I'm Rory Sutherland, I'm the Vice Chairman of Oglevin Mesa in the UK.

Now, that is a pretty impressive title, but we should say you hardly had a typical climb

up the corporate ladder did you, you've been described as the worst trainee, quote,

Oglevin Mesa ever had.

Yes, I was actually so bad that I was booked onto a time management course and I got the

date one.

So I turned up at this empty building expecting a time management course only to find it was

the following week.

Oglevin Mesa is a gigantic global marketing and advertising firm, part of the even more

gigantic WPP.

O&M was founded in 1948 by David Oglevin, a legend on Madison Avenue.

Born in England as a child, he lived in a house where Lewis Carroll used to live.

The headmaster at his boarding school wrote that Oglevin had, quote, a distinctly original

mind inclined to argue with his teachers and to try to convince them that he is right

and the books are wrong.

David Oglevin's peers went on to become doctors, lawyers, politicians.

He became, as he would later write, a chef in Paris, a door-to-door salesman, a social

worker in the Edinburgh slums, an associate of Dr. Gallup in research for the motion picture

industry, and a farmer in Pennsylvania.

Ultimately, he took up advertising.

Oglevin's firm was responsible for a number of commercials, with which you are likely familiar.

Do you know me?

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