We’re moving. Relocating. I mean Trish and I are physically upping sticks and moving our home. We’ve been here for seven years or so, but now we’re off to pastures new. Nothing changes here, of course but big changes offline.
If you’ve ever undergone a house move, you’ll know how stressful it is. You have to decide what to throw away and what to keep. Easy. You want to keep all your stuff and throw away other people’s stuff, to lighten the load. Well, that doesn’t happen and you wind up with the heartache of dismantling your life so far. So what you try to do is predict the direction of the rest of your life, based on what you can take with you in the move.
David Ogilvy
But it’s not all bad. While you’re sorting out the junk and trashing your life, you come across things you’ve been looking for for ages and that you decided someone has obviously thrown out unbeknown to you. Such an item is the book by David Ogilvy, “Ogilvy On Advertising.” This is a book I came across in a cheap bookshop some years ago and bought, just because it looked interesting. It’s only comparatively recently that I’ve realized its importance in the marketing world, having seen references to it online. Having given up the search some time ago, it was gratifying to find it at the bottom of an “In” tray. Of course, I can’t admit I’ve found it, so this is just between us, right?
Here’s the first paragraph from the book: “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. 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. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’ ”
This is the kind of person I want to follow in my marketing – he speaks my lingo. Later in the introduction, he says, “This is not a book for readers who think they already know all there is to be known about advertising. It is for young hopefuls – and veterans who are still in search of ways to improve their batting average at the cash register.”
Read about David Ogilvy on Wikipedia, then track down this book and buy it.
Terry