The final chapter of Ogilvy on Advertising is titled “I predict 13 changes”. As the name might suggest, in it David Ogilvy listed 13 changes related to advertising he thought would occur in the future.
Ogilvy wrote the book in 1983, which means we’re already 42 years into the future, so let’s take a look at some of those predictions, shall we?
Some of them aged like fine wine. Others not so much.
One of the best predictions reads, “There will be a vast increase in the use of advertising by governments for purposes of education, particularly health education.”
I’m not sure how much I agree on the health education aspect, but there’s definitely a big increase in government advertising—an overall good thing to see.
One of my personal favorite prediction reads, “There will be a renaissance in print advertising”. While, as far as I’m aware, this is far from the case—many businesses still overlook print advertising, at least in the form of direct-response advertising (the only exception is B2B advertising, for which direct mail is still being used a ton)—I do feel a movement popping up of people going back to print advertising, particularly direct mail, even direct-response newspaper ads such as the infamous advertorial.
This might just be because that’s what I personally want to see and I’m living in my own bubble. But still, let me have it for now.
Here are a few fun ones that didn’t pan out as expected:
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“Advertising will play a part in bringing the population explosion under control”
“Candidates for political office will stop using dishonest advertising”
“Direct-response advertising will cease to be a separate specialty, and will be folded into the ‘general’ agencies”
“Advertising will contain more information and less hot air”
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The first one, ironically, did happen… only to cause worlwide major underpopulation issue requring government bodies to spend tons of money encouraging people to have more children.
But I’ll let you be the judge of those other three.
As for the last one, that might just be a good sign for you. Most advertisements you see today are nothing more than hot air. Just some branding, a vague slogan, a few nice pictures, quite often some random celebrity to associate with the product (which has been proven to be less effective for over 50 years already), and sometimes the price, or more precisely, a discount…
Yet no or very little information about the product to be found (note: I’m not speaking bad about brand awareness campaigns major multinationals like you see Coca-Cola or Redbull doing—they’replaying a different game)
So what’s, the good news?
Well, that just means there’s less competition for you to create high-converting direct-response style ads that sell.
And one, maybe less intuitive, way I found helpful to teach me how to write better information-rich ads that convert is by writing daily emails. Writing these emails forces me to, well… write. But do it in an engaging, fun, and informational way that keeps people reading day after day. Even if people live busy lives and I have to compete for their attention with all the other unread emails in their emails, forcing me even more to grab their attention straight away without letting go.
So while I can’t promise you’ll be writing killer ads starting tomorrow, you might just find learning to write engaging daily emails a worthwhile skill to get better at.
If so, consider checking out my flagship course which teaches you all about it.
Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/