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.
David Ogilvy
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
David Ogilvy
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy
Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
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.
David Ogilvy
Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.
David Ogilvy
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose… the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
David Ogilvy
Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
David Ogilvy
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
David Ogilvy
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.
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.
David Ogilvy
Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.
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.
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.
David Ogilvy
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
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.
David Ogilvy
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.
David Ogilvy