Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by David Ogilvy, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring David Ogilvy quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 190 David Ogilvy quotes for you to read and share.

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Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped. -- David Ogilvy
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I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product. -- David Ogilvy
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No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me. -- David Ogilvy
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Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom. -- David Ogilvy
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Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client. -- David Ogilvy
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The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money. -- David Ogilvy
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In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. -- David Ogilvy
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Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images -- David Ogilvy
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Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product. -- David Ogilvy
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Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. -- David Ogilvy
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Within every brand is a product, but not every product is a brand. -- David Ogilvy
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You now have to decide what 'image' you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place. -- David Ogilvy
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Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them. -- David Ogilvy
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We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have. -- David Ogilvy
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Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. -- David Ogilvy
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Write the way you talk. Naturally. -- David Ogilvy
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Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money ... If Oxford undergraduates were paid for their work, I would have performed miracles of scholarship and become Regius Professor of Modern History. -- David Ogilvy
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It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. If I do my job well, I shall contribute as much as the hundred scientists to the success of this product. -- David Ogilvy
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Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency. -- David Ogilvy
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It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people. -- David Ogilvy
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Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards. -- David Ogilvy
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Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals. -- David Ogilvy
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Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. -- David Ogilvy
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Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. -- David Ogilvy
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Nobody should be allowed to create general advertising until he has served his apprenticeship in direct-response -- David Ogilvy
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What you learn is more important than what you earn. -- David Ogilvy
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Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure. -- David Ogilvy
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It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business -- David Ogilvy
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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form. -- David Ogilvy
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A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service. -- David Ogilvy
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I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes. -- David Ogilvy
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Be more ambitious. Don't bunt. When you get a job to do a story or an ad, try and hit the ball out of the park every time -- David Ogilvy
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I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself. -- David Ogilvy
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I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners. -- David Ogilvy
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Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people. -- David Ogilvy
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A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning. -- David Ogilvy
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The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace. -- David Ogilvy
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Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?. -- David Ogilvy
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Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it. -- David Ogilvy
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. -- David Ogilvy
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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. -- David Ogilvy
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We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else. -- David Ogilvy
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Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. -- David Ogilvy
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David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote. -- David Ogilvy
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Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday. -- David Ogilvy
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The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason. -- David Ogilvy
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The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising. -- David Ogilvy
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To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?" -- David Ogilvy
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The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions. -- David Ogilvy
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Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society. -- David Ogilvy
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Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest. -- David Ogilvy
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Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns. -- David Ogilvy
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If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself. -- David Ogilvy
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I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language. -- David Ogilvy
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When you have nothing to say, sing it. -- David Ogilvy
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At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. -- David Ogilvy
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Most agencies run scared, most of the time ... Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising ... If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts. -- David Ogilvy
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You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. -- David Ogilvy
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There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers. -- David Ogilvy
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I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive. -- David Ogilvy
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Play to win, but enjoy the fun. -- David Ogilvy
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Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created -- David Ogilvy
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Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell. -- David Ogilvy
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs. -- David Ogilvy
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Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled. -- David Ogilvy
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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. -- David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement. -- David Ogilvy
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The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious. -- David Ogilvy
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Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work. -- David Ogilvy
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Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand. -- David Ogilvy
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Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising. -- David Ogilvy
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I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do. -- David Ogilvy
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We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost - for support, but not for illumination -- David Ogilvy
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The only marketers who know what the hell they're doing are those who have worked in sales -- David Ogilvy
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In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows? -- David Ogilvy
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If you have a truly big idea, the wrong technique won't kill it. And if you don't have a big idea, the right technique won't help you -- David Ogilvy
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way -- David Ogilvy
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Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better able to write. -- David Ogilvy
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If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it, -- David Ogilvy
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There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections. -- David Ogilvy
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Only amateurs use short copy. -- David Ogilvy
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything. -- David Ogilvy
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In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. 'Search the parks in all your cities You'll find no statues of committees. -- David Ogilvy
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Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. -- David Ogilvy
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The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account. -- David Ogilvy
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Never write more than two pages on any subject. -- David Ogilvy
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Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose ... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible. -- David Ogilvy
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I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas -- David Ogilvy
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Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say. -- David Ogilvy
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Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite. -- David Ogilvy
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It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buckpassers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame. -- David Ogilvy
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You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it. -- David Ogilvy
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Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock. -- David Ogilvy
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Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation. -- David Ogilvy
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Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things. -- David Ogilvy
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Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine. -- David Ogilvy
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The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers. -- David Ogilvy
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You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire. -- David Ogilvy
