"The man in the Hathaway shirt"
Legendary ad man David Ogilvy ran through 18 concepts for shirt-maker Hathaway's ad campaign before deciding on Baron Wrangell & the eye patch idea. Here's...View More
an excerpt from "Ogilvy on Advertising" on how Ogilvy was led to the idea: "In 1947, Harold Rudolph, who had been Research Director in Stirling Getchel’s agency, published a book on the subject. One of his observations was that photographs with an element of ‘story appeal’ were far above average in attracting attention. This led me to put an eye-patch on the model in my advertisements for Hathaway shirts. The eye patch conveyed an aristocratic aura and story appeal of the Hathaway man."
Hathaway had been making shirts for over a century, but were barely noticed. Ogilvy used the image of Wrangell with an eye patch to grab the reader's attention & draw them in to find out who this mysterious man was. The headline "The man in the Hathaway shirt" goes along with this mysterious ploy, but doesn't reveal anything on initial glance, thus getting them to read the ad. This is widely considered one of Ogilvy's greatest campaigns.
