David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born in West Horsley, England, on June 23, 1911.

He was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh and at Christ Church, Oxford (although he didn't graduate).

After Oxford, Ogilvy went to Paris, where he worked in the kitchen of the Hotel Majestic. He learned discipline, management - and when to move on: "If I stayed at the Majestic I would have faced years of slave wages, fiendish pressure, and perpetual exhaustion." He returned to England to sell cooking stoves, door-to-door. Ogilvy's career with Aga Cookers was astonishing. He sold stoves to nuns, drunkards, and everyone in between. In 1935 he wrote a guide for Aga salesmen (Fortune magazine called it "probably the best sales manual ever written"). Among its suggestions, "The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will get. But never mistake quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship."

In 1938, Ogilvy emigrated to the United States, where he went to work for George Gallup's Audience Research Institute in New Jersey. Ogilvy cites Gallup as one of the major influences on his thinking, emphasizing meticulous research methods and adherence to reality. During World War II, Ogilvy worked with the Intelligence Service at the British Embassy in Washington. There he wrote enormously, analyzing and making recommendations on matters of diplomacy and security. He extrapolated his knowledge of human behavior from consumerism to nationalism in a report which suggested "applying the Gallup technique to fields of secret intelligence." Eisenhower's Psychological Warfare Board picked up the report and successfully put Ogilvy's suggestions to work in Europe during the last year of the war. After the war, Ogilvy bought a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and lived among the Amish. The atmosphere of "serenity, abundance, and contentment" kept Ogilvy and his wife in Pennsylvania for several years, but eventually he admitted his limitations as a farmer and moved to New York.

In 1948, he founded the New York-based ad agency Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather (which eventually became Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide), with the financial backing of London agency Mather & Crowther. He had never written an advertisement in his life. Thirty-three years later, he sent the following memo to one of his partners: Will Any Agency Hire This Man? He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college. He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knows nothing about marketing and had never written any copy. He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year. I doubt if any American agency will hire him. However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world. The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.

In his agency's first twenty years, Ogilvy won assignments from Lever Brothers, General Foods and American Express. Shell gave him their entire account in North America. Sears hired him for their first national advertising campaign. "I doubt whether any copywriter has ever had so many winners in such a short period of time," he wrote in his autobiography. "They made Ogilvy & Mather so hot that getting clients was like shooting fish in a barrel." In 1965, Ogilvy merged the agency with Mather & Crowther, his London backers, to form a new international company. One year later the company went public - one of the first advertising firms to do so. Soon Ogilvy & Mather had expanded around the world and was firmly in place as one of the top agencies in all regions.

In 1973 Ogilvy retired as Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather and moved to Touffou, his estate in France. While no longer involved in day-to-day operations of the agency, he stayed in touch with the company. Indeed, his correspondence so dramatically increased the volume of mail handled in the nearby town of Bonnes that the post office was reclassified at a higher status and the postmaster's salary raised. Ogilvy came out of retirement in the 1980s to serve as chairman of Ogilvy & Mather in India. He also spent a year acting as temporary chairman of the agency's German office, commuting daily between Touffou and Frankfurt. He visited branches of the company around the world, and continued to represent Ogilvy & Mather at gatherings of clients and business audiences.

When, in 1989, the Ogilvy Group was bought by WPP, two events occurred simultaneously: WPP became the largest marketing communications firm in the world, and David Ogilvy was named the company's non-executive chairman (a position he held for three years).

At age 75, Ogilvy was asked if anything he'd always wanted had somehow eluded him. His reply, "Knighthood. And a big family - ten children." (His only child, David Fairfield Ogilvy, was born during his first marriage, to Melinda Street. That marriage ended in divorce (1955) as did a second marriage to Anne Cabot. Ogilvy married Herta Lans in France in 1973.) He didn't achieve knighthood, but he was made a commander of the British Empire in 1967. He was elected to the US Advertising Hall of Fame in 1977 and to France's "Order of Arts and Letters" in 1990. He chaired the Public Participation Committee for Lincoln Center. He was appointed Chairman of the United Negro College Fund in 1968, and trustee on the Executive Council of the World Wildlife Fund in 1975. David Ogilvy died on July 21, 1999 at his home in Touffou, France. Ogilvy remains one of the most famous names in advertising and one of the handful of thinkers (Raymond Rubicam, Leo Burnett, William Bernbach, Ted Bates) who shaped the business after the 1920s.

