David Ogilvy Quotes

It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to 'come up with something new' every six months. It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. But golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with it over a long period.

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.

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.

Nobody should be allowed to create general advertising until he has served his apprenticeship in direct-response

The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.

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

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.

Committees can criticize, but they cannot create.

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.

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

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

The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I had a friend who was the King's surgeon in England. One day I asked him what makes a great surgeon. He replied, "What distinguishes a great surgeon is his knowledge. He knows more than other surgeons. During an operation he finds something which he wasn't expecting, recognizes it and knows what to do about it." It's the same thing with advertising people. The good ones know more. How do you get to know more? By reading books about advertising. By picking the brains of people who know more than you do. From the Magic Lanterns. And from experience.

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

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.

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

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

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

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.

I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.

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.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

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?.

I once found myself conspiring with a British Cabinet Minister as to how we might persuade Her Majesty's Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said he, "Why does any American in his senses spend his vacation in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian skies? I can only suppose that your advertising is the answer." Damn right.

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

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

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every advertisement is part of the long term investment in the personality of the brand.

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 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

Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself

Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.

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.

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.

Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose ... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

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.

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.

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

Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

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.

Never write more than two pages on any subject.

What you learn is more important than what you earn.

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.

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

Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created

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.

Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.

The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers.

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.

Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society.

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.

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

Play to win, but enjoy the fun.

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.

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

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.

It isn't the whiskey they choose, it's the image.

No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.

I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.

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

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.

Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.

We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost - for support, but not for illumination

Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life

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

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.

Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.

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.

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.

Only amateurs use short copy.

If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.

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