If David Ogilvy Were in Advertising Today, How Would He Do Things Differently?

Jay Rivera

JMC 68001: Public Relations Management December 8, 2012

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Introduction

The mid-twentieth century witnessed the golden age of advertising, and no one held

more sway than the king of Madison Avenue, David Ogilvy. From his work with

Hathaway and Rolls-Royce, to his industry redefining research, Ogilvy reigned over the

advertising world with his clever ad campaigns that told the truth but made the truth

fascinating. His approach to advertising guided his own advertising firm and influenced

generations of advertising men when print and radio revenues were at their peak, and

television advertising was in its infancy.

Ogilvy’s landmark book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, contains plainspoken

advice on everything from copywriting, running an ad agency, and earning new

business. His book had such an influence on the advertising men of his age that even

Roger Sterling, the fictitious account executive of the television series Mad Men once

groused, “It's the book everybody writes. It should be called A Thousand Reasons I'm

so Great.”

The advertising world has changed dramatically since Ogilvy’s time. D igital ad

revenues are expected to increase 13.5 percent globally in 2013, eclipsing the growth in

all other formats combined (out of home, including cinema advertising, 3.4 percent;

radio, 1.5 percent, television, 2.3 percent). Newspaper and magazines, once the

centerpiece of advertising campaigns, continue to decline toward obsolescence, to a

predicted 3.4 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively in 2013.

No one knows for certain if David Ogilvy would have garnered the respect for himself

and the advertising industry that he did in the 1950s and ’60s, if he were plying his trade

in the digital age. Culling from scholarly and online resources, this paper will examine

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Chapter 6 of Confessions of an Advertising Man, “How to Write Potent Copy,” to

determine whether Ogilvy’s thoughts on writing have relevance in an age of new media.

Due to the scope of the chapter and the emergence of new technologies since Ogilvy’s

time, I will limit the discussion to Ogilvy’s 10 guides for writing headlines.

Headlines

At the outset, Ogilvy states, “On the average, five times as many people read the

headline as read the body copy.” (121) Current numbers vary by format, but the data

support Ogilvy’s claim. The Poynter Institute reported 56 percent of readers absorbing

headlines, with only 26 percent of readers absorbing text (Moses 2002), while the

Outsell News Users’ Report found 44 percent of Google users scan newspaper

headlines without visiting the corresponding news outlet’s site. (Wauters 2010) The

effort by newspapers to recapture declining subscriptions by setting up pay walls has

only exacerbated this, with only 10 percent of news users saying they would pay for an

online news subscription to gain access, and 75 percent saying they would “turn to a

different source for local online news if their newspapers required a paid subscription.”

(Wauters 2010) I will now turn my attention to Ogilvy’s 10 guidelines for headline writing.

1. “Use it to flag down the readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are

advertising…. Do not say anything in your headline which is likely to exclude any

readers who might be prospects for your product.” (121)

The online world is replete with examples of copywriters who understand this basic

principle of Ogilvy’s copywriting strategy, with one notable exception: in the age of Web-

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based advertising, segmentation is the order of the day. It isn’t that online content

creators seek to exclude a potential customer, but that online ad creation software like

Google AdWords and Facebook ads allow them to target specific prospects with

specific products and services. These methods were simply unavailable in Ogilvy’s time.

In his discussion on why some copywriters excel at writing great blog posts titles,

Copyblogger CEO Brian Clark said, “a really great headline generally won’t appeal to

everyone, and watering it down for mass appeal will only hurt you.... Understanding

what type of headline is appropriate to a specific context is the real key to writing

magnetic post titles that get your content embraced and shared.” (Clark 2012)

2. “Every headline should appeal to the reader’s self-interest…” (122)

This seems so obvious, but in online advertising and copywriting, an online search

engine acts as an intermediary between advertiser and seller. It is often not the best

content that appears at the top of an online search, but the work whose keywords most

closely match the parameters of a given search. When potential prospects “enter a

search phrase, they expect the results to correspond with what they want,” explains

marketing consultant and trainer J-P DeClerk. “Your blog post title is a promise that

ensures them your post provides an answer. That’s relevance and search engines care

about it a lot as well. There is nothing worse than a title that leads to content that

doesn’t live up to the promise in the title.” (DeClerk 2012) Some of the most potent

headline and copywriting focus on solving a problem, and there are many opportunities

for copywriters who can tailor their headlines to specific audiences.

