Big River salutes..... David Ogilvy

If there is one person that truly embodies an industry, that person surely was David Ogilvy. An advertising man par excellence, his body of work is the industry’s standard. From the extravagant man in the Hathaway eye-patch to the fable of the electric clock in a Rolls-Royce, Ogilvy’s ‘Big Ideas’ has served as a benchmark on how to combine creative flair with proper mass salesmanship. In short, his ideas worked.

In fact, it is the pursuit of the Big Idea that is at the heart of Ogilvy’s success (though never his best trait, he was modest enough to admit that he’d only 20 big ideas in his career). He was never a man who valued quantity over quality (during his reign, Ogilvy & Mather only had 19 clients). He never cared much for artistic flair in advertising but had high regards for delivering factual information about a product. For him bigness is never about extravagance but about honesty and integrity.

Born in 1911 in West Horsley England, the son of a Scottish father and an Irish mother made his name as the head of Ogilvy & Mather in New York. For those interested to know more about his life do read Confessions of an Advertising Man and Ogilvy on Advertising. In fact, anyone interested to know more about advertising, marketing or the business world in general ought to read those two books. Even though some of the passages in the books might seem a tad dated the ideas, anecdotes and rules are as relevant now as it was when they were published.

While his very nature protruded an unending desire to succeed, it was his humanity and morality that makes him a true marketing great. He once said that “we like people who are honest in argument, honest with clients and, above all, honest with consumers”. As admen from the New York’s 5th Avenue to the posh surroundings of Damansara Heights, Malaysia toil over the next big thing in advertising, the ghost of David Ogilvy puffing away on his pipe will hover upon them while subliminally reminding each and everyone that “unless your campaign contains a Big Idea, it will pass like a ship in the night”.