Book Review: Ogilvy on Advertising
Advertisement has to be seen as a medium of information rather than medium of entertainment.
There are very few books that explain the A to Z of Copywriting in a simple way and prove Copywriting is more of a science than an art. “Ogilvy on Advertising” is one of those books. The author of this book, David Ogilvy was a British advertising tycoon also known as the “Father of Advertising”.
This book provides information on how to run an Advertisement business successfully, how to get started as a copywriter. It also highlights the importance of direct response copywriting. The author also explains leadership from an advertising business point of view. The book also explains how to draft your copy to attract your audience’s attention and how to research the product you’re selling. It also reveals how to choose an agency for your product, secrets of success in direct mail, and many more.
The above-mentioned strategies are revealed in the following paragraphs.
Study the Product you’re going to advertise
Ogilvy explains why it is important to study the product you’re selling from the customer’s point of view. The more you know about the product, the more likely you’re to come up with a big idea for selling it. you can get a lot of information by doing research among consumers and getting feedback from them regarding the product.
Research your advertising competitors. knowing your competitor’s tactics is the best way to achieve success in the market.
Show the uniqueness of your product
It is of no use to promote your product by saying it is better than your competitor. Instead, Ogilvy advises to show how your product is unique from others and how the uniqueness of the product can help make your customer’s life better.
To achieve success in copywriting, you have to be ambitious in the advertising profession. Always think big and set your priorities in the right direction.
Try to excel in Direct response Copywriting
Ogilvy advises beginning your career in Direct response copywriting. Direct marketing is the only form of accountable advertising where you can trace every dollar of sales to every dollar of costs. Direct response marketing is an effective way of testing your sales.
Direct response copywriting is the process of writing sales copy that has the goal of getting an immediate response from the customer. This is one of the reasons why the direct response is looked at so highly in the writing and business world.
Claude C. Hopkins, another grandfather of the direct-response marketing movement, wrote, “Tests are important and help us to understand our customers. Good selling is based on good testing.”
At the start of your career in advertising, what you learn is more important than what you earn.
Learning new things, consuming knowledge, and gaining experience are more valuable than earning money at the beginning of your career.
The hallmark of a potential successful copywriter
- Obsessive curiosity about products, people, and advertising
- A sense of humour
- A habit of hard work
- The ability to write printed prose for printed media
- The ability to think visually
- The ambition to write better campaigns than anyone has ever written before
Half the battle is won, if you write a good headline for your copy
The headline of an advertisement is the most critical part of a copy where you draw the attention of your customer. On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. Headlines that show benefits, always work best.
News can be included in the headline. Never put period/full stop at the end of headlines. When you advertise in a local newspaper, include the name of each city in your headline. Include the specifics of your product in the headline. Long headlines sell more merchandise than short headlines. You can also show the urgency of your product in the deadline to increase your sales in a given period. Give utmost care to your headline, it can increase or decrease the sales of your product.
Advertising which promises no benefit to the customer does not sell. The first duty of advertising is to communicate effectively, not to be original or entertaining.
Try to add more helpful content in your body copy. The more facts you tell, the more you sell
The body copy is the 2nd most important part of a copy after the headline. The first paragraph of your copy should be an attention grabber. Never write essays in your body copy. Try to tell a story in your body copy. You cannot bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them in buying it.
Telling a story in the copy makes the people feel more relatable to their experiences and provokes their emotions. Keep the language of the copy as simple as everyday conversations.
Hard work never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease.
It is very important to find the purpose of your life. You just cannot start copywriting or an advertising business just for the sake of earning money. Although it can make you happy for a moment it cannot be long-lasting. Your passion for copywriting should align with the purpose of your life.
Ogilvy states that “ Learn to thrive and work under pressure. It is a good idea to start the year by writing down exactly what you want to accomplish and end the year by measuring how much you have accomplished. Great leaders always exude self-confidence, they pick themselves up after defeat.
An effective leader satisfies the psychological needs of his followers.
Conclusion
Ogilvy has explained the complex principles of copywriting & advertising simply and effectively in this book. His principles on researching the product, Direst response marketing, the importance of Headline, and Leadership in the advertising business are some of my key takeaways from this book.
Overall, I found this book insightful and interesting from a Copywriter’s perspective. A person who is new to copywriting and advertising can find this book very helpful and can learn a lot from the concepts of this book. I would recommend this book to newbie Copywriters and people working in advertising agencies.
