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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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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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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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
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Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
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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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Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
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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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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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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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Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
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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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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
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Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
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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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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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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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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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Leaders grasp nettles.
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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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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.
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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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A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
DAVID OGILVY