David Ogilvy - Clients Quotes

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The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.

David Ogilvy
I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.

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 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
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
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
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
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
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
Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.

David Ogilvy
Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled.

David Ogilvy