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 OGILVYIt 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.
More David Ogilvy Quotes
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It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.
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A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
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Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
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Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
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Many 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.
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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.
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Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
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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.
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On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.
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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.
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Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
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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.
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The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
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If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
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I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
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Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
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Many 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.
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The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
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In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
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Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.
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Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
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Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
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There 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 OGILVY