David Ogilvy Quotes - 9quotes.com

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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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
Written by David Ogilvy
The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.
Written by David Ogilvy
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
Written by David Ogilvy
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
Written by David Ogilvy
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
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.
Written by David Ogilvy
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
Written by David Ogilvy

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