirt. The eyepatch. That shows you the power of creating a spectacle, of being instantly perceived as unique.
3. A 7-word soundbite Ogilvy wrote once, which I will not quote here, but which I bet you have heard before.
I bet you’ve heard it because I’ve quoted it before in this newsletter, and so have 99% of people who write about advertising, whether they knew it came from Ogilvy or not.
There’s some magic to this soundbite that makes it stick in people’s minds and that makes them want to repeat it — even though Ogilvy wrote it as just a throwaway in the middle of a 12,000-word ad.
Maybe you know the 7-word soundbite I have in mind.
Maybe you even know the magic that makes it stick in people’s minds beyond the millions of other words that Ogilvy wrote in his 50-year career.
And if you don’t know, but you think it might be in your interest to know, then you can find out all about it during the third call of my upcoming Age of Insight live training.
Registration for Age of Insight closes tomorrow, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST. But I am only making this training available to people who are on my email newsletter. If you want to get in on the training, then hurry to get on my newsletter and pray that you are in time.