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Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of online marketing research company MECLABS, puts it

this way: “All marketing messages should be centered around the interest of the

customer. So when it comes to crafting effective headlines, you need to emphasize

what the visitor gets rather than what they must do.” (McGlaughlin 2012, 14)

3. “Always try to inject news into your headlines, because the consumer is always

on the lookout for new products, or new ways to use an old product, or new

improvements in an old product…. The most powerful words you can use in a

headline are FREE and NEW.” (122)

“FREE” and “NEW” seem almost anathema to most copywriters, the sort of cheap

tactics relegated to the world of infomercials. But leading researchers in sales

optimization and marketing processes confirm Ogilvy’s assertion about the most

powerful words in headline writing. In a series of tests involving a survey company that

pays its members money to take online surveys, McLaughlin, analyzed 10 headlines

that accompanied a registration form. He found the inclusion of a headline with a

shortened form increases registrants by more than 10 percent. In a test of 10 headlines,

the five that earned the highest conversion rate all “emphasize what you receive, they

emphasize the get factor, and they did so right at the front of the headline.” (13) The top

headline, “Get paid to take FREE surveys” illustrates Ogilvy’s point perfectly and

reminds copywriters of another valuable principle – ad campaigns that win awards are

rarely effective, and vice versa.

Online content strategist Gregory Ciotti cited another study by Dan Ariely in his book

Predictably Irrational in which consumers were offered a choice between a one-cent

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Hershey’s Kiss, and a 15-cent Lindt Truffle. Predictably, 73 percent of consumers chose

the Lindt truffle. When the prices were changed to 14 cents for the truffle, and the word

FREE substituted for a price on the Hershey’s kiss, the results changed completely.

Sixty nine percent of consumers chose the free Kiss while only 31 percent of consumers

chose the 14-cent truffle. This is due to what Ariely calls loss aversion, the human

“disdain for losing out on things.” (Ciotti 2012)

“NEW,” meanwhile is equally powerful because “novelty plays an incredibly

important role in activating our brain’s reward center and in keeping us content with our

products.” (Ciotti 2012) Nearly citing Ogilvy, Ciotti concludes, “New fixes to old

problems, new features and improvements, a fresh new design, or even new ways of

getting your message out there (Red Bull anyone?) are all essential for keeping your

customers ‘on their toes,’ without losing the trust that has cemented you as an

awesome brand in their mind.”

4. “Other words and phrases which work wonders are: HOW TO, SUDDENLY,

NOW, ANNOUNCING, INTRODUCING, IT’S HERE, JUST ARRIVED,

IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT, IMPROVEMENT, AMAZING, SENSATIONAL,

REMARKABLE, REVOLUTIONARY, STARTLING, MIRACLE, MAGIC, OFFER,

QUICK, EASY, WANTED, CHALLENGE, ADVICE TO, THE TRUTH ABOUT,

COMPARE, BARGAIN, HURRY, LAST CHANCE.” (122)

Copywriters function in the age of the keyword search, and it is here that modern

methods pull away from the way business was done in Ogilvy’s day. In the age of

search engine optimization, “it’s much more important to use the keywords being used

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in searches by your company’s target audience.” (Sebastian 2012) To put it another

way, it only makes sense to use keywords if prospective customers are using the same

keywords to search for products and services. Incredibly, only 19.5 percent of press

release headlines are optimized for online search engines, according to a report issued

in February 2012 by Schwartz MSL Research Group and Business Wire. (Sebastian

2012) Ogilvy’s words are catchy and compelling once a viewer is reading a copywriter’s

pitch, but a viewer may never read a headline if it doesn’t contain words that are

intuitive to most readers.

