You know the story about killers and poets, right?
It’s from a section of David Ogilvy’s classic book Ogilvy on Advertising. Even if you’ve
heard the saying, you may not realize that Ogilvy made his famous point by first quoting
another “Mad Man” of the era.
That would be William Maynard, creative director at Ted Bates & Company, which at the
time was the 10th largest advertising agency in the United States. Maynard shared this
observation about the writers he had worked with during his career:
“Most good copywriters fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an
ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end.”
And then Ogilvy famously added:
”If you are both killer and poet, you get rich.”
He would know. Ogilvy was responsible for some of the most creative and innovative
advertisements of the “golden age” of advertising.