Ogilvy Style

After leaving Oxford without taking a degree, David Ogilvy (1911-1999) worked as (in his own words) "a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer" before going into the advertising business at age 38.

At the time, he said, he knew "nothing about marketing and had never written any copy." And yet he later managed to build the company he founded, Ogilvy & Mather, into one of the world's most successful advertising firms.

He was a master copywriter and his campaigns for Hathaway Shirts ("The man in the Hathaway shirt") and Schweppes ("Schweppervescence") are classics. His books on advertising are still studied today.

Ogilvy represents the true advertising tradition, not the Hollywood version portrayed in the current American televisual programme Mad Men, a silly fictionalised account written by the very Noo Yawk hipsters whose fathers and grandfathers displaced the Madison Avenue elite in the first place.

In the photograph (above), lifted from the cover of his autobiography Blood, Brains, & Beer, Ogilvy is pictured wearing a Brooks Brothers khaki suit with a 3/2 roll and a repp tie. He holds a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles. In other photographs from the period he is depicted wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe.

Pay attention to his haircut: his hair does not creep forward in sideburn form, nor does it cover his ears. Study the photographs and note the way he parts his hair on the right, widely recognised as a mark of creative genius.