#82/111: Confessions Of An Advertising Man

What is it about?

If you are interested in advertising you probably heard of David Ogilvy. He’s the master mind behind one of the greatest advertisements of the last century. In this book he talks about his work ethics, marketing research and how he ran his company.

What can I learn?

You can’t bore someone into buying: Although Ogilvy was one of the more conservative advertisers he knew that you need an interesting idea behind your ad. Your prospects should be energized by reading/watching your ad. You can’t sell them something, if they won’t buy it.

Promote hard work: Ogilvy discovered early that the corporate culture is essential for great work. He wanted a culture affected by hard work and not by politics. He said: “We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.

Research is important: Claude Hopkins was one of Ogilvy’s role models. He preached that you should eliminate the guessing process and work with testing and research. Ogilvy, who worked as a researcher at Gallup, never forgot this mantra.

Conclusion

Confessions Of An Advertising Man is a truly great book. Ogilvy is famous for his superb writing skills and it’s a pleasure to read this book. If you want to work in advertising you should read this book as soon as possible. Even for non-ad people this should be an interesting lecture.

#49/111: How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit

What is it about?

Writing a novel and becoming a full-time author is a dream of lots of people. But it is really hard. How about writing a how-to book? Robert W. Bly shows how to write how-to texts and how to market and sell them.

What can I learn?

Research your topic: Before writing your article, blog post or booklet, you should research your topic. You can conduct interviews or read books about this topic. Though, the best thing is to actually do it by yourself. If you want to write an article about fishing, go fishing. If you want to write an article about online marketing, do some online marketing.

Clarity, Concise, Compelling: These are the main guidelines for writing good how-to content. That is, you should write as few words as possible and use a clear structure (headlines, sub headlines, etc.). Furthermore, your content should be easy to read, i.e. no unusual words or too much jargon. Lastly, use examples to give your articles more life.

Break your content down to steps: The last thing to remember is breaking your instruction down to several steps. It’s easier to follow for your readers and supports the structure. In addition, people like lists. Think of Top 3 ways of X, Top 10 Y on twitter or How to eat healthier in three steps.

Conclusion

Originally I read the book because I wanted to know how to improve my writing style. Sadly, only 12 of about 220 pages explain how to write better. The rest is about various formats (books, booklets, articles, etc.) for your content and its marketing. Though, if you want to make money with writing how-to texts this is a great book for you.