ogilvy-copy

Ogilvy copy

Advertising exists to sell. Every decision serves that. Apply this to selling copy only. Andy's personal site stays short, plain and in his own voice (conversational-tone-of-voice). Run every draft through anti-slop-writing before sending.

The order that matters

Later decisions only count if earlier ones are right.

1. Positioning

Answer two questions before writing a word: what does the product do, and who is it for? Every later choice rests on this.

• Dove was positioned as a beauty bar for women with dry skin. Schweppes was positioned as a mixer.
• Segment by mindset (what people believe, reject and want) as well as age and sex. Any agency can target "women 25 to 45".

2. The promise

A promise is a specific benefit the buyer receives. Features, slogans and themes don't qualify.

• It must be unique against the alternatives, and the product must deliver it.
• Pick one. Campaigns that try to say many things end up saying nothing. Boil the strategy to one promise and deliver it completely.
• Samuel Johnson: "Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

3. Brand image

Every piece adds to a cumulative identity. Most advertising is made ad hoc with no consistency from year to year, and that is waste. Quality signals quality: ugly work makes buyers assume a shoddy product.

The big idea

Without a big idea, advertising passes unnoticed. A big idea jolts the reader out of indifference so they notice, remember and act. Big ideas are almost always simple, and they take research and time. A strong one can run for 20 years (Ogilvy's eye patch for Hathaway shirts).

To find one: learn the product thoroughly, study what worked and failed for similar products, study what customers really think, want and fear, then choose the most persuasive promise.

Headlines

5 times as many people read the headline as read the body. A wasted headline wastes about 80% of the spend.

• Put the brand name and the promise in the headline.
• Promise a benefit. Headlines that promise benefits outperform those that don't.
• Add news. People hunt for what's new or improved. Informative beats clever.
• Use plain language. Readers don't stop to decode.
• Longer works: 8 to 10 words are best for recall, 6 to 12 pull the most mail-order responses. "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" is one of his best-known long headlines.
• Name your audience when the product is for a group ("Going to Europe?", "For mothers of toddlers").
• Avoid negatives and blind, cryptic headlines. Most people never read the body, so the headline has to work alone.

Body copy

• The more you tell, the more you sell. Readership drops fast up to 50 words, then barely changes between 50 and 500. Interested buyers read long copy.
• Treat the reader as intelligent: "The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife."
• Facts sell. Success rises with the number of relevant facts. Praise adjectives ("great", "revolutionary") add nothing, specifics prove the claim.
• Be useful beyond the pitch: advice or information the buyer can use lifts engagement by roughly 75%.

Never invent proof

Facts and testimonials sell, which tempts invention. Never make up numbers, quotes, customers, awards or press. Where proof is missing, write a visible placeholder such as [real customer quote] and flag it to the person.

Visuals and layout

• Photographs beat illustrations for readership, belief, memory and sales.
• Captions are read by about twice as many people as body copy. Treat each as a small ad with the brand and the promise.
• Pictures with story appeal ("what's going on here?") pull readers into the copy. Before-and-after contrast earns above-average attention.
• Layouts that resemble editorial content beat ones that look like adverts.

Repetition

Great campaigns get dropped before they pay off. Ogilvy found readership held up when an ad was repeated, up to about 5 exposures. Keep running winners after the team is bored of them.

Video

Open with something strong. Testimonials work when credible and relevant. Show a recognisable problem, then the product solving it, with no cheating. Demonstrate the promise. On-camera voice outperforms voiceover. Music lowers recall. Build one distinctive, memorable device (a sound, symbol or phrase). Let pictures carry the story and keep the words few.

On a web page today

Ogilvy wrote for print. The rules carry over:

• Hero: a headline with the promise and the audience, and a subhead that says how it works. A real screenshot or photo, captioned.
• Proof near the top: a number, a short customer quote or a recognisable name, only if it is real.
• One call to action whose verb says what happens ("Start a free trial", "Book a demo").
• Long copy below for the interested reader: how it works, what it costs, objections answered in an FAQ.
• Visible pricing where possible. Tech buyers distrust pages that hide it.

What to avoid

• Chasing awards. Awards show no link to sales. Make the product the hero.
• Imitating competitors or fashion. Start something. Pre-test it before committing.
• Boring the reader. Nobody was ever bored into buying. Talk like a person.
• Burying news. A launch is the easiest moment to earn interest. Say it loudly, up front.
• Over-complication. One strategy, one promise, one idea.

Ten questions before writing

1. What is the positioning (does what, for whom)?
2. What is the single promise?
3. What is the big idea?
4. Who is the reader, in demographic and mindset terms?
5. What does the headline do (brand, promise, news)?
6. What proof exists (facts, demos, testimonials, before-and-after)?
7. What does the image say, and does it back the promise?
8. Does the caption work as an ad on its own?
9. Is this boring?
10. Is the product the hero?

Source

Adapted from David Ogilvy, "How to Create Advertising That Sells" (1972), "Ogilvy on Advertising" (1983) and "Confessions of an Advertising Man" (1963), Modified from the ogilvy skill in https://github.com/boraoztunc/skills (Apache License 2.0, copy in LICENSE-upstream). Changes: reworded throughout, corrected several claims, added sections on invented proof and web pages, removed em dashes.