Five Business Tips from David Ogilvy of O&M

“While reading ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ written by the man himself, I came across these five nuggets on running an advertising agency. These five excellent business tips are valid not only for running advertising agencies but for managing any business under the blue sky,” shares John from StreetLessons.com.

Here they are:

1. Never allow two people to do a job which one could do. As George Washington once said, “Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of duty by close application thereto, it is worse executed by two people, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein”.

2. Never summon people to your office; it frightens them. Instead do to see them in their offices, unannounced. A boss who never wanders about his agency becomes an invisible hermit.

3. If you want to get action, communicate verbally. If you want the voting to go your way at meetings, go to the meeting. Remember the French saying: “He who is absent is always wrong”.

4. It is bad manners to use products which compete with your clients’ products. When I got the Sears Roebuck account, I started buying all my clothes at Sears. This bugged by wife, but the following year a convention of clothing manufacturers voted me the best-dressed man in America. As the number of brands advertised by Ogilvy & Mather now exceeds two thousand, my personal inventory is getting complicated.

5. Never allow yourself the luxury of writing letters of complaint. After my first transatlantic voyage I wrote to my travel agency complaining that the service on the Queen Mary was slovenly and the decoration vulgar. Three months later we were on the point if getting the Cunard account when they happen to see my letter. It took them twenty years to forgive me and give us their account.

Costly job hopping, anyone?

Believe it or not, job loyalty is becoming such a rarity in non-manufacturing sectors so much that some employers have to find up replacements for 75% of their executives who switch jobs within a year. This trend of course is costing the companies a heavy price tag.

According to The Star Online: “Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) executive director Shamsuddin Bardan said employers had to spend an average RM25,000 to RM30,000 to replace each employee who quit. “It's not as simple as someone leaving and someone coming in. There is the cost of advertising for vacant positions, interviews, screening, background checks, training and medical check-ups,” he said.”

A MEF survey found that the IT/communication sector had an extremely high annual turnover rate of 75.72%, the highest among the non-manufacturing sectors in the country. This was followed by associations/societies (33%) and hotels/restaurants (32.4%). The survey was conducted on 143 companies between June 2010 and July 2011. “Employees in the IT/communication industry are very mobile and they are always searching for the perfect company,” said Shamsuddin.

MTUC secretary-general Abdul Halim Mansor said that the high turnover rate among workers could be due to the rising cost of living. “Employees will start jumping if their salaries cannot meet the cost of living,” he added. Abdul Halim said companies within the same industry sometimes also pinched from each other, which could contribute to the high turnovers. “You don't see it happening so much on production floors (with less skilled workers),” he pointed out. “This usually occurs more with employees in the semi-skilled levels,” he added.

Via The Star Online