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 OGILVYI 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.
More David Ogilvy Quotes
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
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 -
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
DAVID OGILVY -
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
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 -
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
DAVID OGILVY -
Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
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 -
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
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 -
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 -
Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
DAVID OGILVY -
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
DAVID OGILVY -
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
DAVID OGILVY -
First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.
DAVID OGILVY






