How To Create Industrial Advertising Ad By David Ogilvy

How to create industrial advertising that sells

by Ogilvy & Mather

Ogilvy & Mather has created industrial advertising for over 200 of our clients in 30 countries. Here, with all the dogmatism of brevity, are some of the ways we have learned to get the best results.

1. Use your best people. Industrial advertising can be more challenging than consumer advertising. Often it aims to influence decisions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you want first-rate industrial advertising, assign first-rate people. At Ogilvy & Mather, the people who develop industrial advertising are the same people who develop consumer advertising. The same account executives. The same copywriters and art directors. The same media people. 2. Prove your case. Advertising with a largely emotional appeal can sell some types of consumer products. But rarely, if ever, will it sell industrial products. Hard-nosed buyers, men whose business is spending money wisely, need an airtight argument to be convinced. 3. Demonstrate what your product will do. Tertia tacta can be unusually effective. To demonstrate the strength of their steel, one of our clients bored neat concentric holes through a wooden beam and a steel girder, then inserted the head of one of the largest advertising firms in the U.S.A. through the transposed panel. Until then, it had been unable to gain editorial coverage. 4. Develop a simple advertising format for all your product groups. Otherwise your advertising will become confused. 5. Create reuse for a new material. Once you identify your market, develop possible uses for the material. Then show them in your advertising. 6. Make your advertisement a product guide — with your product the hero. 7. Put a strong promise in the headline. 8. Use the second color sparingly. 9. Get the reader to participate. 10. Concentrate your forces. Run in fewer magazines. 11. Think visually. 12. Consider 2-color — a real bargain.

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