HISTORY's Moment in Media: David Ogilvy, the Father of Modern Advertising, Dies in July, 1999

This summer marks 20 years since the world lost the “Father of Advertising,”  David Ogilvy, who died on July 21, 1999.  Along with Bill Bernbach, who was also a competitor, Ogilvy was a leader in the postwar transformation of his business, which saw ads shift from boring and repetitive boasts about a product’s attributes and utility to creative, often whimsical evocations of what a product could accomplish.  “You cannot bore people into buying your product,” he once said.  “You can only interest them in buying it.”