How to keep clients like David Ogilvy

It was the era of “Mad Men,” when keeping clients happy was a matter of knowing the right bars (and … other establishments). Back then, David Ogilvy was a superstar on Madison Avenue, having founded his highly successful, supercharged eponymous agency. Television was brand-new, and Ogilvy and his creative team were inventing a whole new kind of advertising. 

Ogilvy chronicled this story in his best-selling book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, first published in 1963. Reading the book now, as I just did, is a trip into another world — outdated in many ways and infuriatingly sexist. But I was surprised by how much of Ogilvy’s business advice is relevant today. I especially liked his chapter on “How to Keep Clients.” Here are some of his pearls (with some slight paraphrasing):

9 rules for how to keep clients

1. Devote your best brains to the service of your clients, instead of diverting them to the pursuit of new ones.

2. Avoid hiring unstable, quarrelsome executives. … Pedestrian nonentities can have a genius for creating relationships of calm stability.

3. Keep in contact with your clients at all their levels. It’s extremely dangerous to depend on your connection to a single person in the client company. And don’t restrict contact on your side to the account executive. Let your team members get to know your client.

4. See problems through your clients’ eyes. … Buy shares in their company so you can think like a member of their family.

5. Never tell a client you cannot attend an event because you have a previous engagement with another client; successful polygamy depends on pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach. I’m not kidding — he actually wrote that.

6. When a client takes a dislike to one of your people, whether it’s justified or not, transfer that person off the account.

7. Always use your clients’ products. … Resign an account when you lose confidence in their product or service. And for a great example of his sexism, I love this one: “It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product he would not allow his wife to buy.”

8. Admit your mistakes before you get charged with them.

9. Don’t allow your staff to be bullied by tyrants.

The wisdom in these comments is not restricted to a particular era or industry. Retaining clients is critical to running a successful business, and Ogilvy’s comments ring as true today as they did 60 years ago.  

If you’d like a thought partner for how to keep your best clients, contact me.