Success Quote by David Ogilvy

Ogilvy’s insult lands because it’s aimed at a modern corporate vice: outsourcing responsibility. He isn’t anti-data; he’s anti-cowardice dressed up as rigor. The lamp post image turns “research” from a tool into a prop, a piece of street furniture executives cling to so they won’t have to admit what’s really happening - they’re afraid to be wrong in public, and they’d rather be safely bland in a committee than boldly right on a bet.

The line works as a miniature moral fable. A drunk doesn’t use the lamp to see; he uses it to stay upright. Ogilvy suggests research can be misused the same way: not to reveal a consumer truth, but to justify a decision already made, or to avoid making one at all. That’s the subtext: numbers become a shield. If the campaign fails, you can blame “the data” instead of your taste, your nerve, or your understanding of people.

Context matters. Ogilvy came up in an era when advertising sold itself on craft - copy, positioning, psychological insight - just as postwar corporate America was professionalizing into systems, reports, and measurable “scientific” management. Market research was exploding in status, and with it the temptation to treat focus groups and surveys as oracles. Ogilvy’s point is that research should sharpen judgment, not replace it. In creative work, especially persuasion, the most dangerous thing isn’t ignorance; it’s the comfort of evidence that hasn’t actually illuminated anything.