Here’s a coincidence.
Seth Godin wrote the other day: “Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year. Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.”
Shortly after I read this I found, while trawling through my old files, an article I wrote 20 years ago in which I remarked on a singular fact.
Among an audience I had been pontificating to a few days earlier were five people from Ogilvy & Mather, only two of whom had read Ogilvy on Advertising.
You would think any sane person hoping to make a career in advertising would have read this, one of the two best books ever written on the subject – and certainly by far the most entertaining, comprehensive and well written.
But you would really have to be a dozy bugger not to have read it if you hoped to succeed in the firm this man founded.
This total lack of interest in study is profoundly depressing, and has predictable results. For instance a while back I picked up a book featuring work O & M are proud of. It was full of pictures of the people who made the selection.
Not one had a caption, so it was impossible to know who these creative luminaries are.
David Ogilvy would have been livid at this – which is very, very kindergarten stuff indeed.
