David Ogilvy - Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)

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I once found myself conspiring with a British Cabinet Minister as to how we might persuade Her Majesty's Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said he, "Why does any American in his senses spend his vacation in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian skies? I can only suppose that your advertising is the answer." Damn right.

David Ogilvy
It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to 'come up with something new' every six months. It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. But golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with it over a long period.

David Ogilvy
H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that it pays to make all your layouts project a feeling of good taste, provided that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a first class ticket through life.

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
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
The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising

David Ogilvy
I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the baby.

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

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
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
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

David Ogilvy
Make sure that your agency makes a profit. Your account competes with all the other accounts in your agency. If it is unprofitable, it is unlikely that the management of the agency will assign their best men to work on it. And sooner or later they will cast about for a profitable account to replace yours.

David Ogilvy
It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

David Ogilvy
Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

David Ogilvy
The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Try not to insult her intelligence.

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

David Ogilvy
To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?"

David Ogilvy
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?

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

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
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

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

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