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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
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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
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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
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You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it.
David Ogilvy
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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
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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
David Ogilvy
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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
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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
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… 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
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Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
David Ogilvy
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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
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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
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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
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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
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You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.
David Ogilvy
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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
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I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
David Ogilvy
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Claude Hopkins... maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.
David Ogilvy
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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
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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
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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
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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
David Ogilvy
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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
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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
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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
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Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth.
John Lyly
David Ogilvy
Born:
June 23, 1911
Died:
July 21, 1999
(aged 88)
Bio:
David Mackenzie Ogilvy was an advertising executive who was widely hailed as "The Father of Advertising". In 1962, Time called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry".
Known for:
Ogilvy on Advertising (1983)
Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)
An Autobiography (1978)
The Private Pilot's Licence (1987)
Most used words:
advertising
people
product
agency
write
advertisements
buy
clients
men
consumer
headline
big
brand
idea
work
David Ogilvy on Wikipedia
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