David Ogilvy Quotes

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.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

Within every brand is a product, but not every product is a brand.

Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, "Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of toilet soap if only they hadn't set the body copy in ten point Garamond." Don't you believe it. What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

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

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.

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.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.

Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

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.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants

The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides the reader whether to read the copy.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.

Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created

I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.

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.

It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business

The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

What you learn is more important than what you earn.

The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.

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.

A consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. Don't insult her intelligence, and don't shock her.

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.

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.

Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.

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.

Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

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.

Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.

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.

It's not creative unless it sells.

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.

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.

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.

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.

Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.

I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.

If you can’t be brilliant, at least be memorable

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.