David Ogilvy: We Sell or Else

Here’s an oldie but a goodie — David Ogilvy talking about the power of Direct Response versus general brand advertising. What he failed to understand was the seductive power of general brand advertising to corporate marketers — the desire to work unmeasured is ever-present; while the relentless daily measurement and accountability grind of Direct Response is challenging. The people who gravitated to Direct Response originally were the entrepreneurs, for whom sales meant “feed the family”.

His cadence of speech is really interesting — notice how he directly addresses the viewer as a single target (lots of use of the word “you”); and frequent use of the word “know”.

You know, in the advertising community today there are two worlds: Your world of direct response advertising; and that other world, the world of general advertising. These two worlds are on a collision course. You direct response people know what kind of advertising works and what doesn’t work. You know it to a dollar — the general advertising people don’t know…

The awesome power of Marketing Automation is that we now live in a time where all marketers are going to be held accountable for the results of their work — it will be the most difficult part of change management for any organization that is converting to Marketing Automation … particularly in the large corporations. Ogilvy would love it!