David Ogilvy’s Great Headline Heist!

David Ogilvy is one of the most famous names in advertising. And the headline he wrote to sell Rolls-Royce cars is nearly as famous.

Here is what Ogilvy wrote:

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock

But did you know Ogilvy didn’t actually write this sentence? The proof is right in the original ad itself. Here is what the first paragraph says…

‘At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise comes from the electric clock,’ reports the Technical Editor of THE MOTOR.

So here is what we know:

The Technical Editor of THE MOTOR magazine wrote what became Ogilvy’s headline.

Ogilvy’s genius wasn’t his creativity, nor even his research. His genius was his ability to use a proven idea to position the Rolls-Royce favorably within its market.

But the story goes even deeper than this. That’s because there’s evidence that Ogilvy’s headline pre-dates even the magazine he referenced in his ad.

As Robert Rosenthal reports on his blog “Freaking Marketing,” a variation of the headline first appeared in 1933 in an ad to sell Pierce-Arrow automobiles. The headline reads…

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

Could it be that what appears to be a singular moment of genius was really just a latent idea that had been bouncing around the advertising world for years?

We’ll never really know. But one thing’s for sure. Ogilvy nailed it when he wrote that headline. It was the right appeal for the right product at the right moment in history.

What does all of this mean? Well, for one thing, originality doesn’t count for as much as we’d like it to. As Rosenthal writes: “You don’t take originality to the bank.”

Most advertising breakthroughs come from the synthesis or adaptation of time-tested ideas that have already appeared in the past.

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-Ryan M. Healy