Did David Ogilvy's Rolls-Royce Headline Originate Here?

It all began with this comment from direct response copywriter Bob Bly to Euro RSCG co-founder Tom Messner on Bly's blog:

"David Ogilvy wrote: 'At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.' Madison Avenue wrote: 'At Ford, Quality is Job One.' Case closed."

Actually, things were just getting started. In the same string of comments tied to Bly's post, "Why I Don't Admire Jerry Della Femina," Messner dropped this bombshell:

"A guy I knew at BBDO had an ad for Pierce-Arrow circa 1932 in his office. (Jerry Gerber was his name.) Framed. It was the Rolls-Royce headline done for that company, Pierce-Arrow."

What you see at the top is a Pierce-Arrow ad that ran in the February 27, 1933 issue of Time. I believe it's the only image of the ad presently available on the Internet. My daughter and I retrieved it from microfilm with the help of the reference librarians at the Wellesley Free Library. The ad contained this headline:

"The only sound one can hear in the new Pierce-Arrows is the ticking of the electric clock."

Obviously, Tom Messner was right. But did David Ogilvy do anything wrong? Since Ogilvy was a proponent of fact-based communication, let's sort out some of the questions and facts.

Was Ogilvy old enough to recall the Pierce-Arrow ad? Absolutely. He was 21 when it ran. And besides, Ogilvy could have easily put his hands on Pierce-Arrow advertising as part of his information-gathering process for the Rolls-Royce campaign. In fact, I'd be surprised if Ogilvy & Mather employees didn't review the Pierce-Arrow work -- one of the first consistently great automotive advertising campaigns..

Since Ogilvy had extremely high standards, would he even want to play off a Pierce-Arrow ad? I've seen over 100 Pierce-Arrow ads, and the campaign was consistent with everything Ogilvy preached.

Is there a chance Ogilvy -- or one of his copywriters -- wrote the Rolls-Royce headline with absolutely no knowledge of the Pierce-Arrow ad? Yes. But the two headlines were very similar and appeared in advertising for super luxury cars within a 25-year span.

If Ogilvy or a colleague worked off the Pierce-Arrow headline, did they do a disservice to the client? No. An agency's main job is to help maximize sales of the client's product. Ogilvy or a colleague may have built on a line that ran in a dusty old one-third page vertical ad for a long-defunct company. You don't take originality to the bank. What matters is the bottom line, and from what I've read, this ad was enormously successful. 

Does this diminish the Ogilvy legend? No. If anything, it humanizes Sir David. We see a man operating on all cylinders (pun intended) to deliver the best possible outcome for his client. Ogilvy, through his agency work, lectures and books, probably did more to make clients and agency people successful than anyone who ever stepped into a Madison Avenue elevator. His agency remains at the top of the advertising game nearly 50 years after the Roll-Royce ad originally ran.

Is it productive to bring this information out at this time? Yes. Ogilvy & Mather's Rolls-Royce campaign is an important piece of American advertising history, and the Pierce-Arrow connection is a noteworthy part of the story.

What do you think?

Comments

[Tom Messner]

I don't think David Ogilvy stole the headline. Possibility is that someone else at the O&M agency did or that David wrote it without knowledge of the previous headline. Too much upper class snoot to be involved in Dickensian street crime. In 1933, he had not yet immigrated to the city where the streets were paved with gold, and possibility is that he wouldn't be interested in such an arriviste as this American stab at luxury.
Where David did falter is not acknowledging the earlier ad in one of his later books; since Jerry Gerber had the ad framed, David by then would have known of it and could have done a nice self-effacing piece which he was not incapable of doing. He said, at one point, that he only had three great ideas in his career. That, for me, was his best quote and exonerates him from theft.
But what the heck: anyone who can put a crown on the head of a mere commoner for Imperial Margarine or seduce Eleanor Roosevelt to give up her endorsement virginity or invent Schweppervessence need not have to defend oneself against mere swiping. It isn't like he stole "Lemon" or "Think Small" or "Which hand has the M&M's" or, going back to radio, the jingle: "Super Suds! Super Suds! Super Super Super Suds!"

[Robert Rosenthal]

Arriviste? I'm staring at a beautifully illustrated Pierce-Arrow ad with the headline, "The Prestige of Pierce-Arrow has a Mechanical as well as a Social basis..." and this body copy:

"From the time it is pure molten metal until it takes final shape as a great power plant, the engine of a Pierce-Arrow is built with the precision accorded an observatory telescope. Instruments as sensitive as the seismograph attest the balance of many of its parts. Bearings are shaved with diamond edges to achieve split thousandths accuracy."

I suspect the adman from Surrey would have salivated over every word.

