📚Book Club - Confessions Of An Advertising Man Part 1
Or: Why a 60-year-old book is still the best guide to the advertising world.
Hey! So we’re trying something new for the newsletter. Every Friday, we’re going to do a Book Club - a weekly post and thread about the book we’re reading at the moment. Let’s do this!
First up, David Ogilvy’s iconic Confessions of an Advertising Man.
So, first, a personal story: I switched over from journalism to advertising in 2017 or so. There were lots of industry similarities (love of the written word and storytelling!) and lots of differences (the client/account-first mentality, the holding company ecosystem, the generous expense accounts for medium- and high-level employees, etc.).
I first read Confessions in that context. It’s an older book, originally written in 1962. Author David Ogilvy founded Ogilvy and Mather and played a hand in many ad campaigns you know of today.
Anyway, his book helped simplify a lot of the industry stuff I saw firsthand--how agencies work, client-agency relationships, how agencies generate revenue and profit, and how the advertising industry views itself (I mean, c’mon… self-mythologizing and self-promoting is literally what we do).
And yes, you can tell it was written in the 1960s. Pre-internet, pre-social media, pre-influencer, pre-transition from analog to digital, pre-experiential, with some dated societal views and a quaint-in-retrospect assumption of a common shared pop culture.
But it's still 110% useful.
I’d go as far as arguing it’s still the most useful book for understanding making advertising, understanding working with advertising agencies and understanding how how advertising agencies work internally with clients.
Not bad for something written 60 or so years ago. Not bad at all.
Next week: The role of agency bosses in letting workers be weirdos.
Love and coffee,
Neal
About This Newsletter: Neal Ungerleider is a strategic communications consultant working with individuals, agencies and brands. He writes this weekly newsletter about the media communications industrial complex and hopes that you found it of use. Check out his bio, his portfolio, and current projects and interests .
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