|
Ogilvy’s Life David MacKenzie Ogilvy was born on June 23, 1911. Not one to break from tradition, he shared
a birthday with both his father and his grandfather. Ogilvy was born in a small village called
Surrey about thirty miles southwest of London. He was the fourth of five children to
father Francis John and mother Dorothy Fairfield (Danzig). When Ogilvy was three years old, England declared war
on Germany. The war sent his father
into financial ruin, and the family was forced to move to London to live with
Ogilvy’s grandmother. David settled
into life with his grandparents and life with the war, and grew into a
precocious boy with a knack for conversing with adults. In his autobiography, Ogilvy reminisces,
“At the age of eight I formed the habit of asking my father’s friends how
much they were worth; most of them were so taken aback that they told me...I
always preferred the company of grownups, the older the more interesting”
(Ogilvy, Blood…, 7). Ogilvy remembers his father as “kind, patient, gentle,
straight-forward, unselfish, affectionate, athletic, and strong as an
ox...From my father I inherited two things—smoking a pipe and a scatological
sense of humor. I was devoted to him,
but we never had a conversation of any intimacy” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 9). In an effort to make David “as strong and
brainy as himself”, his father “required that I should drink a glass of raw
blood every day. To strengthen my
mental faculties, he ordained that I should eat calves’ brains three times a
week, washed down with a bottle of beer” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 8). Hence the title of Ogilvy’s autobiography,
“Blood, Brains, and Beer”. At the age of nine, Ogilvy began his first of many
stints in boarding school. He was
given an academic scholarship because his parents could not afford to pay for
the normal school billing. It was
here, at St. Cyprian’s, that Ogilvy was introduced to religion. “There had been no religion in my family
since my grandparents became agnostics in 1870...However, I soon became
deeply religious...I prayed for good marks on exams” (Ogilvy, Blood…,
14). During his time at boarding
school, David also learned about the intricacies of teacher/student
relations. One of his teachers
reported to his father, “David possesses a large fund of general information
and is very grown-up in his conversation—he seems to take a serious view of
life...He has a distinctly original mind, and is inclined to argue with his
teachers that he is right and the books are wrong” (Ogilvy, Blood…,
17-18). Ogilvy spent the years until his seventeenth birthday
working his way through boarding school, first at St. Cyprian’s and, later,
at Fettes on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
After finishing school at Fettes, Ogilvy spent two years working
unsuccessfully before applying to Oxford, “thereby avoiding competition with
my father, my brother Francis, and the rest of my family, who had all
distinguished themselves at Cambridge” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 38). After two years of suffering at Oxford,
Ogilvy decided that he was finished with the academic life: “Perhaps it was impatience with academe and
the itch to start earning a living.
Perhaps I was intellectually out of my depth. Whatever the reason, I failed every
examination” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 41). Ogilvy founds his calling in Paris. “I ran away from academe and became a cook
at the Hotel Majestic” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 44).
He slaved in the kitchen, working his way from preparing meals for the
customers’ dogs to a full-fledged cook.
Ogilvy was content with this life until the realization that “If I
stayed at the Majestic, I faced fifteen years of slave wages, fiendish
pressure, and perpetual exhaustion” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 53). David’s next line of work brought him back to Britain
to sell Aga cooking stoves.
Eventually, Ogilvy was so successful selling Aga stoves that the
company asked him to write a sales manual for the benefit of the other
salesmen. “When the editors of Fortune read it thirty years later, they reported
that it was probably the best sales manual of all time” (Ogilvy, Blood…,
61). Aware of the superb writing in his sales manual, David
sent a copy to his brother Francis at Mather & Crowther. The advertising agency hired Ogilvy
immediately. “I was twenty-five...and,
when my salary was doubled, I tasted blood” (Ogilvy, Blood…, 62-63). Ogilvy spent the next three years at the
agency, where his habit of hard work did not go unnoticed. |