Success Quote by David Ogilvy

Ogilvy is doing two things at once: drawing a hard business boundary and taking a sly swipe at the kind of corporate short-termism that makes good advertising impossible. The line reads like advice, but it’s also a warning label. If advertising is “marginal” in the mix, it won’t be treated as strategy; it’ll be treated as a slush fund. “Awkward tendency” is classic Ogilvy understatement, a dry euphemism for panic-driven budget vandalism.

The intent is practical. Ogilvy isn’t romanticizing creativity; he’s protecting the conditions that allow it to work. Advertising needs continuity, testing, and patience. A client who only half-believes in it will demand miracles, then pull the plug the minute a quarterly report looks ugly. By screening those clients out, he’s defending his agency’s ability to produce results and, just as importantly, to claim credit for them.

Subtext: marketing is politics. Budgets aren’t rational allocations; they’re power struggles. When cash gets tight, executives raid the line item that feels least “real” because it’s harder to trace directly to revenue. Ogilvy is calling out that bias: companies love the idea of brand-building until they have to treat it as an investment rather than discretionary spending.

Context matters. Ogilvy built his reputation in an era when modern brand advertising was becoming a boardroom language, but still had to justify itself against sales promotions, distribution spend, and executive instinct. His quote is a pre-emptive contract clause: if you want advertising to perform, don’t treat it like petty cash.