The Unpublished David Ogilvy

Front Cover
Profile, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 192 pages

First collected by his devoted family and colleagues as a 75th birthday present, The Unpublished David Ogilvycollects a career's worth of public and private communications - memos, letters, speeches, notes and interviews - from the 'Father of Advertising' and founder of Ogilvy & Mather. Still fizzing with energy and freshness more than 25 years after it was first published, its success outside the private circle of friends and colleagues it was created for was, in the words of one of its editors: 'because so often he spoke out on important matters long before the crowd caught up to him; because all of what he says, he says so well; because so little of what he says in the book had ever before appeared in print'. It includes The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA Cooker, described by Fortune magazine as 'the finest sales instruction manual ever written', and an interview in which he makes disclosures that even long-standing associates had never heard before.

This is a business book unlike any other: a straightforward and incisive look at subjects such as salesmanship, management and creativity, presented in his trademark crisp prose. Whether carefully prepared for a lecture or as a private joke to a friend, his writing always underlines the importance of the rule, 'it pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox'.

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About the author (2012)

David Ogilvy CBE is often described as the 'Father of Advertsising'. After dropping out of university, he pursued several career paths, working as a chef at the Paris Ritz, a researcher, an AGA salesman and a farmer. In 1949, having worked at the British advertising firm Mather + Crowther, he founded his own advertising agency in New York, Ogilvy + Mather, which became one of the most successful advertising firms of all time. He was responsible for several iconic campaigns for brands such as Shell, Rolls Royce, Schweppes, Dove and Marlboro (the famous 'Marlboro Man').