David Ogilvy Quotes

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

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.

Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.

Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.

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

...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.

One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation.

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

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.

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.

You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

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.

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.

If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.

Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious.

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.

I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have a previous engagement with another client; successful polygamy depends upon pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach.

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

Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

Leaders grasp nettles.

To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?"

It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.

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.

There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections.

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

Agencies which frequently work nights and weekends are more stimulating, more successful - and more profitable.

The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad

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.

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.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

The only marketers who know what the hell they're doing are those who have worked in sales

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.

If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.

The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them...This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life.

Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.

As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?

Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.

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.

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.

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.

People who think well, write well

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.