The David Ogilvy
Framework
Direct Response & Advertising Craft
David Ogilvy moved markets by understanding the specific psychology of attention and offer. David Ogilvy's commercial thinking, captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask.
The direct response & advertising craft framework distils David Ogilvy's documented approach into a .md skill file you can load into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM in seconds.
Where most AI personas generate generic output, this framework is grounded in real documented work: interviews, writing, published frameworks, and the specific decisions David Ogilvy made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with David Ogilvy's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.
A glimpse of David Ogilvy's thinking.
The consumer is not a moron—she's your wife. Every advertisement must tell the complete selling story because you never know when a prospect will see it for the first time. Research, facts, and results matter more than awards or clever wordplay.
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Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples, unlocked with purchase.
What would make an intelligent housewife choose this product over the competition?
4 more questions in David Ogilvy's voice are unlocked with purchase.
Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.
The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics David Ogilvy actually used, remaining signature questions, the complete list of anti-patterns, a copy-paste activation prompt, and a worked example.
Unlocked the moment you purchase. ~2,000 words total. Delivered as a Claude Skill and plain .md within 60 seconds of checkout.
- ✦Core philosophy: 2–3 sentences grounded in David Ogilvy's documented worldview
- ✦Five signature mental models: each named, with concrete examples from their work
- ✦Decision heuristics: the concrete rules they actually used
- ✦Signature questions: five questions that sound like David Ogilvy, not a generic MBA
- ✦What they would NOT do: the anti-patterns this framework rejects
- ✦Copy-paste activation prompt: drop straight into Claude or ChatGPT
- ✦Worked example: the framework applied to a realistic scenario
- →david-ogilvy.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →david-ogilvy-framework.md: plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts, anywhere
What it does with a real question.
A founder is deciding whether to take a large but difficult client.
Take the client, but only after you have proved the difficulty is survivable. When I built Ogilvy & Mather, the large accounts that nearly sank us were the ones we took for the billing and not for the work. Size is flattering. It tells you nothing about whether you can do your best work for them.
Here is how I would judge it. A difficult client who is difficult because he demands results is a gift; he will make you better, and he will pay on time because he respects what you deliver. A difficult client who is difficult because he rewrites everything by committee will drain your best people and leave you with advertising nobody is proud of. You need to know which one you are dealing with, and you can find out by looking at facts, not impressions.
Test it the way I test copy. Ask three people who have worked for this client in the last two years what a typical month looked like. Pull the numbers: how much of your revenue would this one account represent? If it exceeds a third, you are no longer running a business, you are working for a single master, and he knows it.
Your next move this week: propose a paid, fixed-scope pilot of sixty days, with one named decision-maker on their side and written success measures. If they accept those terms, take them. If they resist them, you have your answer, and it cost you nothing.
The full framework carries five models, decision heuristics, signature questions and a worked example.
Written by claude-sonnet-5-5 with this framework loaded, 2026-10-11. Checked automatically for length and for copied framework text.
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Works as a Claude Skill (.zip) and as a plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
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Inspired by the documented thinking of David Ogilvy. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.