"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"
About this Quote
The specific intent is ruthlessly practical: a headline is a targeting tool. Ogilvy isn’t asking you to impress everyone; he’s telling you to identify and stop the right people. “Flag down readers who are prospects” reframes the audience as moving traffic. Readers aren’t seekers of meaning, they’re passersby. Your job is less to persuade the whole crowd than to signal value to those already predisposed to care.
The subtext is where the cold elegance sits. Ogilvy assumes the product is a given; the creative act is largely a system for matching product to buyer efficiently. That’s why “the kind of product you are advertising” matters: the headline must pre-qualify. Done well, it doesn’t just attract attention, it repels the wrong attention, saving budget and protecting the brand from being misunderstood.
Contextually, this is mid-century mass media logic: print ads, direct response discipline, measurable outcomes. Ogilvy helped professionalize persuasion by making it sound like logistics. The line still reads modern because the internet only intensified his premise: the headline isn’t art on a pedestal, it’s a filter in a feed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
|---|---|
| Source | Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy, 1983) — on headlines: "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." |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ogilvy, David. (2026, January 18). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-headline-is-the-ticket-on-the-meat-use-it-to-6332/
Chicago Style
Ogilvy, David. "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." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-headline-is-the-ticket-on-the-meat-use-it-to-6332/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-headline-is-the-ticket-on-the-meat-use-it-to-6332/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
