About the book
David Ogilvy's memoir follows the advertising man from a childhood that knew poverty to the top of Madison Avenue. Born in 1911, he spent his first years in Surrey, where Beatrix Potter's uncle lived next door, under a father, a classical scholar and Cambridge rugby player, who fed him raw blood, beer and calves' brains to build his strength and mind. After World War I ruined the family, they moved in with London relatives. Before advertising he worked as a cook in Paris and sold stoves to nuns in Scotland. He later created the Hathaway shirt man with the black eyepatch and worked for clients as varied as IBM, Rolls Royce and the British, French and American governments.
How to Web co-founder Bogdan Iordache read it in one night as a student in France and was struck by how often Ogilvy rose, failed and rose again before founding his agency.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Bogdan Iordache (Co-Founder/How to Web)
One specific book that had a big impact on me when I was young and studying in France was "An autobiography" by David Ogilvy. Turns out this guy was a successful chef at 20, and a loser at 25, and again a successful person at 30 and then a loser at 35, and then he founded "Ogilvy & Mather" and became successful again at 40.
It's a short book, I read it in one night. Turns out, doing things your way may be difficult sometimes, but if you keep doing what you think is right and learn from your mistakes and successes, everything will be alright in the end. I was wondering whether to stay in France and settle for a developer job (though I did not like programming very much) or return to Romania and start something on my own (I did not know what exactly). I made the right decision to return.
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