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Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work. -- David Ogilvy
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Senior men have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers and others. Encourage this, you need all the ideas you can get. -- David Ogilvy
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Committees can criticize, but they cannot create. -- David Ogilvy
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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. -- David Ogilvy
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We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company - and above all, honest with consumers. -- David Ogilvy
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Don't count the people that you reach, reach the people who count -- David Ogilvy
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Supposing you've got an acute appendicitis. You've got to be operated on tonight. Would you like to have a surgeon who's read some books of anatomy and knows how to do that operation - or would you prefer to have a surgeon who refused to read all books about anatomy and relied on his own instinct? -- David Ogilvy
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I don't believe in tricky advertising, I don't believe in cute advertising, I don't believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives -- David Ogilvy
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The best idea is the simplest. -- David Ogilvy
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One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation. -- David Ogilvy
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It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money ... -- David Ogilvy
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What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same. -- David Ogilvy
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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals. -- David Ogilvy
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If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising. -- David Ogilvy
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First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it. -- David Ogilvy
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On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. -- David Ogilvy
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Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind -- David Ogilvy
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Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits. -- David Ogilvy
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The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind. -- David Ogilvy
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If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. -- David Ogilvy
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Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass. -- David Ogilvy
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Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them. -- David Ogilvy
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Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough. -- David Ogilvy
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Creativity needs discipline and freedom. -- David Ogilvy
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Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work. -- David Ogilvy
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Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga. -- David Ogilvy
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Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image. -- David Ogilvy
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Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising? -- David Ogilvy
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If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring. -- David Ogilvy
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While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes. -- David Ogilvy
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When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom. -- David Ogilvy
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Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters. -- David Ogilvy
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There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs. -- David Ogilvy
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The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore ... Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospects shows an interest in. -- David Ogilvy
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Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on "teamwork" is bunkum - a conspiracy of the mediocre majority. -- David Ogilvy
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The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife. -- David Ogilvy
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Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous. -- David Ogilvy
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Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising. -- David Ogilvy
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Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands. -- David Ogilvy
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If you can't be brilliant, at least be memorable -- David Ogilvy
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Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand. -- David Ogilvy
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The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything. -- David Ogilvy
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It follows that your advertising should consistently project the same image, year after year. This is difficult to achieve, because there are always forces at work to change the advertising -- David Ogilvy
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It's not creative unless it sells. -- David Ogilvy
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If you can't advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else? -- David Ogilvy
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It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. -- David Ogilvy
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Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster. -- David Ogilvy
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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying. -- David Ogilvy
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There are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife. -- David Ogilvy
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The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the altar of creativity, which really means 'originality': The most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising -- David Ogilvy
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It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye. -- David Ogilvy
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Every advertisement is part of the long term investment in the personality of the brand. -- David Ogilvy
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years. -- David Ogilvy
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If you want ACTION, don't write. Go and tell the guy what you want. -- David Ogilvy
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Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one. -- David Ogilvy
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If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible. -- David Ogilvy
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I have noticed that agencies which are full of fun and ferment seem to create the best advertising. If you are not happy in advertising, for goodness sake find a job in which you would be happy. For as far as I know, we pass this way only once -- David Ogilvy
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It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy. -- David Ogilvy
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I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the baby. -- David Ogilvy
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Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious. -- David Ogilvy
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Don't just create content to get credit for being clever - create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience. -- David Ogilvy
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It isn't the whiskey they choose, it's the image. -- David Ogilvy
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The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad -- David Ogilvy
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A consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. Don't insult her intelligence, and don't shock her. -- David Ogilvy
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Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on. -- David Ogilvy
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What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it. -- David Ogilvy
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I never assign a product to a writer unless I know that he is personally interested in it. Every time I have written a bad campaign, it has been because the product did not interest me. -- David Ogilvy
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The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response; they have never tasted blood -- David Ogilvy
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. -- David Ogilvy
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I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students. -- David Ogilvy
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct? -- David Ogilvy
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It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read. -- David Ogilvy
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Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines ... People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say. -- David Ogilvy
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I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years. -- David Ogilvy
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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. -- David Ogilvy
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Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues. -- David Ogilvy
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Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients. -- David Ogilvy
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I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. -- David Ogilvy
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The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising -- David Ogilvy
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Consumers do not buy one brand of soap, or coffee, or detergent. They have a repertory of four or five brands, and move from one to another. They almost never buy a brand which has not been admitted to their repertory during its first year on the market. -- David Ogilvy
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Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself -- David Ogilvy
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I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings. -- David Ogilvy
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Never allow two people to do a job which one could do. George Washington observed, 'Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by close application thereto, it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein. -- David Ogilvy
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You can't save souls in an empty church. -- David Ogilvy
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Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life -- David Ogilvy
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The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it. -- David Ogilvy
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You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to. -- David Ogilvy
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You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas. -- David Ogilvy
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas. -- David Ogilvy
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People who think well, write well -- David Ogilvy
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Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon. -- David Ogilvy
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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines. -- David Ogilvy