It's Not Creative If It Doesn't Sell

What David Ogilvy's 'On Advertising' Can Teach Creatives & Founders About Creating Ads & Products That Sell

Good morning everyone.

On today’s edition of Who Do You Know? I want to focus on some teachings of someone we should all know: David Ogilvy.

Ogilvy in perhaps the most famous ad man in history. He wrote the playbook on effective advertising, and ended up creating one of the world’s most revered, and successful ad agencies in the process.

I am currently reading On Advertising, and found so much of what he wrote in the 1980s to be incredibly poignant for today’s creatives and founders.

So I wanted to share some insights, specifically on why we should throw out any our preconceived notions on what constitutes creativity.

For context, I did not go to school for marketing or advertising, and its funny how I’ve ended up where I have in the world of brand marketing and creative strategy… mostly from being astute at listening to people smarter than me and soaking up as much as I can. Hope I can help you too.

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Creativity and Good Advertising Are Often Mutually Exclusive

Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce Ad required research to find factual, unique benefits he used to create this iconic copy

The biggest misconception in marketing is that sheer creativity sells products.

I hate to break it you… but as much time and effort as you put into your brands typography, colors, and imagery ultimately mean nothing if its not pulling in results.

But the unique stubbornness most commonly found in creatives and founders has caused millions of dollars in development, advertising, and investment to be squandered for the sake of ‘creativity’

I see it all the time when I talk to founders, and I talk to a lot. They want their unadulterated vision to be birthed into the world in the form of some new product. Being a founder (or a creative for that matter) requires an amount of delusion most often associated with Red Bull stuntman and astronauts. They think their intuition for their customer, their sheer taste alone, can sell a product.

But more often than not, it honestly can’t. But that’s okay.

Me saying this may come as a shock to you… I work in the creative/marketing industry. But I can’t pay rent with my creative intuition, and some of my favorite ideas for brands, marketing tactics, and creatives have been torn apart, rejected, and many sent to the dust bin of history. Why? We’d like to think its because arduous committees don’t get it or that bureaucracy stifled pure creative output. The reality? That someone smarter than me saw what I couldn’t… that the idea wasn’t going to move the needle.

How could they see this and I couldn’t? Because creativity, or what we like to think of as creativity, is as blinding as our phone screen when we wake up. It twists our ego and hides us from the unadulterated truth— that our idea just sucked.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of incredibly intelligent people, and have been keen on studying their background, taste, and thought process. More often than not in these circumstances, they have had a lot more experience around the block than me, and know what will move the needle and what won’t. Have they been wrong? Yes, sure. And studying that has made me all the better at detecting winners and losers, which has made me better at my job.

On Selling

Because of them, and idols like Ogilvy, I’m infinitely smarter and more clever.

If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative. - David Ogilvy.

Ogilvy was obsessed with driving results for clients. Its how he grew a small, boutique advertising shop on Madison Ave. into one of the largest advertising firms in the world, with hundreds of offices and thousands of employees helping drive billions in sales for products in nearly every category.

But Ogilvy was not unaware of the fact that the sole purpose of advertising was to sell. He wrote, “… advertising is not an art form, it's a medium for information, a message for a single purpose: to sell”

Oftentimes those of us in marketing can forget this in the pursuit of fancier endeavors. I see so many brands, copywriters, creatives, etc. eschew the basics of the practice in favor of glitzy campaigns with million dollar budgets, only to see it all fail to do the sole purpose of we wake up each day: to sell.

We need to remember that if our client doesn’t sell more… we are out of a job. So the driving factor in all of our endeavors must be to sell, by (nearly) any means necessary.

This means getting real about what we don’t know.

Do the Damn Research

Ogilvy did extensive research to find unique qualities of the Dove bar, and positioned it specifically to appeal to women at the time.

One of the most important lessons in On Advertising is the critical importance of research. Creatives who rely just on their taste and intuition often create visually stunning, witty, award-winning work that fails to sell a product, and can oftentimes actually negatively affect sales.

Ogilvy points out in the book that a research study done in the mid 1900s showed that readers who didn’t see Ford’s ads were actually more likely to purchase a Ford. Why? The ads didn’t just not sell, they drove people away.

Modern brands can glean a lot from this, as I see so many brands quickly hop on trends to catch short term attention spans, and fail to see the bigger picture about building a lasting brand image.

The best ads can run for decades. Take for example, Coca-Cola’s famous Polar Bears, or even Jake from State Farm. Those are both campaigns that have stood the test of time and driven results.

Would it be more creative to switch things up every year? Yes. Would it be more exciting? Definitely. Do brands overturn marketing directors, who in turn want to make their own mark? You betcha.

But do these brands ever change the playbook? Not until it stops selling.

This is due in part to sophisticated research, consumer analysis, and demographic testing that is required to make creative that actually works.

We cannot throw this methodology away, and many creatives and founders would be better off by studying paid ad experts.

Ogilvy writes that he hates rules, but loves suggestions. One being that research shows white type against a black background (this was in the age of magazine printing) is less likely to be read than black type on a white background. Yes, I know this goes against the dark mode design trope every startup in the world wants to emulate. But if the data suggests black type works against a white background… go with the data. Don’t let your creative ego get in the way.

Its safe to say that the ‘rules’ written by Ogilvy have largely changed, he died 25 years ago. But the principle of using data, insights, and expert opinions to create advertising that hits your target demo and compels them to buy is the most important thing a creative can do. The second most important thing is actually creating but…

Pure Creativity Isn’t That Noble

Mozart said that he never even bothered to compose anything wholly original. Picasso said great artists steal. And Virgil Abloh designed by the 3% principle, where he only changed the existing design of a product by 3%.

We all want to create something wholly unique, and original, as if the world will instantly recognize us for our unabashed originality. But we are a product of our environment, of the great creatives who came before us. So don’t look to reinvent the wheel and create something that never existed when you make anything.

The best brands don’t really create anything original, they just solve a problem the current pack isn’t solving for, and are very intentional at crafting every brand touch point around the target consumer who needs this problem solved the most.

Creatives and founders often need to kill their darlings, so to speak, and getting raw, unadulterated feedback from people who aren’t friends and family is the best way to do that.

Ogilvy quotes another iconic ad man in his book, Rosser Reeves, who said—

“What do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?”

Ogilvy went on to discuss his most successful ad, a boring, lengthy, and ‘embarrassing’ ad for industrial development in Puerto Rico. He said it won no awards for creativity, but “persuaded scores of manufacturers to start factories in that poverty-stricken island”

There are numerous brand strategists, founders, and designers who bring awfully inventive ideas, designs, and products into the world that simple take up space and never sell.

Writing about this reminded me of a recent Substack I read.

Annie Kreighbaum

, founder of Soft Services, recently wrote about her experience designing products and how to do so in proper context,

“The real surprise is that even if you do everything “right,” your product might not sell. Meanwhile, people who do everything wrong sell a lot. Capitalism is so random in that way.”

And capitalism has a funny way of objectively proving if something is creative or not: Does it sell?

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Takeaways

• If it doesn’t sell… it isn’t creative.

• Founders & creatives need to listen to data, experts, and history to inform our decisions, not just our intuition & vision.

• Create to satisfy the bottom line, not our egos.

• Understand your product and its customer above all.

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Thanks for reading this different article. I really enjoyed writing it. Let me know if you guys like this. I usually charge for this stuff… LOL.

BYE SEE YOU TOMORROW!

Jake Bell is a content marketing, creative strategist, and designer based in NYC. He specializes in brand building, content creation, branding, art direction, creative strategy, and making things cool.

Want to chat? Email me: jake@jb.studio