If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
DAVID OGILVYSome manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
More David Ogilvy Quotes
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The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
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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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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.
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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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Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
DAVID OGILVY -
Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
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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 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 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 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 OGILVY -
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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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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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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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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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.
DAVID OGILVY