David Ogilvy: Direct vs Creative

One of the greatest advertising geniuses of the 20th century was David Ogilvy.

Although he was the head of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, he sided firmly with direct advertising over creative advertising.

Here is an excerpt from a speech he gave to advertising executives in Paris where he laid out the difference between the two approaches and why, in his opinion, direct advertising is the more effective form:.

“There is a yawning chasm between you generalists and we directs. We directs belong to a different world. Your gods are not our gods.

“You generalists pride yourselves on being creative – whatever that awful word means. You cultivate the mystique of creativity. Some of you are pretentious poseurs. You are the glamour boys and girls of the advertising community. You regard advertising as an art form – and expect your clients to finance expressions of your genius. We directs do not regard advertising as an art form. Our clients don’t give a damn whether we win awards at Cannes. They pay us to sell their products. Nothing else.

“You must be the most seductive salesmen in the world if you can persuade hard headed clients to pay for your kind of advertising. When sales go up, you claim credit for it. When sales go down, you blame the product. We in direct response know exactly to the penny how many products we sell with each of our advertisements. Your favourite music is the applause of your fellow art directors and copywriters. Our favourite music is the ring of the cash register.

You generalists use short copy. We use long copy. Experience has taught us that short copy doesn’t sell. In our headlines, we promise the consumer a benefit. You generalists don’t think it is creative.

You have never had to live with the discipline of knowing the results of your advertising. We pack our advertisements and letters with information about the product. We have found out we have to – if we want to sell anything.”

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Comments

[Steven Paul Matsumoto]

I love Ogilvy, before analytics became a buzz word he was blasting creatives for their lack of trackability. I will grant you that recent advances in technology have added to the ease of determining the performance of a campaign. Ghost URLs and tracking lines can be your best friend in any media source and give you some great demographic data. Great excerpt Derrick, keep them coming.

[Douglas Ladd]

Although these are great quotes, looking at the current Ogilvy website, the very focus of the website is how many Cannes awards they have won. It is the very first item on the page, not how sales increased for their last client. The merit of the agency at first glance is that they create award winning work, not sales smashing work. Looking at the entries it is quite apparent that the very advertising that David has a great disdain for here is exactly the advertising that is showcased. Sad really.

[Abimanyu]

Once again, cheers to David Ogilvy! And yet so true that ogilvy works from all around the world are award winning ones...how ironic!