David Olgivy

By almost any standards, David Olgivy is a successful man. He is handsome, imposing, articulate, urbane, powerful and, one presumes, whoppingly solvent. He is so successful, in fact, that he wrote a book about his trade and it promptly became a best-seller. He is the kind of man whose name looks good on the roster of trustee boards, on cultural committees, on the speaking circuit--and indeed he is on all of these. When he comes to Harvard he can speak merely of what he did the previous day and attract a good sized audience. And yet he is neither a distinguished statesman, a respected scholar, nor an entertainment celebrity. David Olgivy has become a success selling soap, margarine, gasoline, and underarm deodorant.

The manufacturers of these goods are among the 127 clients of Olgivy & Mather, the Madison Avenue advertising agency which is perhaps best known as the originator of "soft sell" advertising. This is the firm that made Hathaway shirts a brand name (remember the man with the eyepatch?), put Commander Whitehead's Schweppes in gin, made Maxwell House Coffee perk in time to a jingle, and rubbed liberal quantities of Ban deodorant into the armpits of a Greek statue. Started by Olgivy with a capital of $6,000, it now has assets reportedly over $55 million and it would be a safe bet that every person in the country has at one time or another been sold something by Olgivy. And "sold" is the word that Olgivy himself would choose. "Advertising isn't some hidden persuasion, some mythical unconscious influencer--it's sales," he says proudly. Olgivy isn't interested in campaigns which are merely entertaining, which win awards for their supposed aesthetic values. "A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself. It should rivet the reader's attention on the product."

All of which seems to fit the preconceived idea we have of Madison Avenue, an image which somehow includes shark skin suits, three martini lunches, ulcers before thirty, and infernal white knights charging from our television screens. It is America's fascination with this half-myth that perhaps accounts for the wide sales (400,000) of Olgivy's book. The very title, "Confessions of an Advertising Man" indicates a delicious expose, rather than a witty Robert Morse-like "how to" book. Olgivy wryly acknowledges this, saying, "It always seems to be displayed next to biographies of whores."

But Olgivy seems to defy the myth on almost every count. His suits usually come from Sears Roebuck (a client), he dislikes luncheons with clients ("I haven't the time, it gives me indigestion, and I don't think it's very profitable."), and he appears to be a long way from that ulcer as he consumes whiskey and cashews with relish. As a man whose business is selling, Olgivy seems to have decided that the best way to sell himself is to be himself, and he can at times be disarmingly honest. When he removes his jacket in an overcrowded room to reveal bright red suspenders, it's not merely for an opening effect--he's hot.

Olgivy is not afraid to criticize advertising practices: "Unless we reduce advertising in television and radio it might be legislated out of existence by an enraged citizenry." And in his book he makes quites clear that he is one of the enraged. "I am angered to the point of violence by the commercial interruption of programs."

Yet David Olgivy is not on a soapbox, nor will he probably ever be television reform's darling. He is, first and last, a successful businessman with an admittedly enormous material ambition. He refuses to advertise on billboards not only because they ruin the landscape but because they are not effective. He says he cannot conceive of anyone going into an industry not wanting to be president. And though one could easily say of him that he is a man of integrity, he is also one of practicality, professionalism, and the wary warmth of experience that becomes one who has been a door-to-door salesman, a Paris chef, a Pennsylvania tobacco farmer, and an Oxford student.

Experience has taught him that although success is desirable, failure need not be fatal if one possesses enough human resilience. Of the advertising game he says, "If you play it grimly, you will die of ulcers. If you play it with lighthearted gusto, you will survive your failures without losing sleep. Play to win, but enjoy the fun." Olgivy seems always to have enjoyed the fun--but then, he's always been successful, too.