[Robert Rosenthal]

I agree that Ogilvy didn't "steal" the headline. A victim of the Great Depression, luxury car maker Pierce-Arrow went out of business in 1938 -- 20 years before the Ogilvy Rolls-Royce ad ran.

The two ads were similar but they weren't identical. The Pierce-Arrow headline talked about the "ticking" of the clock. The Rolls-Royce headline added the point about speed.

[Tom Messner]

"Electric" is the key. Clear theft, now that I look at it closer. Identical more than similar; the result of research not learned from the tutelage of Dr. Gallup.
The only thing left to attack is the truth of either of the ads. Come to think of it, both are probably gross exaggerations.
But hyperbole like theft of intellectual property is, I guess, a venial sin in the world of commerce.
And maybe "Quality is Job One" is more honest and more persuasive and more impactful than either Pierce Arrow's work or Rolls Royce.

[David MacGregor]

I think it is plain that Mr Ogilvy must have found the Pierce Arrow ad when he was searching on Google.

Actually I don't find this line of enquiry especially edifying. The Rolls Royce ad stands as the definitive execution and the chance of coincidence is high - given that both vehicles were luxury cars (and smooth running would have been a key benefit) and both had electric clocks - which must have been something.

The ease with which we can corroborate plagiarism now would not have existed then. I doubt that finding a 25 year old ad would have been as easy for Ogilvy and his team as it is now.

[Robert Rosenthal]

David: To a lot of objective advertising people, the similarities between the two headlines seem remarkable. The question we've been asking is, "Why was a line Ogilvy attributed to a British car editor so similar to a 25-year-old Pierce-Arrow headline?" You're right -- the gap is strange.

This afternoon I found a possible answer. I'll add a post on it shortly. In the meantime, you may want to check out the other Freaking Marketing posts relating to this.

[Tom Messner]

As noted somewhere, I saw the ad for Pierce Arrow framed in an office at BBDO in 1969.
What I hadn't said was that the framing also contained a gibe at Ogilvy for imitation.
So Sir David had to be aware of the ad by the early 70s, at least, since I was aware of it and I was just a junior copywriter hobbling along while he was who he was.
But thanks to Robert Rosenthal, we can safely conclude that the ad wasn't theft at all; it was just research.
Now to the truth question: was the only sound really the sound of the electric clock? And then the efficacy question raised by Robert Bly: was the Ford tagline of more consequence to Ford than the clock headline was to Rolls Royce? Edifying? Hardly. But this is a blog, not a chapel.

[Bob Bly]

David MacGregor: Surely you jest. When Ogivly wrote the ad, there was no Google -- and no Internet.

Tom Messner: If you think "quality is job one" is good copywriting, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

[Tom Messner]

I can't say if the Ford line is good or bad copywriting.
I can, though, ask whether the Ford line resulted in anything useful for Ford and whether such usefulness approaches the clock ad for Rolls or Pierce.
I can also ask if the clock ad was truthful or another example of ad hyperbole.
I can also say==without question== that Mr. Bly is not really big on irony at least where poor Mr. MacGregor is concerned.

[Robert Rosenthal]

Was the Ford tagline of greater consequence to Ford than the clock headline was to Rolls-Royce? I read that Rolls-Royce had a five-figure media budget, so even if it achieved the greatest ROI in automotive advertising history, it would have been nearly impossible for it to matter as much. The clock ad was just one print ad. The "Quality is Job One" tagline lasted for years and ran across a huge amount of media. It also communicated something important to customers and employees at a time when the country needed a kick in the ass. The Rolls-Royce headline had more specificity because it was a single ad for a particular model. The Ford tagline had a much bigger job.

[CGraves]

DAVID OGILVY NEVER CLAIMED TO HAVE WRITTEN THE HEADLINE!!!
You can hear it from David Ogilvy himself. Go to the video of an interview with him at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kfsnjcUNiw and fast forward into the video until the minute gauge says there are 45 minutes and 20 seconds left (45:20)
David Ogilvy says: "That's a good ad isn't it? I didn't write that headline. It's a quotation from an article that appeared about 20 years before in an English automobile magazine."

[Robert Rosenthal]

CGraves: Thanks for participating in our little investigation. I wrote a later post (link below) on that particular video clip. I've hired a UK-based researcher to review back issues of THE MOTOR in the London Library and locate the quote Ogilvy attributed to a Technical Editor. The researcher, a professor of international business, will begin his work this Thursday. Stay tuned.

http://robertrosenthal.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/we-have-video-o.html

[Greg]

Of course he could steal it. No one would ever recall the ad which A)ran 30 years ago before the war and B)the client was not in business for over 20 years already.
And of course it could be one of first major cases when two good ads were created independently in a great span of time ... which is least likely the case.