David Ogilvy the Businessman, biography, facts and quotes

"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"

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

"If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative"

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

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

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

"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"

"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"

"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"

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

"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"

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

"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"

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

"Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous"

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

"Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals"

"Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things"

"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"

"Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped"

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

"Leaders grasp nettles"

"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"

"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"

"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"

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

"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"

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

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

"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"

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

"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"

"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"

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

"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"

"I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination"

"I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive"

"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 do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

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

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

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

Born as	David Mackenzie Ogilvy
Occup.	Businessman
From	England
Born	June 23, 1911 West Horsley, Surrey in England
Died	July 21, 1999
Aged	88 years

David Ogilvy Biography

48 Famous quotes by David Ogilvy