5. “Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy, so it is

important that these glancers should at least be told what brand is being

advertised. That is why you should always include the brand name in your

headlines.” (122-3)

It makes sense to include brand names in headlines, but a qualifying statement is

often needed. Consider the following fictitious headline:

Apple promotes new Christmas album

To whom or what does the “Apple” refer in the preceding headline, recording artist

Fiona Apple, the creator of the iPad, iPod, and Mac computers, or the former recording

label for The Beatles? Smaller companies that lack an immediately known name should

probably avoid one-word, snappy names, and instead focus on a name that includes the

product or service they offer. Imagine the confusion if a local plumber simply called his

business Pipe, Wrench, Drain, or Leak. Including one’s name in a press release works

for McDonald’s or Coca-Cola; they stand alone without any qualifying statements or

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explanation. A local plumber would do well to try something like “Pipe, a local plumbing

company, to offer discounted repairs during Holiday season.”

6. “Include your selling promise in your headline…. Headlines of ten words or

longer, containing news and information, consistently sold more merchandise

than short headlines.” (123)

Including a selling promise works in a headline, explains Brian Clark, because the

headline itself is “a promise to readers. Its job is to clearly communicate the benefit

you’ll deliver to the reader in exchange for their valuable time.” (Clark 2012)

Search engines, where increasing numbers of customers go to learn about products

and services, prefer headlines that are 65 characters or less. (Sebastian) While longer

headlines are acceptable in print ads, the influence of texting and Twitter, in which

communications are kept to 140 characters, must be acknowledged. One has to

conclude that headlines and copy will grow shorter in the years ahead.

7. “People are more likely to read your body copy if your headline arouses their

curiosity; so you should end your headline with a lure to read on.” (123)

This is a basic principle that doesn’t require detailed study, but it is important to note

that it is clearly supported by copywriters today. In “How to Write Magnetic Headlines,”

the introductory remarks to his Magnetic Headlines series, Clark offers this advice:

“Remember, every element of compelling copy has just one purpose – to get the next

sentence read. And then the sentence after that, and so on, all the way down to your

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call to action. So it’s fairly obvious that if people stop at the headline, you’re already

dead in the water.” (Clark 2012)

8. “Some copywriters write tricky headlines – puns, literary allusions, and other

obscurities. This is a sin. In the average newspaper, your headline has to

compete with 350 others…. Your headline must telegraph what you want to say,

and it must telegraph it in plain language.” (123)

In her analysis of the virtues of Hemingwayan prose and its application in

copywriting, Florence G. Feasley cites the virtues of writing for the everyday person.

(1985) She cites the great creative advertising director John Caples, who wrote perhaps

the most well-known ad of all time, “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano,” who

said: “Simple words are powerful words but they’re words many people understand.

Write to your barber, or mechanic or elevator operator.” (123) Simple is better, and it is

the simple, unpretentious headline that attracts a reader’s attention.

The last two Ogilvy guides, “Research shows that it is dangerous to use negatives in

headlines,” (124) and “Avoid blind headlines – the kind which mean nothing unless you

read the body copy underneath them; most people don’t.” are self explanatory and

timeless enough that the advent of online communications neither detracts nor adds to

their wisdom.

Conclusion

In this paper, I examined the David Ogilvy’s guides to headline writing contained in

Confessions of an Advertising Man. While some have lost their impact in the age of

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search engine optimization and online advertising, especially his list of words that work

wonders (Guide No. 4), his principles not only remain true, but they are more popular

than ever. A new generation of digital copywriters have taken his principles and

reapplied them to their work, with great results.

It remains to be seen if the advent of online content pay walls at news sites and new

paid advertising models for social media sites will render much of Ogilvy’s headline

guides obsolete.

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