David Ogilvy and the 10 Day Home Confinement Ad

How do you really know if you’re a copywriter and not just someone who dabbles writing ads?

It’s pretty easy to tell.

Little things like meals (and showers) cease to have the same importance when you’re in the heat of writing an ad.

David Ogilvy recounts spending ten days at home doing nothing else but writing this ad for Puerto Rican Economic Development in 1955.

Thanks to my friend Byrne Hobart and his New York web design firm, I found out about the magnificent book, The Art of Writing Advertising, which contains this ad and story.

Ogilvy relates that he put his heart into writing this ad and he was both “intellectually and emotionally committed to the subject.”

Conversely, he also relates how excruciating it can be to write an ad for a market you’re not into. For him it was beauty because he was “not terribly interested in lipstick and face powder.”

While there are the rare writers among us who can sit down and churn out ads on any subject, most of are like Ogilvy. Give me my sweet-spot markets and I’ll happily lock myself in my office for days to write a 28-page sales letter. Like Ogilvy, I find it difficult to write even a single auto-responder message for markets I “don’t get.”

Here’s the 148 KB pdf, “Now Puerto Rico Offers 100% Tax Exemption to New Industry.”