OGILVYISMS.

The happiest and most rewarding years I spent as an advertising copywriter was when I worked as a Creative Director for Ogilvy & Mather International in Toronto, New, York, Houston, Los Angeles, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Most memorable of all were the times when I was privileged to work with David personally. He did not lecture to his writers; he taught by example of his own straightforward writing style, and by voicing his clear-headed civilized approach to life.
David Ogilvy published his first book, "Confessions of an Advertising Man," in 1963. It became the most widely read book ever written about advertising. It was followed by "Ogilvy on Advertising" (1983) which expanded on David's beliefs about advertising. Together, the two books set forth a coherent point of view and a compendium of detailed knowledge and specific advice, unlike any other available to practitioners of advertising, before or since.
David Ogilvy has been widely quoted both in and beyond the advertising industry. The following are just a few of his numerous precepts, mostly excerpted from Confessions Of An Advertising Man, while others were voiced by him along the way during his long career.
“I have never wanted to get an account so big that I could not afford to lose it. The day you do that, you commit yourself to living in fear. Frightened agencies lose the courage to give candid advice. Once you lose that, you become a lackey.”
“Every word in the copy must count. Concrete figures must be substituted for atmospheric claims; clichés must give way to facts, and empty exhortations [need to be replaced] by alluring offers.”
“Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?”
“Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline: exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?”
“I always tell prospective clients about the chinks in our armor. I have noticed that when an antique dealer draws my attention to flaws in a piece of furniture, he wins my confidence.”
“Notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment. They are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp-post for support, rather than for illumination.”
“I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings. I abhor quarrelsome people. I abhor people who wage paper warfare. I despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.”
“The headline is the ticket on the meat. Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.”
“You have only 30 seconds [in a TV commercial]. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull ... when you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.”
“I once used the word "obsolete" in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word "ineffable," only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.”
“No manufacturer ever got rich by underpaying his agency. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.”
“Tourists do not travel thousands of miles to see things which they can see next door. For example, people who live in Switzerland cannot be persuaded to travel five thousand miles to see the mountains in Colorado. Advertise whatever is unique [to each particular audience.]”
“When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.”
“Don't judge the value of higher education in terms of careermanship. Judge it for what it is -- a priceless opportunity to furnish your mind and enrich the quality of your life. My father was a failure in business, but he read Horace in the loo until he died, poor but happy.”
[From a letter to his 18-year-old great nephew]
“If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.”
“Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting [mental] images.”
"If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants."
[from Ogilvy on Advertising]
"If you ever find a man who is better than you are, hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself."
“It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question: I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. If I do my job well, I shall contribute as much as two hundred scientists to the success of this product.”
[From Confessions of An Advertising Man, by David Ogilvy.]

KEEP YOUR WRITING SIMPLE

If you write for US audiences, best keep your writing simple, lest a large segment of readers are unable to fully understand what you mean. Some lamentable problems of comprehension among the American general public were found in a survey study by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.
The U.S. is 11th among developed nations in the proportion of 25-to-34 year-olds who have graduated from high school, 16th in college completion rate, 22nd in broadband Internet access, 24th in life expectancy at birth, 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college graduates who have degrees in science or engineering, 48th in the quality of kindergarten to Grade 12 math and science education, and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.
Forty-nine per cent of U.S. adults do not know how long it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun. U.S. consumers spend more on potato chips than their government does on energy research and development. The average American kindergarten-to-Grade-12 student spends four hours a day watching TV.
During a recent period when two high-rise buildings were built in Los Angeles, 5,000 were built in Shanghai. Sixty-nine per cent of U.S. public school students in Grades 5 through 8 are taught mathematics by teachers who have neither a degree nor a certificate in math.
Friedman has been-writing about this stuff for a long time. He thought the U.S.'s future in the world's economy should have been the overriding issue in the campaigns for the Senate and House of Representatives. All indications are that more trivial issues occupy centre stage.

As novelist Sholem Asch said, “Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.”

The recent widespread use of incorrect grammar and spelling is commonplace among TV spokespersons, and particularly noticeable on the Internet. It is hard to say whether these lapses are being caused by the urge for haste while posting, or simple ignorance, or a wider consequence of the general decline in education standards.
It might seem tiresome to make a long list of such errors, so one recent example might serve for now.
The word "problematic" does not mean something that is a problem. Problematic means something that is doubtful or questionable of success. An example of correct useage: "Whether the initiative will be successful is problematic for now."

