David Ogilvy Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

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
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

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
We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.

David Ogilvy
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

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.

David Ogilvy
There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections.

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
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
You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.

David Ogilvy
Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?

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

David Ogilvy
There isn't any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

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
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
The best headline I ever wrote contained eighteen words: At Sixty Miles an Hour the Loudest Noise in the New Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.

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
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
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
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

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
Agencies which frequently work nights and weekends are more stimulating, more successful - and more profitable.

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
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 success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.

David Ogilvy