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 OGILVYThe pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
More David Ogilvy Quotes
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.
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The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
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The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
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Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
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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 pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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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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A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
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If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
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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.
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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.
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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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Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.
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Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
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Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.
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The 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.
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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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If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
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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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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
DAVID OGILVY