The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappyness

by David Ogilvy

This Book is about philosophy and culture of David Ogilvy corporation.
This handbook will tell us to make David´s "divine discontent" a habit by daily practice of following creative habits.

Genres: Business, Philosophy, Nonfiction

66 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born in West Horsley, England, on June 23, 1911. He was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh and at Christ Church, Oxford (although he didn't graduate).
david ogilvy After Oxford, Ogilvy went to Paris, where he worked in the kitchen of the Hotel Majestic. He learned discipline, management - and when to move on: "If I stayed at the Majestic I would have faced years of slave wages, fiendish pressure, and perpetual exhaustion." He returned to England to sell cooking stoves, door-to-door.
Ogilvy's career with Aga Cookers was astonishing. He sold stoves to nuns, drunkards, and everyone in between. In 1935 he wrote a guide for Aga salesmen (Fortune magazine called it "probably the best sales manual ever written"). Among its suggestions, "The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will get. But never mistake quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship."

In 1938, Ogilvy emigrated to the United States, where he went to work for George Gallup's Audience Research Institute in New Jersey. Ogilvy cites Gallup as one of the major influences on his thinking, emphasizing meticulous research methods and adherence to reality...

Reviews

[Daniel]

This is a rare book so it’s hard to get your hands on, but if you do then it’s a fantastic read. It’s clearly meant for people in the company. However, I think a lot of the lessons in this book are applicable to every day working life.

If you get the chance to read this, definitely give it a go, it’s incredibly dense in its advice given that it’s only a short read.

[kept by meri]

David Ogilvy’s “The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappyness” dwells in tender spaces, blending memoir with meditations on joy’s elusive dance. Ogilvy traces laughter and loss through intimate, universal anecdotes. His prose, spare yet luminous, invites us not to grasp, but to witness. A book of questions that hum in the marrow. What if happiness is the shadow cast when standing in our own light?

[Luciana Godoy]

This is beautiful, I know is only given to workers of Ogilvy but I'm so happy my friend gave it to me for my birthday.

[pie]

Does this even count as a "real book"? Whatever it is, I'm counting it to help me make this year's reading goal. In any case, it was an entertaining-motivational-nuggets type of read, and I'm glad I got to this right before the new year, as we head into resolutions and new beginnings and all that jazz.

[Hoanh Le]

3.5 / 5 (maybe 4 if i have the physical copy, read via https://archive.org/details/tepou-ogi...)

legendary marketing agency: https://www.ogilvy.com/

dogged determination is often the only trait that separate a moderately creative person from a highly creative one.

that's because great work is never done by temperamental geniuses, but by obstinate donkey-men.

[Milos]

It's a reminder to not get my book recommendations from Twitter. I just loved the title so I went with it. Goodreads says it's 66 pages but there's barely 20 pages in here.

It's not all fluff! Some nice little gems and it reminds me of Valve's internal employee manual - just slightly worse.

[emily]

It was alright… too fluffy and abstract to be practical, but too concise to begrudge it the time it took to read. I’m only removing a star because it’s a company manual for a company it sounds like I’d hate to work at. All in service of the corporation!!!

[Reinis Simanovskis]

A masterclass in setting company culture 🙌🏼

[Peter Gyurko]

Gonna compete with immortals now, brb.

[Jacob George]

Shorter than a novella but was a pretty good read.
Just as good as the unpublished Sequoia DTV, the Facebook Red Book and the Valve Handbook for New Employees

[Jose Antonio Alguacil]

Una de las jollitas de las que (si trabajas en publicidad o en creatividad) no te puedes desprender.
Un básico