Hammock’s Idea Email of May 2, 2013, uses several quotes by the real-life Don Draper of the 1960s and early 70s, David Ogilvy, to show that when it comes to customer media and great content of all types, there is a time and place for short, snappy writing and a place for longform communication.
But there’s no place for content that doesn’t serve, in some way, “the sell.”
We refer to the accompanying ad in our email, one of a series of “house ads” Ogilvy wrote that are credited with helping his company, Ogilvy & Mather, grow into one of the world’s largest networks of marketing companies. It is a remarkable ad for many reasons, but our focus today was how one quote in it (#35) is often used to suggest that today, if you can’t limit your message to 140 characters, then you might as well not say it. Yet few of the people who use that quote realize it is buried in 1,909 words of advertising copy.
In addition to the image file (click on it to see a larger version) of the ad, itself, we’ve reproduced the copy from the ad so that you can read it and note how little hype there is in the copy — just good, informative and helpful advice. The nuanced, unspoken message in the copy is this: In the 1960s and 70s, if you wanted to work with the folks who were creating the new rules of advertising, then you needed to hire O&M (or, perhaps, Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce).
After the jump, read the entire ad.
