Recently, both Advertising Age and Adweek celebrated what would have been the 100th birthday of David Ogilvy with a series of articles memorializing this well-known pioneer of the modern advertising business.
And, as with most everything else I’ve ever read lionizing the man, I was thoroughly nonplussed by most of it. Save for one redeeming article that may, alas, be the closest thing to a reasonable argument I’ve found yet for his legacy, or an interesting thought on the subject at the very least.
I’ll get to the second more enlightening part, and why I agree with it, in a moment. But, on the first count, I must start by saying that I’ve just never gotten it all. Rather, David Ogilvy’s a bit like the Barry Bonds of advertising in my book: lots of unequivocal accomplishments, but always with some caveat or ‘historical context’ that mitigates each one:
* Grew a highly successful ad agency (!), but did it in an era of scarce, almost negligible, competition (*asterisk);
* Wrote innovative ads (!), relative to a sea of total dreck common to the time (+footnote);
* Authored legendary campaigns (!), run in a small handful of media that reached a majority of US consumers as (++contextual note) they were all that existed.
Now, before I offend anyone here by desecrating the sacred canon of David Ogilvy, let me clarify: it’s not the person, or his unequivocal intelligence or influence that I question; but rather the constant attempts by his acolytes to apply his every utterance to today’s byzantine, hyper-accelerated advertising landscape, or armed-to-the-teeth-with-information consumers it struggles to connect with every day.
After all, Karl Benz largely created the modern automobile, yet I can’t imagine engineers at Porsche regularly pausing these days to consider how he might solve the problem of, say, maintaining optimal aerodynamics at 160mph; or designers of the Kindle studying old Gutenberg press models for a few product refinements; LeBron James waxing nostalgic about the deeper strategy of Naismith’s ideas in a post-game press conference. Get the picture?
It’s okay folks, really: a figure can be groundbreaking in their day, without necessarily being correct or relevant for all eternity.
So, given my years of perplexity with the whole Ogilvy-mania thing, I truly enjoyed one writer’s smart, honest case for it. In an Adweek piece, Michael Wolff respectfully argues that Ogilvy’s influence was ultimately less on breakthrough ways to run marketing services firms than the importance of promoting them: on creating and maintaining an agency ‘brand’ around a singular expertise it alone owns—and gets paid appropriately for by clients.
Call it and elevator-pitch or what you will, but you’d best have one as a marketing services firm. Especially with continued ‘unbundling’ of full-service agencies by clients that effectively demands every shop understand, and be able to articulate, what they alone can provide and its essential value.
Now that, to me, is a truly well-deserved legacy—one that conveys the same value, relevance and urgent import today as it did decades ago.
It’s just a shame it took me years of my career and reams of articles, stories, anecdotes, bon mots and fluff to see someone finally get to it so plainly…And that I won’t be around to glean another similar nugget of insight on “The David Ogilvy Bi-Centennial”.
