David Ogilvy Quotes
-
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.
-
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
-
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
-
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
-
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
-
The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.
-
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
-
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 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.
-
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.
-
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
-
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
-
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.
-
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
-
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.
-
Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
-
Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
-
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.