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.
DAVID OGILVYOn 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.
More David Ogilvy Quotes
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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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Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
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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.
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Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.
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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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I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
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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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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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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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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
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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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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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Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
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The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
DAVID OGILVY