The opportunity to delight people you want to make a big impression on (investor, potential client, company leader, hiring manager, founder etc.) is easier now than it was 10 years ago. 

However people still choose average.

This reminds me of the day I got hired at Ogilvy by the great Admen jacques burger, Mike Abel and friend Jason Harrison 

David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency explains his philosophy on hiring in one of his books…

“When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message:

“If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

I found a shop in a backstreet of Cape Town CBD that sold traditional Russian Dolls and bought a set and followed suit and hand delivered them with the same message to Jacques but signed it Will Green.

I got the opportunity to work with the best in the business and learnt at the “University of Marketing” and am a proud “Ogilverian.” 

There is no excuse for being average.