14 SURE-FIRE STEPS TO COMPLETING ANY SHORT WRITING ASSIGNMENT.
Next time you need to come up with writing something new, follow these steps and they will lead you easily to completing a full article or piece of advertising copy in record time.
1. Start by picking a word that broadly covers your topic -- any word that relates to your topic or product will do for now.
2. Go online to the Overture Keyword tool, and type in your word. Sift through the results, and choose five keyword phrases that best describe your idea most clearly.
3. Sit back, relax, and think over it for a while, maybe muse over a cup of coffee. The important thing now is not to try and rush the writing. If you do, you will just have to start all over again, so have patience.
4. Now, jot down some further ideas that relate to your subject, then scramble the phrases you wrote.
5. These phrases – however disjointed they may seem at this stage -- will eventually become the seeds of your writing outline.
6. Now, open Google Search and click on the Advanced search. The reason for using Advanced search is that it will return more definitive results, unlike an ordinary web search where you have to filter through numerous pages before you get to what you are interested in.
7. Trying to write about a topic straight off without preparation is not likely to be productive, when you are facing the need to write an 800 word article about it.
8. Type each of your main words or keyword phrases into the Advanced site. Set it to show 10 results. Open the sites one by one and first determine how closely what you see is relevant to what you want to write. If so, read through the content once or twice and select the main elements or ideas you find to be important to your article.
9. Go through all ten phrases. You will likely find that only about half will be relevant to you. You will also come across ideas or information you never even thought of in the first place.
10. As you research, write down the headings for ideas in your document. Don't worry what it looks like at this stage; just keep going.
11. Once you have finished with the research, give yourself a break just to clear your mind. If you still feel stuck, best push yourself away from the keyboard and take a break by going outdoors to do something physical. Maybe a brief jog around the block, or take a walk with the dog, anything to break let your subconscious go to work.
12. This break will get you back to your computer refreshed, more able to start sorting the information you wrote down. Don't rewrite yet, first cut and paste in the page until you have a rough article that will makes sense. Now is the time to form the piece into having a coherent beginning, middle, and end.
13. Once you have completed this process, start rewriting your information in sentences and paragraphs into easily readable form.
14. Overly simple as this procedure may seem, it is a sure-fire method of overcoming so-called “writers block” and quickly getting the final words down on paper.

“Copywriting is 80% research, only 20% writing the actual copy.”
Ad agency adage.

HUGE DEMAND STILL FOR PRINTED INFORMATION BOOKS.
Despite what is being claimed everywhere on the WWW, e-books are not the absolute be-all-and-end-all of published format. There is still a huge buyer demand for information printed the "old-fashioned way" -- on paper. The very technology that spawned the WWW also provides the ability for individual self-publishers to produce top-quality books that can be readily sold for a handsome profit.
Strange to say, that can be a problem in itself. Many would-be self-publishers of books seem dazzled by the variety of impressive production features that are possible with new print on demand [POD] technology. They visualize their name on fat full-length novels printed with perfect-bound spines, elaborate text formatting, varnished covers, and four-colour artwork.
Unfortunately, this yen for heft and glitz is not only expensive, it overlooks the fact that every self-published book is very difficult to market and sell, no matter how handsomely packaged or aggressively promoted.
Instead, entrepreneurial authors could be far more successful by producing modestly-sized publications that require only ordinary word processing software, simply printed on typewriter paper held together with staples or spiral binding. Millions of these little-known special interest printed publications are published yearly, enjoyed by individuals who buy them regardless of finished appearance; valued for content that, while simple, is not available elsewhere.
The "information market" comprises what is probably the largest, and certainly most lucrative, segment of self-publishing today. It meets an enormous on-going demand for fact-filled booklets, folios, reports, guides, manuals, and directories – short compilations of specific information on a variety of everyday subjects: "how-to" instructions on everyday subjects, and guidance on health, hobbies, finance, or romance. It's much easier than authors might guess to start profiting from information they possess already. People crave written knowledge and advice that somehow educates or enlightens them, and pay for it readily, regardless of format appearance. Demand for practical information is so large and diverse in topics and interests, it offers unlimited opportunities for self-published authors.
Subject matter varies widely. For instance, Julia Griggs Havey parlayed her self-published Awaken The Diet Within into a lucrative career on the lecture circuit. Don Massey wrote a 64-page manual about buying and selling used cars, and has made well over $150,000 from it already. J. Conrad Levinson, now the wealthy author of Guerilla Marketing books and seminars, started out in 1974 selling a 30-page booklet for $10.00. Half a million people bought Ted Nichols' instructions on How To Form Your Own Corporation. My own 90-page Military Publications International Directory is now in its 23rd annual edition, continuing to be a steady and popular perennial.
Other successes are legion, with short folios on thousands of topics ranging from folk medicine, pet care, and sex manuals, to money-making plans, genealogy, and cookbooks. So if you have published similar informative topics as e-books, grasp the opportunity now to maximize your profits by converting the electronic material to printed form as well.