Serendipity Book: The story of David Ogilvy

Note to self.

Remember to set the PVR for another potential treat this weekend: there is a documentary on BBC Four on Saturday night about the life and work of David Ogilvy:

"David Ogilvy's advertising agency started out in 1948 with no clients and two members of staff, and became the largest advertising conglomerate in the world. This documentary reveals Ogilvy's extremes and eccentricities through interviews with individuals whose lives he touched: those who knew him and worked with him during the conception of some of his most famous campaigns."

I hope it's better than the recycled pap that is 'Hard Sell'.

Books By My Bedside

Gordon Torr: Managing Creative People: Lessons for Leadership in the Ideas Economy
I hope Gordon didn't choose that subtitle. It seems below him somehow. Grubby even. His book is, he insists, the first attempt to fully explore how to get the best out of creative people. I'm currently half way through and loving every bit of it. More soon. (****)
Randall Rothenberg: Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign
Rothenberg is a long time NYT journalist who went on to be editor of Ad Age and is now president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Where the Suckers Moon is an implausibly detailed account of the pitch and subsequent development of an ad campaign for Subaru USA. The book ends with Wieden's Subaru ads being voted dead last by consumers on Superbowl Sunday in 1993. It's quite a ride. (*****)
Joshua Ferris: Then We Came to the End
The rythyms of life in a Chicago ad agency during a recession. The writing is a bit too staccato for my liking and the characters are all long gone before you can get to know them. Nonetheless, it is about as close to home as you can get. (***)
Joe Moran: Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime
More homespun ethnography in the vein of Kate Fox's 'Watching the English'. Makes you think and there is even some gold hidden between the platitides. (****)
Nick Davies: Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
Davies finds his colleagues in the media guilty of systematically recycling press releases and news agency output without checking the facts or seeking to find the truth. Shame he doesn't even attempt to seek a solution. (****)
Sam Delaney: Get Smashed!: The Story of the Men Who Made the Adverts That Changed Our Lives
Enjoyable romp through the history of (mostly British) advertising containing some (possibly apocryphal) tales from those that lived through it. (*****)
Mark Tungate: Adland: A Global History of Advertising
Tungate manages to make the history of advertising boring. Quite an achievement. (**)
Robert Johansen: Get There Early
The Institute for the Future's president Bob Johansen gives us the benefit of his 30 years as a trends forecaster and futurist. (***)
Joe Moran: Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime
Watching the English revisited. Joe Moran digs into the Mass Observation archive (and a lot more besides) to tell the story of how everyday British habits have changed over the last century. (****)
Oona Strathern: A Brief History of the Future; How Visionary Thinkers Changed the World and Tomorrow's Trends Are 'Made' and Marketed
A worthy attempt at pulling together the history of futurists and trendspotters. Nice companion to 'Where's my Jetpack?' (****)
Jim Taylor & Steve Hatch: Rigorous Magic: Communication Ideas and Their Application
A valiant but ultimately flawed attempt to codify and assess the value of different types of communications ideas. The typology they have created is useful but they fall down when it comes to providing workable definitions (e.g. between an 'emotional platform' and a 'brand idea'). Furthermore, being media men they are predictably in thrall of those kinds of ideas that media agencies can control ('activation' and 'symbiotic' ideas), less enthusiastic about 'brand' ideas and brazenly critical of the value of 'advertising' ideas. (**)
Stuart Maconie: Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North
Imagine if Pevsner was written by Nick Hornby. Maconie fights his demons about living in the South of England by going back home to the North. Supposendly a travel book, this is Maconie's humorous and informative take on the North-South divide. (***)
Mark Earls: Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature
Mark Earls, the professional contrarian and erstwhile Head of Planning at Ogilvy London has developed his ideas about herd thinking into a book for all to see. (****)
Dick Taverne: The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism
If you like Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column in The Guardian then you will enjoy this. I don't agree with all of it but then that's part of the point. (***)
Andrew Marr: My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism
Andrew Marr writes his autobiography under the guise of authoring an insider perspective on the world of news journalism. Fascinating and written with a light touch. Not as ambitious as it might have been but riveting nonetheless. (****)