A comedic, yet endearing ad from Ogilvy looking for Creative Directors. Here's an excerpt from "Ogilvy on Advertising" about hiring & this ad: "hiring success...View More
in running an agency depends on your ability to hire men and women of exceptional talent, to train them thoroughly, and to make the most of their talents. The most difficult people to find are those who have the capacity to become good copywriters. I have found that they always have well-furnished minds. They give evidence of exceptional curiosity about every subject under the sun. They have an above-average sense of humor. And they have a fanatical interest in the craft of advertising. I used to think that nobody could write good advertising before he was thirty. Then one day, on a visit to Frankfurt, I asked to meet the author of an exceptionally good campaign. She was eighteen. I marvel at the ability of some copywriters to keep their creative juices flowing year after year. George Cecil wrote the American Telephone advertising for 40 years, and wrote it well. It is a tragedy of the advertising business that its best practitioners are always promoted into management. I was infinitely more useful to my clients when I wrote copy than when I was Chairman of the Board. When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants. Even when you find someone who is better than you are, you won’t always succeed in recruiting him. When I advertise for Creative Directors, I make it clear what I want (referencing this ad "Trumpeter Swans").
