David Ogilvy Quotes

If you want to be interesting, be interested.

When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.

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

What you learn is more important than what you earn.

Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.

Compete with the immortals

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

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.

You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it.

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

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

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

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.

If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

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

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.

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

I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.

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.

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.

Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever — create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.

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

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.

My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way

Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.

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

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

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.

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

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

The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore. Foster any attempt to talk about other things; the longer you stay the better you get to know the prospect, and the more you will be trusted.

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

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

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

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.

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 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

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

Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.

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

Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.

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

It's not creative unless it sells.

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

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

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

I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.

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

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.