David Ogilvy's three books, Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963), Blood, Brains and Beer (1978), and Ogilvy on Advertising (1983), provide the basic principles of modern advertising. CONFESSION OF AN ADVERTISING MAN First published in 1963, Confessions of an Advertising Man defines advertising in the 1960s, yet continues to hold relevance today. All the basic principles of good advertising are laid out in plain, but definitely not dull, English, along with enough Ogilvyisms to keep you engrossed and entertained. In 2011 Southbank Publishing released a new edition to commemorate the centennial year of David Ogilvy's birth. It is available throughAmazon.co.uk.

OGILVY ON ADVERTISING

"When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product." David Ogilvy's 1983 treatise on advertising takes the reader from "How to Produce Advertising that Sells" to "What's Wrong with Advertising?" and includes a recommended reading list for further study. The author's overture offers an overview.

DAVID OGILVY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY David Ogilvy cooked for the President of France. He sold stoves door-to-door in Scotland. Farmed with the Amish. Wrote questionnaires for Gallup. Worked for British Intelligence. And built Ogilvy & Mather. In 1978 he wrote Blood, Brains and Beer, his life story. In 1997 it was re-released (with new material) as "An Autobiography."

Early life (19111938)

David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born on 23 June 1911 at West Horsley, Surrey in England. His mother, Dorothy Blow Fairfield, was Irish. His father, Francis John Longley Ogilvy (c. 1867 1943) was a Gaelic-speaking Highlander from Scotland who was a classics scholar and a financial broker. Ogilvy attended St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, on reduced fees because of his father's straitened circumstances and won a scholarship at age thirteen to Fettes College, in Edinburgh. In 1929, he again won a scholarship, this time in History to Christ Church, Oxford. Without the scholarships, Ogilvy would not have been able to attend Fettes or Oxford University because his father's business was badly hit by the depression of the mid-1920s. His studies were not successful, however, and he left Oxford for Paris in 1931 where he became an apprentice chef in the Majestic Hotel. After a year, he returned to Scotland and started selling Aga cooking stoves, door-to-door. His success at this marked him out to his employer, who asked him to write an instruction manual, The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA cooker, for the other salesmen. Thirty years later, Fortune magazine editors called it the finest sales instruction manual ever written. After seeing the manual, Ogilvy's older brother Francis Ogilvy - the father of actor Ian Ogilvy showed the manual to management at the London advertising agency Mather & Crowther where he was working. They offered the younger Ogilvy a position as an account executive. [edit]When

Ogilvy "tasted blood"

After just a few months in advertising, Ogilvy took the discipline in a whole new direction. A man walked into Ogilvy's London agency wanting to advertise the opening of his hotel. Since he had just $500 he was turned to the novice, David Ogilvy. Ogilvy bought $500 worth of postcards and sent invitations to everybody he found in the local telephone directory. The hotel opened with a full house. "I had tasted blood", says Ogilvy in his Confessions. This is also the incident leading him to understanding the importance of direct advertising, his "Secret Weapon" as he says in Ogilvy on Advertising. [edit]At

Gallup (19381948)

In 1938, Ogilvy persuaded his agency to send him to the United States for a year, where he went to work for George Gallup's Audience Research Institute in New Jersey. Ogilvy cites Gallup as one of the major influences on his thinking, emphasizing meticulous research methods and adherence to reality. During World War II, Ogilvy worked for the British Intelligence Service at the British embassy in Washington, D.C. There he analyzed and made recommendations on matters of diplomacy and security. According to a biography produced by Ogilvy & Mather, "he extrapolated his

knowledge of human behavior from consumerism to nationalism in a report which suggested 'applying the Gallup technique to fields of secret intelligence.'"[2] Eisenhowers Psychological Warfare Board picked up the report and successfully put Ogilvys suggestions to work in Europe during the last year of the war. After the war, Ogilvy bought a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and lived among the Amish. The atmosphere of "serenity, abundance, and contentment" kept Ogilvy and his wife in Pennsylvania for several years, but eventually he admitted his limitations as a farmer and moved to Manhattan. [edit]The

Ogilvy & Mather years (19491973)

