My policy has always been that of J.P. Morgan – ‘only first-class business, and that in a first-class way’ – but at first I had to take anything I could get, to pay the rent. A patent hairbrush, a tortoise, an English motorbike. But I also had the good fortune to get four small accounts which gave me a chance to produce the kind of sophisticated advertising which attracts attention to an agency: Guinness, Hathaway shirts, Schweppes and Rolls-Royce. The easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising. During one period of seven years, we never failed to win an account for which we competed, and all I did was to show the campaigns we had created. Sometimes, I did not even have to do that. One afternoon, a man walked into my office without an appointment and gave me the IBM account; he knew our work. This unparalleled run of success gave me a swelled head. When Dr. Anton Rupert told me that he had it in mind to market Rothmans cigarettes in the United States and asked me to do the advertising, I declined with such hubris that he said, ‘Mr. Ogilvy, I hope to meet you again – when you are on your way down.’ We did not meet again for 25 years, when we were both on the Executive Committee of the World Wildlife Fund. He is a great man. In recent years, manufacturers have complicated the process of selecting agencies beyond reason. They start by sending long questionnaires to a dozen or more agencies. Idiotic questions like: ‘How many persons are employed in your print production department?’ To which I answered, ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea. I haven’t been in the department for seven years. Why do you think it matters?’