Library Required reading Copy that sells
The Only Way to Know Which Ad Sells
David Ogilvy built one of the great agencies on two convictions. An ad exists to sell, and you find out what sells by research, not by taste. Ogilvy on Advertising is his late-career summary of both.
David Ogilvy · Ogilvy on Advertising · 1983
What it is
This is Ogilvy’s own guide to the business, published in 1983, more than thirty years after he started the agency that became Ogilvy & Mather. It covers how to write, how to judge an agency and what research had taught him, all in his usual plain and opinionated style. He sets out his stance on the first pages:
“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.” p. 7
What you’ll take from it
The big one is that taste doesn’t count as evidence. Before he started his agency, Ogilvy worked for George Gallup’s research institute, and the book keeps coming back to what had been measured: which headlines get read, which layouts work, what makes people buy. In his chapter on research, “18 Miracles of Research,” he puts it like this:
“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.” Chapter 15, “18 Miracles of Research”
Where it shows up in your numbers
Ogilvy’s research answered the question his clients paid for, which ad sells more. You need to add the question he couldn’t easily measure in 1983. Which customers did it sell to, and what were they worth afterwards? The signals are still there to be decoded, and most of them now live in your CRM and your finance system instead of a readership study.
Next on the shelf Joseph Sugarman, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook