David Ogilvy's Life Story
David MacKenzie Ogilvy was born thirty miles southwest of London in West Horsley, England on June 23, 1911. He was born on the same birthday as his father and grandfather. He was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh and at Christ Church, Oxford. He did not graduate from Oxford where, as he put it years later, he "got thrown out." He calls this "the real failure of my life ... I was supposed to be a star at Oxford. And instead of that, I was thrown out. I couldn't pass the exams."
From Oxford, David went to Paris where he worked in the kitchen of the Hotel Majestic. Pitard, the head chef, made an everlasting impression on him and helped form his principles of management. In a 1972 talk on leadership, given in acceptance of the Wharton School's Charles Coolidge Parlin Award, he recalled the high morale in Pitard's kitchen:
"I saw my old boss in the kitchens of the Hotel Majestic fire one of his chefs because the poor devil could not get his brioches to rise straight. I was shocked by his ruthlessness, but it made all the other chefs feel that they were working in the best kitchen in the world. Their morale would have done credit to the U.S. Marine Corps."
On returning to England, David worked as a door-to-door salesman for Aga stoves. In 1935 he wrote a guide for Aga salesmen which Fortune has called "probably the best sales manual ever written." The 24-year-old author served up timeless advice such as this:
"The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will generate. But never mistake quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship."
David Ogilvy immigrated to the United States in 1938. He worked for George Gallup, Associate Director of the Audience Research Institute in Princeton. He counts Gallup as one of the major influences on his thinking. Gallup's meticulous research methods, and devotion to reality, became characteristics of David's own approach to everything that came before him.
During the war he served in British Intelligence, as 2nd Secretary in the British Embassy in Washington. He reported to Sir William Stephenson, learning among other things the art of the terse note. Memos to Sir William returned swiftly to the sender with one of three words written in hand at the top: YES. NO. Or SPEAK, meaning come to see him.
In later years David adopted the Stephensonian brevity to a wide variety of correspondence. A letter to the Governor of Puerto Rico, on his re-election after years out of office, contained two words,"Dear Governor. Thank God. Yours ever, D.O."
A telex from his home in France to a colleague back in New York, sent shortly after the French had elected Mitterand, read in its entirety: "Mitterand is going to tax the rich. I am rich."
After the war David lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania among the Amish and worked as a farmer.
He was 38 when, with the backing of Mather & Crowther, an English agency, he entered the advertising business.
In his agency's first dozen years, David almost single-handedly won assignments from Lever Brothers, General Foods, and American Express. Shell gave him their entire account in North America. Sears hired him for their first national advertising campaign.
In 1965 David merged the agency with Mather & Crowther, his London backers, forming a major international firm. One year later the company went public -- one of the first advertising firms to do so.