Background

Ethnicity: Ogilvy's mother was Anglo-Irish. His father was a Gaelic-speaking Highlander from Scotland.

David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born on June 23, 1911, in West Horsley, England. He was the son of Francis John Longley and Dorothy (Fairfield) Ogilvy.

Education

In 1929, Ogilvy was a student of Fettes College in Edinburgh. In 1931, he studied at Christ Church of Oxford University.

Career

In 1936, Mr. Ogilvy began work at London-based agency Mather & Crowther, where his older brother Francis as general manager. In 1938, Mather & Crowther sent Mr. Ogilvy to New York to learn about U.S. advertising. He extended his stay to work for George Gallup as associate director of the Audience Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. World War II postponed Mr. Ogilvy's advertising ambitions, and after three years with Gallup, he joined British intelligence in 1942; he later worked in the British embassy in Washington. After the war, he spent a brief time as a farmer in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. From 1944 to 1945, he was a Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington.

In 1948, Mr. Ogilvy went to his brother at Mather & Crowther with a plan to launch a "British agency" in the U.S. Mather & Crowther and S.H. Benson Ltd., another London shop, each invested $45,000 in the new venture, and Anderson Hewitt was chosen to run the shop. The agency opened in September 1948 under the name Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather. Mr. Ogilvy merged his agency with Mather & Crowther in 1964 and served as chairman until 1965 when he dropped that title in favor of the title creative director. The next year he shortened the agency's name to Ogilvy & Mather and formed a holding company, Ogilvy & Mather International, with himself as chairman. Later that year he took the company public. From 1957 to 1967, Ogilvy was a director at New York Philharmonic in New York.

In 1973, Mr. Ogilvy gave up day-to-day management duties and moved to Bonnes, France, where he and his third wife, Herta Lans, took up residence in a chateau called Touffou. Despite the distance from Madison Avenue, Mr. Ogilvy remained in close touch with the advertising business. In 1975, Mr. Ogilvy retired as chairman of OMI but continued to influence agency affairs that interested him and to represent the company to clients. He unsuccessfully fought a hostile takeover by Martin Sorrell's WPP Group in 1989. By the late 1990s, he ceased active involvement with the agency.

Achievements

• Ogilvy was one of the best-known figures in the world of advertising, having built the company Ogilvy & Mather into an international giant in the industry. His company’s clients included Rolls-Royce, Shell Oil, and Pepperidge Farm, as well as the shirt company Hathaway, whose ads always featured the eyepatch- wearing “Hathaway Man.” Among the campaigns that established his reputation were his "man in the eyepatch" ads for Hathaway shirts, his "Commander Whitehead" campaign for Schweppes and a print ad for Rolls-Royce that carried the headline, "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."
  
  In 1962, Time called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry".

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Unpublished David Ogilvy

    (This is a business book unlike any other: a straightforwa...)

    1986
  • Ogilvy on Advertising

    (A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of adver...)

    1985
  • Confessions of an Advertising Man

    (A new edition of the timeless business classic featured o...)

    1963
  • Blood, Brains & Beer: The Autobiography of David Ogilvy

    (Creator of one of the biggest advertising agencies in the...)

    1978
  • David Ogilvy: An Autobiography 1964
  • Geständnisse eines Werbemannes

Views

Ogilvy believed the best way to sell customers on a product - and selling products was foremost in his mind - was to talk to them intelligently and explain why they should want the product, rather than simply entertaining them with an eye-catching ad.

Quotations: “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.”

Membership

Ogilvy was a member of the Copywriters Hall of Fame and the Advertising Hall of Fame.

Interests

• Gardening.

Connections

On July 6, 1973, Ogilvy married Herta Lans. They had one son, David Fairfield.

Father:

Francis John Longley Ogilvy

Mother:

Dorothy (Fairfield) Ogilvy

Spouse:

Herta Lans

Son:

David Fairfield

References

• The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising
  2009