#306 David Ogilvy (Confessions of an Advertising Man)

What I learned from reading Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.  ---- Listen to one of my favorite podcasts: Invest Like the Best ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- (4:15) When Fortune published an article about me and titled it: "Is David Ogilvy a Genius?," I asked my lawyer to sue the editor for the question mark. (4:45) The people who built the companies for which America is famous, all worked obsessively to create strong cultures within their organizations. Companies that have cultivated their individual identities by shaping values, making heroes, spelling out rites and rituals, and acknowledging the cultural network, have an edge (5:30) We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they grow in oak forests. (5:48) We hire gentlemen with brains. (6:16) Only First Class business, and that in a First Class way. (6:25) Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees. (9:45) Buy Ogilvy on Advertising (10:45) One decent editorial counts for a thousand advertisements. + You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several. — Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300) (15:22) It was inspiring to work for a supreme master. M. Pitard did not tolerate incompetence. He knew that it is demoralising for professionals to work alongside incompetent amateurs. (16:66) You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. It's too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can't indulge B players. (18:12) In the best compan