David Ogilvy Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

David Ogilvy
Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images.

David Ogilvy
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

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
Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

David Ogilvy
As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?

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
Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.

David Ogilvy
The biggest problem which besets almost every agency is the problem of producing good campaigns. Copywriters, art directors, and television producers are easily come by, but the number of men who can preside over an agency's entire creative output - perhaps a hundred new campaigns every year - can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. These rare trumpeter swans must be capable of inspiring a motley crew of writers and artists; they must be sure-footed judges of campaigns for a wide range of different products; they must be good presenters; and they must have a colossal appetite for midnight oil.

David Ogilvy
I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product.

David Ogilvy
You have only 30 seconds [in a TV commercial]. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull... When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.

David Ogilvy
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.

David Ogilvy
Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

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.

David Ogilvy
The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.

David Ogilvy
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

David Ogilvy
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.

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.

David Ogilvy
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

David Ogilvy
I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have a previous engagement with another client; successful polygamy depends upon pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach.

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.

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
There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

David Ogilvy
You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it.

David Ogilvy
I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.

David Ogilvy
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

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.

David Ogilvy
Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure.

David Ogilvy
… there are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.

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