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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.

David Ogilvy

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 more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Information Persuasion
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Important Marketing Place Product Vocabulary Word Yourself
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Agency Egg Genius Gold Man
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Committee Creation Mess See Television
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
DAVID OGILVY

Business Idiot Infest Ourselves Pretend
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
DAVID OGILVY

Best Funny Ideas Possible Thinking Yourself
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
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Entertainment Information Regard
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Editor Need 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
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Brand Complex Contribution Image
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Campaign Exception Live Wife World
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Consumer Himself Honesty Wife
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Brand Decision Image Market People Personality Place Yourself
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertising Dangerous Enemy Ignorance Research Signal
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.
DAVID OGILVY

Creative Genius Leaving Reputation Surround Yourself
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

Believe Goodness Live Product Writing Yourself
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
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Sale
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Evil Limitation
The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
DAVID OGILVY

Consumer Herself Wife
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 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
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
DAVID OGILVY

Creative Sale
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

Goal Hire Leaving People Remark Settle Yourself
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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