David Ogilvy

“A hell of a habit to get into and just about as hard to get out”

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David Ogilvy, a stylish copywriter who started one of the biggest marketing agencies in the world, once wrote that, of the “six giants who invented modern advertising,” at least five were gluttons for work.

One of Ogilvy’s marketing giants was Claude Hopkins, who may have been the first A-list copywriter of all time.

​​A century ago, Hopkins amassed a fortune by writing profit-generating ads for big brands, many of which still survive today — Palmolive and Quaker Oats and Pepsodent.

He also wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which has become a kind of bible in the field. (According to Ogilvy, nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book at least seven times.)

Hopkins was certainly a glutton for work. He worked 16-hour days, every day, including Sundays — his “best working days, because there were no interruptions.”

Sounds horrendous, right? But here’s the thing that struck me about Claude Hopkins and his love of work. From his autobiography, My Life in Advertising:

“All the difference lay in a different idea of fun. […] So the love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play. The terms are interchangeable. What others call work I call play, and vice versa. We do best what we like best.”

In other words, work can become fun, if you work at it. Maybe you find that thought encouraging. I know I sometimes do.

Other times, though, all I remember is what Hemingway said about work: “It’s a hell of a habit to get into and it’s just about as hard to get out.”

So what’s my point? No point. It’s Sunday, after all, a day of rest for non-gluttons. Enjoy and relax. We’ll get back to points, well-made or not, tomorrow.

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Puerto Rico

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I don’t know much about Puerto Rico except two things:

1) It gets regularly flattened by hurricanes

2) “International Man” Simon Black praises it as a good place to do business

Neither of those makes me really want to visit the place.

But I’m reading David Ogilvy’s “On Advertising” right now. Ogilvy is famous in copywriting circles for his Rolls-Royce ad:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

Along with Rolls-Royce, Ogilvy also wrote copy for many other massive corporate accounts. ​American Express. Shell. IBM. But he didn’t do advertising for products and companies only.

Ogilvy also sold countries.

His advertising agency produced big tourism campaigns for England, France, and, most famously, Puerto Rico. As Ogilvy says in his book:

“The biggest obstacle to tourism in Puerto Rico was its image. Research showed that people believed it to be the dirtiest, poorest, most squalid island in the Caribbean. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and this I demonstrated in advertisements. Tourism increased by leaps and bounds.”

Ogilvy created ads for Puerto Rico that captured attention… overcame objections… told a story… and most important, created a vision.

Do you want to see how?

Then check out the following ad for Puerto Rico from 1958, and see how Ogilvy creates vision, both through copy and through the image (taken by famous penny-pinching photographer Elliott Erwitt):

How big is your…?

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I saw the following size-measuring question today:

“How big is your confidence in copywriting? I know this is the softest metric of one’s success, but I wonder greatly. How confident are you in your job and what’s your confidence based on?”

This is honestly not a question I’ve thought about ever.

I don’t worry about confidence. Instead, I think about having a system for moving forward, and about following that system. As long as I do that, I feel I’m safe.

(Or maybe I’ve been influenced too much by dating coach Tom Torero, who said something like, “Confidence is just when you’ve seen the same situation many times over.”)

But if you’re looking to start out as a copywriter, maybe this doesn’t help you.

So let me give you another quote, this one by Claude Hopkins, the great-grandfather of modern direct response marketing.

(About a century ago, Claude wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which the famous David Ogilvy, the “King of Madison Avenue,” said is so important that “nobody, at any level, should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.”)

Anyways, back when Claude was just a wet-behind-the-ears lad working for peanuts at the “Felt Boot Company,” he got to talking to a successful businessman in his town.

The businessman was impressed when he heard that Claude would work from 8 in the morning until after midnight, and be back the next morning for more of the same.

So the big businessman offered Claude a new, higher paying job. And here’s what Claude concluded from this:

“In the early stages of our careers none can judge us by results. The shallow men judge us by likings, but they are not men to tie to. The real men judge us by our love of work, the basis of their success. They employ us for work, and our capacity for work counts above all else.”

Maybe this will help you if you are agonizing about where you are on the copywriting totem pole.

And in case you want to grab a free copy of that “must-read” Claude Hopkins advertising Bible, so you can add a bit of length or girth to your copywriting confidence, then here’s where to go:

https://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.pdf