Having worked as a chef, researcher, and farmer, Ogilvy now started his own advertising agency with the backing of Mather and Crowther, the London agency being run by his elder brother, Francis, which later acquired another London agency, S.H. Benson. The new agency in New York was called Ogilvy, Benson, and Mather. David Ogilvy had just $6,000 in his account when he started the agency. He writes in Confessions of an Advertising Man that initially, he struggled to get clients. Ogilvy also admitted (referring to the pioneer of British advertising Bobby Bevan, the chairman of Benson) "I was in awe of him but Bevan never took notice of me!" They would meet later, however.[3] Ogilvy & Mather was built on David Ogilvy's principles, in particular, that the function of advertising is to sell and that successful advertising for any product is based on information about its consumer. His entry into the company of giants started with several iconic advertising campaigns: "The man in the Hathaway shirt" with his aristocratic eye patch which used Baron George Wrangell as model; "The man from Schweppes is here" introduced Commander Edward Whitehead, the elegant bearded Brit, bringing Schweppes (and "Schweppervesence") to the U.S.; a famous headline in the automobile business, "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Roycecomes from the electric clock"; "Pablo Casals is coming home to Puerto Rico", a campaign which Ogilvy said helped change the image of a country, and was his proudest achievement. One of his greatest successes was "Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream". This campaign helped Dove become the top selling soap in the U.S. Ogilvy believed that the best way to get new clients was to do notable work for his existing clients. Success in his early campaigns helped Ogilvy get big clients such as RollsRoyce and Shell. New clients followed and Ogilvy's company grew quickly. In 1973 Ogilvy retired as Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather and moved to Touffou, his estate in France. While no longer involved in the agency's day-to-day operations, he stayed in touch with the company. His correspondence so dramatically increased the volume of mail handled in

the nearby town of Bonnes that the post office was reclassified at a higher status and the postmaster's salary raised. Ogilvy & Mather linked with H.H.D Europe in 1972.[clarification needed] [edit]Life

with WPP and afterward (19891999)

Ogilvy came out of retirement in the 1980s to serve as chairman of Ogilvy, Benson, & Mather in India. He also spent a year acting as temporary chairman of the agencys German office, commuting weekly between Touffou and Frankfurt. He visited branches of the company around the world, and continued to represent Ogilvy & Mather at gatherings of clients and business audiences. In 1989, The Ogilvy Group was bought by WPP Group, a British parent company, for US$864 million in a hostile takeover made possible by the fact that the company group had made an IPO as the first company in marketing to do so. During the takeover procedures, Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP, who already had a tarnished reputation in the advertising industry following a similar successful takeover of J. Walter Thompson, was described by Ogilvy as an "odious little jerk", and he promised to never work again. (When Martin Sorrell signed his next company report, he followed the signature with the letters OLJ.) Two events followed simultaneously, however: WPP became the largest marketing communications firm in the world, and David Ogilvy was named the company's nonexecutive chairman (a position he held for three years). Eventually he became a fan of Sorrell. A letter of apology from Ogilvy adorns Sorrell's office, which is said to be the only apology David Ogilvy ever offered in any form during his adult life. Only a year after his derogatory comments about Sorrell, he was quoted as saying, 'When he tried to take over our company, I would liked to have killed him. But it was not legal. I wish I had known him 40 years ago. I like him enormously now.' At age seventy-five, Ogilvy was asked if anything he'd always wanted had somehow eluded him. His reply was, "Knighthood. And a big family - ten children." His only child, David Fairfield Ogilvy, was born during his first marriage, to Melinda Street. That marriage ended in divorce (1955) as did a second marriage to Anne Cabot. Ogilvy married Herta Lans in France during 1973. He didnt achieve knighthood, but he was made a Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) in 1967. He was elected to the U.S. Advertising Hall of Fame in 1977 and to France's "Order of Arts and Letters" in 1990. He chaired the Public Participation Committee for Lincoln Center in Manhattan. He was appointed Chairman of the United Negro College Fund in 1968, and trustee on the Executive Council of the World Wildlife Fund in 1975. Mr. Ogilvy was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1979.

David Ogilvy died on 21 July 1999 at his home, the Chteau de Touffou, in Bonnes, France. Ogilvy remains one of the most famous names in advertising and is considered one of the dominant thinkers, along with Raymond Rubicam, Leo Burnett, William Bernbach, and Rosser Reeves, who shaped the business after the 1920s. [edit]Works His book Ogilvy on Advertising is a general commentary on advertising and not all the ads shown in the book are his. In early 2004, Adweek magazine asked people in the business "Which individuals - alive or dead - made you consider pursuing a career in advertising?" and Ogilvy topped the list. The same result came when students of advertising were surveyed. His best-selling book Confessions of an Advertising Man (ISBN 1-904915-01-9) is one of the most popular and famous books on advertising. Ogilvys advertising mantra followed these four basic principles,

Research: coming, as he did, from a background in research, he never underestimated its importance in advertising. In fact, in 1952, when he opened his own agency, he billed himself as research director. Professional discipline: "I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance." He codified knowledge into slide and film presentations he called Magic Lanterns. He also instituted several training programs for young advertising professionals. Creative brilliance: had a strong emphasis on the "BIG IDEA." Results for clients: "In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create."