How David Ogilvy’s Ads From The 70’s Might Help You Today.

Here’s how ads from the 1970’s (from David Ogilvy’s agency) might help you when it comes to attracting more ideal customers into your business - through creating scalable “goodwill” that also leads to sales.

First off, if you have absolutely zero clue who David Ogilvy is, that’s okay.

I wouldn’t expect you to, unless you’ve been absolutely obsessed with all things advertising, and more specifically - direct response advertising.

To keep it short:

He’s known for having created some of the most epic advertising campaigns for companies like Rolls Royce, Dove Soap, Hathaway Shirts, and tons others.

Although his agency did a lot of general “brand” advertising, David had a passion for all things “direct response”.

AKA, advertising that is trackable and measurable.

Meaning, knowing exactly how much an ad brought you in “response” (leads, sales, etc) for every dollar you spent.
$1 spent, $2 generated in return (through trackable efforts) - type of advertising.

And interestingly, there can tend to be two “camps” that get set up in the advertising world.

The camp of general “brand” advertising.

And the camp of measurable “direct response” advertising.

Usually one not being a huge fan of the other.

Direct response sometimes getting a rep for being “cheesy” and “over the top” and even “scammy”.

And brand advertising sometimes getting a rep for spending tons of money indiscriminately without a care for getting a return, only focused on creating “entertaining” ads, etc.

And by the way, like most things, those type of labels (in my opinion) are overblown for both camps.

There can be good (and bad) in both.

But, what if you were able to use principles from both?

And simply throw away the “bad”?

That’s exactly what Ogilvy was able to do with the ads he ran for his agency back in the 1970’s.

He created ads that were extremely interesting to read (for a specific target market).

Interesting because of the really helpful and useful content that they included.

In the photo above, you can see all the different headlines for the different campaigns they ran (all starting with “How To…..”)

By the way, If you want - I can send you a link to where I found the ads. (Just let me know!)

But not only were they helpful, but they were also written to try and drive a clear and specific action from the reader. (You can see the section of the photo above with the red border around it)

Really helpful content that helps to build “goodwill” and build Ogilvy’s “brand”, and a clear and compelling call to action for the reader to “respond” to, so Ogilvy has a way to measurably turn those ads back into revenue.

Achieving both goals at the same time.

Building the brand from the ads. (through really useful and helpful content)

Generating measurable results from the ads (through compelling and straight forward offers at the bottom of each ad)

By the way, this is not necessarily something that I happened to “stumble upon” one day.

I first heard of this concept from a guy named Frank Kern.

He called it “intent based branding”.

Smart dude, by the way.

And it was instilled even further in my brain when I saw the exact same thing being done with Ogilvy’s ads in the 1970’s.

Kind of the “nothing new under the sun” concept, right?

That’s why I love reading the “old” stuff.

Especially Claude Hopkins.

So much of it applies to what we do today.

Anyway, hope this was helpful in some way, friend!

Talk soon,
Colin