David Ogilvy Quotes

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

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

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

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.

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

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.

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, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

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.

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

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?.

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?

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.

Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

Don't count the people that you reach, reach the people who count

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.

Play to win, but enjoy the fun.

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

The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.

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

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.

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

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.

Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.

Big ideas are usually simple ideas.

Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.

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.

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?

The best idea is the simplest.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.

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.

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.

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.