Will Any Agency Hire This Man?

He is 38, and unemployed.

He dropped out of college.

He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knows nothing about marketing, and has never written any copy.

He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.

I doubt if any American agency will hire him.

However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.

That man was David Ogilvy.

The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.

I love this memo from Ogilvy himself.

For a range of reasons, there is a talent shortage within the media & advertising industries.

This cannot be solved overnight and a big part of it comes down to retention, making people proud to be a part of this industry and love the work they do, while paying them fairly for it.

But maybe we also need to look further afield when hiring, the best talent often has nothing in common, but they all share the same determination to succeed.

The more diverse the group, the better the ideas.

The better the ideas, the more opportunities for innovation.

Embrace differences and creativity will flourish.