How AGA Became an Icon

ThE TENaciTY of a BULLdog,
ThE MaNNErs of a sPaNiEL…
By 1935, marketing of the AGA cooker had become
big business and the summer launch of the New
Standard AGA – a twin-oven model in cream aimed
at smaller households without domestic staff – saw
AGA Heat Ltd embark on a nationwide publicity
campaign to raise awareness of the brand within a
much broader audience.
For that launch, he used Mather & Crowther as the
advertising agents and specifically the talented Ogilvy
brothers, David and Francis. e decision proved to
be game-changing.
For Wren had again shown incredible prescience.
David Ogilvy’s guide to selling the AGA cooker –
e eory and Practice of Selling the AGA Cooker –
became the company’s sales ‘bible’ and was lauded by
Fortune magazine as ‘the best sales manual ever writ-
t en’.
Ogilvy himself proved to be an advertising genius
who went on to found one of the world’s biggest
advertising agencies, Ogilvy & Mather. By the end
of his career he was known as the King of Madison
Avenue and he was the inspiration for the hit
television series, Mad Men.
Ogilvy, who occupied an office in the AGA Heat
building, was driven by a passion for the AGA cooker.
Later in his career, he said: “It was a special kind of
modernity. It wasn’t a fad, a passing fancy. It looked
solid, it was solid. It was the Rolls-Royce of the
kitchen and people realised that very quickly.”
Ogilvy was the first AGA cooker salesman in
Scotland and rapidly established himself as a
formidable salesman. He was introduced to W.T.
DAVID OGILVY
AGA Heat Ltd’s first
salesman
Advertising genius
Inspiration for TV’s
Mad Men
Second World War spy
David Mackenzie Ogilvy
was born on 23 June
1911 at West Horsley,
Surrey in England. Ogilvy
attended Fettes College,
in Edinburgh. In 1929, he
again won a scholarship,
this time in history to
Christ Church, Oxford.
He left Oxford for Paris in
1931, where he became
an apprentice chef in the
Majestic Hotel. After a
year, he returned to
Scotland and started
selling AGA cookers
door-to-door. His success
at this marked him out to
his employer, who asked
him to write an instruction
manual, The Theory and
Practice of Selling the
AGA Cooker. Thirty years
later, Fortune magazine
editors called it the finest
sales instruction manual
ever written and Ogilvy
went on to become a
giant of advertising.
In 1935, AGA Heat Ltd managing director W.T. Wren appointed his
Scottish sales rep to update how the cooker was being sold and
marketed. Showing impressive prescience, he had given international
advertising legend David Ogilvy his first big break…
How e AGA Became An Icon 15
David Ogilvy pictured in 1938 on board a
ship bound for his new home in America
David Ogilvy devised AGA cooker advertising and provided an explosive critique of the marketing of the parent company,
Allied Ironfounders. Revisiting the report in 1962, he wrote: “It proves two things: a) At 25 I was brilliantly clever; and
b) I have learnt nothing new in the subsequent 27 years.”
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