What I learned from reading Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.
14 years before writing these confessions I had gone to New York and started an advertising agency.
Americans thought I was crazy.
What could a Scotsman know about advertising?
My agency was an immediate and meteoric success.
I wrote this book during my summer vacation in 1962.
I thought it would sell 4000 copies.
To my surprise, it was a runaway bestseller and so far has sold over a million copies.
Why did I write it?
First, to attract new clients to my advertising agency.
Second, to condition the market for a public offering of our shares.
Third, to make myself better known in the business world.
It achieved all three of these purposes.
My colleagues at Ogilvy and Mather have largely followed my ideas and they have sold a lot of products for a lot of manufacturers with the result that our agency is now 60 times as big as it was when I wrote this book.
The book was first published in 1963.
He is writing the introduction to the updated version 25 years later.
I get letters from strangers who thank me for the dramatic improvement in their sales when they follow the advice contained in this book.
And I meet big shots in the world of marketing who say that they owe their careers to reading my book.
If you detect a slight stench of conceit in this book I would have you know that my conceit is selective.
I am a miserable duffer in everything except advertising.
I cannot read a balance sheet, work a computer, ski, sail, play golf or paint.