I often wonder, if David Ogilvy were alive today, would he e-mail a PDF of an ad to a client for approval?
As Ogilvy the agency loses its prestige, Ogilvy the man gets a new biography, called The King of Madison Avenue by Kenneth Roman.
Honestly, I haven’t read the book, and don’t plan to unless I get a complimentary copy to review, as sometimes happens here on AdPulp. But here’s a take on it from The Wall Street Journal:
As Mr. Roman notes, Ogilvy’s primary gift was as a writer; he had less success once television ads made images more important than words, and he never really grasped the emotional power of music in ads. By the 1980s, he had faded into the role of elder statesman. Ogilvy was such a technophobe, the author says, that he used sharpened pencils instead of ball-point pens. The heart gladdens, then, with the thought that some of his ideas are back in vogue in an online age: The Internet fosters the direct selling that he championed, and it provides the sort of customer data that he demanded. The advertising agency that he built endures, as do memories of some of its most notable campaigns, such as Maxwell House’s “Good to the last drop” and American Express’s “Do you know me?” Thanks to “The King of Madison Avenue,” now we know David Ogilvy.
