David Ogilvy
Advertising executive and agency founder
David Ogilvy was a British advertising executive who founded Ogilvy & Mather. He became known as the "Father of Advertising".
1 summary 17 min of listening
British Born 1911 in West Horsley, United Kingdom Died 1999
About David Ogilvy
David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born in West Horsley, England, on 23 June 1911 and died on 21 July 1999. He studied at Fettes College in Edinburgh and at Christ Church, Oxford, though he did not graduate. Before advertising, he worked in a Paris hotel kitchen and sold cooking stoves door-to-door for Aga. Fortune magazine praised a guide he wrote for Aga salesmen in 1935 as possibly the finest sales manual ever produced. In 1938 he moved to the United States and worked for George Gallup's research organization, which he named as a major influence on his thinking. Ogilvy founded the agency Ogilvy & Mather and produced very successful advertising for Rolls-Royce, Dove soap and Hathaway shirts. He credited that success to careful research into consumer habits. He wrote Ogilvy on Advertising, and also Confessions of an Advertising Man.