When Randy Rohn, Executive Creative Director of Keller Crescent Advertising was asked how a student should go about learning the trade, he offered up an age-worn book from 1963 titled “Confessions of an Advertising Man”. You might think much has changed during the intervening 45 years, but this tome was penned by advertising legend David Ogilvy, and his insights were not so much about advertising, but about human nature. Understanding people–especially clients and consumers–is what gave Ogilvy his keen edge. These are not insights that he kept to himself, because Ogilvy knew that it takes talent to execute great ideas, and not everyone has talent. Lucky for us, Randy knows talent and we’ve got loads of it at Keller Crescent Advertising.

Here’s what David Ogilvy had to say, and a quick explanation of what he meant.

• What you say is more important than how you say it. Large promise is the soul of advertising. The promise you make should not be left to chance. Testing and refinement with a qualified audience are essential to determining the most successful promise.
• Unless your campaign is built around a great idea, it will flop. The trick is in having clients who recognize which ideas are the great ones, or rightly trust that you are capable of recognizing the great ideas for them.
• Give the facts. The more information you give about your product, the more you depend on the consumer’s intelligence to decide for themselves whether your product is something they want. Armed with information, consumers are willing to spend more in order to get more benefit.
• You cannot bore people into buying. We are all inundated with advertising throughout the day. If you want your advertising to be heard, it must be done with a unique voice. Create ads that people look forward to experiencing.
• Be well-mannered, but don’t clown. People tend to respond best to trustworthy, respectful spokespersons.
• Make your advertising contemporary. Use the lexicon of your audience and speak to their experience, A 25 year old and a 65 year old may share similar views, but they arrived at those views in vastly different ways.
• Committees can criticize advertisements, but they cannot write them. As the number of people involved in creating an idea increases, the ability to express the idea with a personal voice diminishes. The most effective advertising is spoken in the voice of one individual.
• If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops pulling. A person buys a major appliance perhaps every 10 years, but appliances are sold every day because the audience is always changing. Stopping a successful advertisement simply because the advertisers are tired of seeing it is a poor reason.
• Never write an advertisement that you wouldn’t want your own family to read. Be honest. Don’t lie to the consumer. You cannot sustain a brand through dishonest advertising.
• The Image and the Brand. Every advertisement contributes to the brand image. A brand cannot be all things to all people. The image must be defined. A defined brand image is to the advertiser what a blueprint is to the architect. Changing a brand image, once acquired, is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.
• Don’t be a copycat. Every great advertising campaign is copied by someone. Those who copy are inferior to those who create original, successful campaigns.