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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.

David Ogilvy

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Influence Reflection Society
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
DAVID OGILVY

Creative Sale
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Abstract Illustration Manufacturer Myself Painting Reading
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Avoid Awkward Cash Client Factor Myself Purpose
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Company Hire Inspirational People Perspective Small Thinking
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Attention Draw Goodness Product Sale
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Buy Consumer Decision Form
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Believe Power Sale
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Head Kind Product Reading Ticket
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Honesty Politics Stop
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Evil Limitation
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Average Money People Reading Time Yourself
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
DAVID OGILVY

Big Excellence Profit Pursuit Satisfaction
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

Drink Executive Illumination Marketing Myself Notice Research
The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
DAVID OGILVY

Consumer Herself Wife
The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
DAVID OGILVY

Career Life Secret Time

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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Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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