6.8KB
Ogilvy on Advertising — Chapter-06: Open letter to a client in search of an agency
- Source: /library/Ogilvy on Advertising/source-file.pdf
- PDF pages: 101–106
- Pages without text: none
6 OPEN LETTER TO A CLIENT IN SEARCH OF AN AGENCY Sir or Madam, If you have decided to hire a new agency, permit me to suggest a simple way to go about it. Don’t delegate the selection to a committee of pettifoggers. They usually get it wrong. Do it yourself. Start by leafing through some magazines. Tear out the advertisements you enjoy and find out which agencies did them. Watch television for three evenings, make a list of the commercials you envy and find out which agencies did them. You now have a list of agencies. Find out which are working for your competitors, and thus unavailable to you. By this time you have a short list. Meet the head of each agency and his Creative Director. Make sure the chemistry between you and them is good. Happy marriages fructify, unhappy ones don’t. But don’t ask to meet the working-level people who would be assigned to your account. You might find them congenial, but have no way of judging their talent. Or you might find them repulsive – some of the most talented people are. A prospective client once passed up an opportunity to hire Ogilvy & Mather because the very able copywriter to whom I introduced him had long hair.
Ask to see each agency’s six best print ads and six best television commercials. Pick the agency whose campaigns interest you the most. Ask what the agency charges. If it is 15 per cent, insist on paying 16 per cent. The extra 1 per cent won’t kill you, but it will double the agency’s normal profit, and you will get better service. Whatever you do, don’t haggle over the agency’s compensation. I know a big corporation which insists that its agency negotiate terms of business with its Purchasing Department, as though they were selling office furniture. Would they do this with lawyers and accountants? Insist on a five-year contract. This will delight the agency – and protect you from being resigned if one of your competitors ever tries to seduce them with a bigger budget. • • • Now you have your agency, are you going to get the best out of them? Clients get the advertising they deserve. I know some who are a malediction, and others who are an inspiration. Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself. Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one. I had just finished showing a new campaign to Charlie Kelstadt, the Chairman of Sears Roebuck, when his Comptroller came into the room, started to read my copy – and took a fountain-pen out of his pocket. ‘Put that pen back in your pocket,’ snapped Kelstadt. Once a year give your agency a formal report on its performance. This will serve as an early warning of trouble which, if ignored, could end badly for all concerned. One of the biggest corporations in the world allows five levels to chew up its advertising. Each level has the power to veto, but only the Chief Executive Officer has the power of final approval. Don’t strain your agency’s output through more than two levels. Even the best copywriters are preternaturally thin-skinned. When you have to reject their work, do it gently, and praise them to the skies when they perform well. They are the geese who can lay golden eggs. Inspire them to keep laying. The most inspiring client I have ever had was Ted Moscoso, the economic head of the Government of Puerto Rico. The day he hired us, he
said to me, ‘Before we start advertising, we have to decide what we want Puerto Rico to become. A bridge between Latin America and the United States? An oasis of old Spanish culture? A modern industrial park?’ We talked all night. On later occasions, whenever I made a suggestion which appealed to his imagination – such as starting a music festival in San Juan – Moscoso would make a note in his pocket diary; action always followed. Governor Muñoz Marín, who was Ted’s chief, would have made a good President of the United States. When their party was finally defeated, the new Republican governor moved the advertising to an agency which had handled his campaign in the election. I have never wept so bitterly. CONFLICTS There is a convention that agencies should not serve more than one client in any category. When we do the advertising for Blogg’s Shoe Polish, we are not supposed to take on Mogg’s Shoe Polish. Some clients are fiercely jealous when their agencies violate this convention, to the point of firing them. It sounds simple, but it is a minefield. Suppose the agency has a shoe polish account, and another of its clients decides to go into the shoe polish business. What do we do? Suppose we have a shoe polish account in our Vienna office, and our Kuala Lumpur office is offered another shoe polish. What do we do? Some clients extend the definition of conflict to include any product which might indirectly reduce their sales. Suppose we have a shoe polish account and are offered a sandal account – wooden sandals, which don’t require polish. What do we do? Such conflicts as these bedevil agencies. Says Marvin Bower of McKinsey: ‘If a company rests its policy of not letting its agencies serve competitors on the need for security of information, it does not have a very solid base. As a matter of realism, the interests of competing clients would not be harmed by an almost complete exchange of information among the people serving the two competing companies. Of course, no responsible personal service firm would do that – and
indeed they go to great lengths to avoid even inadvertent exchanges. Nevertheless, as one who has been a repository of confidential information over many years, I am convinced that the history, makeup, ways of doing business, attitudes of people, operating philosophy and procedures of even directly competing companies are ordinarily so different that information could be exchanged between them with no harm to either.’ If I were you, I would think twice about firing my agency when it committed bigamy; another agency might not give you such good advertising. Amour propre can be an expensive luxury. P.S. If your account is too small to interest a good agency, find an experienced copywriter who has retired and pay him to do your advertising. He will enjoy getting back into harness, and welcome the money.
Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself. When Arthur Houghton asked me to do the advertising for Steuben Glass he said, ‘We make the best glass. Your job is to make the best advertising.’ An admirable division of labor.
On the average, long headlines sell more merchandise than short ones. This one-word headline is the exception that proves the rule.