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 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 OGILVYThe most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.
DAVID OGILVYWhat really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
DAVID OGILVYIn the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
DAVID OGILVYMany people – and I think I am one of them – are more productive when they’ve had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I’m far better able to write.
DAVID OGILVYPolitical advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.
DAVID OGILVYRemove 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 OGILVYDevelop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.
DAVID OGILVYMany 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 OGILVYIf it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
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.
DAVID OGILVYNinety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.
DAVID OGILVYGood copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.
DAVID OGILVYThere 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 OGILVYNever stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
DAVID OGILVYA good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
DAVID OGILVY