Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age

Throughout the ad industry, and in many university lecture halls, David Ogilvy is held up as the wise scion of advertising. To this day, his signature still adorns the walls of agency lobbies around the world. There is no more worthy a successor to take on the task of modernizing the thoughts -if not the principles- in David's classic book than Miles Young. In all of my interactions with Miles over the past 20 years he has always been both the most brilliant AND the most humble man in the room. His decades of experience, combined with his astute perspective on where the industry is going in the future creates a rare no BS, measured understanding of how David's principles of the idea, the craft of capturing attention and the skill of turning that into persuasion can be applied in today's programmatic, influencer driven, social networked world. I can think of no better mentor in our industry than Miles, and if you do not have the privilege of experiencing his joyful laugh in person, then this book is certainly a great second-best substitute.

What can I say that hasn't already been said about such a gold standard? Aside from the content being updated and potentially losing some of its original charm, the updated book is much more updated for the digital age and the glossy pages, full color, and graphic design is top notch as you would expect. I'm a sucker for hard covers and this well of knowledge did not leave me dry. I give it a thumbs up

Miles Young is an excellent writer who gives a lot of great insight into the future of marketing. Something to know is that this book is more of a sequel or follow up to the original “Ogilvy On Advertising.” If you want a foundational look at advertising, the original book will be a better read for you.

Wonderful book of advertising history genius. The examples of advertising campaigns is fascinating.

I hoped for better copywriting tips, not just a biography of a great copywriter..

Really amazing loved the book had a lot of good information

Very good material quality

This book should not be called Ogilvy On Advertising. It should be called Miles Young on Advertising. When Ogilvy wrote the original book, he had a way of writing that made it seem like the two of you were chatting it up in a café; like he was speaking directly to you. This book reads like a college textbook, inundated with trivial vocabulary and irrelevant research. On the latter, Ogilvy stressed the importance of research, but this is just overkill. Does anyone in advertising need a history of the internet, let alone mini-biographies of the original founders? It's also hard to distinguish who this book is for, because it does an awful job at defining lingo. Anyone not in advertising won't know what a USP is. For anyone with a more traditional background, Young does define acronyms, but says little else about what they mean in terms of the bigger picture. And for a social/digital native like myself, it reads like a stale science history book, complete with bare-bones diagrams that do little else but exist. I try to read a chapter a day, but it's been a struggle even doing that. To sum up, Miles Young does a very surface-level job of defining the information age we live in today, the behaviors of Millenials and Centennials, case studies from brands like Dove, etc. But he never digs deep enough for any of it to matter. Don't let the name fool you. Ogilvy would not have written a book like this were he alive today.