David Ogilvy is arguably the most important figure in the history of advertising and marketing. He was the founder of Ogilvy & Mather, a multibillion-dollar international advertising agency. He started the concept of branding. He’s been called the “Father of Advertising”. He’s someone you should know about. 

David was born in 1911 in West Horsley, Surrey, England. As a young man, he attended Christ Church, Oxford but left without obtaining a degree. After this, he moved to Paris and worked as a chef’s apprentice at the Hotel Majestic. He returned to the U.K. and became a door-to-door cooking-stove salesman, which he excelled at. Because of his success, he was asked by his employer to write a sales manual, which ended up receiving a considerable amount of recognition and praise.

David’s brother, Francis Ogilvy, was employed at an advertising agency called Mather & Crowther in London. He saw David’s sales manual and presented it to his higher-ups. In turn, they offered David an account executive position at their company. This position eventually allowed him to move out of the U.K. yet again. This time to the U.S.

In New Jersey, he worked as a pollster for George Gallup of the famous Gallup Poll. There he learned the art of surveys and statistics to gauge the public’s feelings about various issues. He later said this period of his career trained him for his later success. Specifically, he learned how to conduct deep research to understand an audience so he could advertise to them effectively.

During World War II, David was recruited by the British military and worked in the Intelligence Service in Washington, D.C. He was tasked with conducting espionage and sabotage operations. Moreover, he used his knowledge of human psychology (which he learned at Gallup) as a spy; he wrote a report that recommended “applying the Gallup technique to fields of secret intelligence.” His recommendations were used during the war.

After the war, he moved to an Amish area of Pennsylvania and tried farming. He enjoyed it for a few years but felt he wasn’t cut out for it and struggled to make adequate money doing it. 

He then moved to New York and started a marketing agency called Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, which later became Ogilvy & Mather. His clients included Rolls Royce, General Foods (now Kraft Foods), Dove, American Express, Shell, Sears, and C. F. Hathaway Company. 

His advertisements for C. F. Hathaway Company were among his most successful. Before David’s involvement in 1951, C. F. Hathaway Company had been manufacturing button-down shirts since 1837 or 1848 (the history’s unclear) but received little attention. So David created an ad campaign featuring a real Russian Aristocrat named Baron George Wrangell, who became known as “The Man In The Hathaway Shirt”.

This character was photographed doing things like having his measurements taken for a tailored suit, playing chess, and holding a hunting rifle. But get this, he had an eye patch. This small, out-of-the-ordinary detail caused audiences to ask, who is this man and what’s his story? The ad campaign became so successful that an actor portrayed this character in a sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Of this campaign, he said, “…photographs with an element of ‘story appeal’ were far above average in attracting attention. This led me to put an [eye patch] on the model in my advertisements for Hathaway shirts. The eye patch conveyed an aristocratic aura and story appeal of the Hathaway man.”

David Ogilvy retired in 1973 and moved to Touffou, France. He passed away on July 21, 1999, at home. His Legacy lives on through his books: Ogilvy On Advertising and Confessions of an Advertising Man; and the New York, New York-based Ogilvy advertising, marketing, and public relations agency which employs 17,500 people.

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