David Ogilvy Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.

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.

David Ogilvy
Most agencies run scared, most of the time....Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising.... If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.

David Ogilvy
If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.

David Ogilvy
You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

David Ogilvy
I'd like to ask each and every one of you how many remarkable people, or people of any kind, you personally have discovered or brought in in the last year. That's a job that I think is too vital for you to delegate... what kind of people should you discover and hire? Well, policemen and tobacco farmers, not MBAs! Clients have got MBAs! Hire the kind of people clients don't have and wouldn't dream of hiring. Don't go to the clients with a lot of guys who are like theirs, only not so good — you have to remember that clients can afford to pay far more than we can for MBAs.

David Ogilvy
I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.

David Ogilvy
Claude Hopkins... maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.

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
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.

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
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

David Ogilvy
Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

David Ogilvy
Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

David Ogilvy
It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. If I do my job well, I shall contribute as much as the hundred scientists to the success of this product.

David Ogilvy
It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

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.

David Ogilvy
It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buckpassers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame.

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
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

David Ogilvy
Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.

David Ogilvy
Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money...If Oxford undergraduates were paid for their work, I would have performed miracles of scholarship and become Regius Professor of Modern History.

David Ogilvy
The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them...This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life.

David Ogilvy
I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.

David Ogilvy
Making the logo twice the size is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. Showing the clients' faces is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.

David Ogilvy
Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.

David Ogilvy
We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company - and above all, honest with consumers.

David Ogilvy
When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.

David Ogilvy
Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on "teamwork" is bunkum - a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.

David Ogilvy
The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money.

David Ogilvy