The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Roman Kenneth

Author:Roman, Kenneth [Roman, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

Having set a vast expansion in motion, Ogilvy was not entirely happy with the consequences. The principles traveled well, but the founder did not. He was terrified of flying and would go to staggering lengths to avoid getting on an airplane. Rather than fly a few hours to the office in Houston, he would take a two-day train trip through Chicago and Dallas and stay for five or six days, instead of making more frequent short trips. In India, where train stations were filled with masses of people sleeping on the platform, he journeyed by train from the office in Delhi to the one in Chennai (Madras)—at 72 hours, the longest train trip possible in that country. Almost all the directors of the Indian agency escorted him, the king with his retinue.

Ogilvy accepted his fear of flying as irrational but was unable to conquer it and flew only when absolutely required. Generally abstemious, drinking only a glass or two of wine on occasion, he might need to pour himself several martinis on a plane. When bad weather prevented him from taking a boat to Scandinavia, he sent a Telex: “Tempest in the North Sea. Taking flight to Stockholm. Please pray for me.”

Beyond his traumatizing fear of flying, he was at heart a colonialist, most comfortable where the British Empire had ruled, especially Canada, India, and South Africa. He visited the agency’s offices in South America less willingly, and derided its entry into Japan as a “cesspool.” He ridiculed an entry into Russia: “What are we going to sell? Fur hats!”

In New York, Ogilvy turned the U.S. agency over in 1965 to a team with Jock Elliott as chairman, Alan Sidnam (a senior executive from Benton & Bowles) as vice-chairman, and Jim Heekin as president. Heekin, a very able, bold account manager, had been promoted when his client Lever Brothers became for a time the largest in the agency. A talented account man with strong strategic and creative instincts, Heekin made several unwise moves, including a power play to become sole boss of the office. Ogilvy fired him and brought Andrew Kershaw down from Toronto to be president.

After establishing himself in New York, Kershaw teamed with Jimmy Benson (no relation to S. H. Benson), who was building the network in Europe. Together, they began driving for growth, arguing that the only way to make more money year after year was to buy other agencies. Page considered it a Ponzi scheme, a way to create the illusion of dynamic growth. Kershaw then put forth the idea of several competing agencies under the same company umbrella, like Marion Harper’s Interpublic Group. This strategy led to the purchase of Scali, McCabe, Sloves, a hot creative agency that was promised total separation except for financial matters. When the Ogilvy directors gathered at the Hotel Dorset to toast the “marriage,” Ed McCabe, the iconoclastic creative director of SMS, raised his glass and responded: “OK. But remember”—wagging his finger—“separate bedrooms!”

Ogilvy disliked both the concept and the execution. From the outset, he insisted that his company should be “One Agency Indivisible.

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