Top 100 David Ogilvy Quotes
#1. I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising.
Jerry Della Femina
#2. Before he became the most brilliant and famous man in the ad business, David Ogilvy sold ovens door-to-door. Because of that, he never forgot that advertising is just a slightly more scalable form of creating demand than door-to-door sales.
Ryan Holiday
#3. Winston Churchill said that appetite was the most important thing about education. Leadership guru Warren Bennis says he wants to be remembered as 'curious to the end.' David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity 'about every subject under the sun.'
Tom Peters
#4. David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.
David Ogilvy
#5. It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business
David Ogilvy
#6. We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company - and above all, honest with consumers.
David Ogilvy
#7. I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.
David Ogilvy
#8. Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.
David Ogilvy
#9. 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
#10. Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
David Ogilvy
#11. Committees can criticize, but they cannot create.
David Ogilvy
#12. Senior men have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers and others. Encourage this, you need all the ideas you can get.
David Ogilvy
#13. It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. If I do my job well, I shall contribute as much as the hundred scientists to the success of this product.
David Ogilvy
#14. Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
David Ogilvy
#15. You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy
#16. The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers.
David Ogilvy
#17. Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose ... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
David Ogilvy
#18. Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
David Ogilvy
#19. Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
David Ogilvy
#20. Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.
David Ogilvy
#21. 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
#22. You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it.
David Ogilvy
#23. It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buckpassers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame.
David Ogilvy
#24. Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure.
David Ogilvy
#25. Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
David Ogilvy
#26. I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.
David Ogilvy
#27. In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
David Ogilvy
#28. Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
David Ogilvy
#29. I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas
David Ogilvy
#30. 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
#31. A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning.
David Ogilvy
#32. Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
David Ogilvy
#33. Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
David Ogilvy
#34. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.
David Ogilvy
#36. The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money.
David Ogilvy
#37. The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
David Ogilvy
#38. Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.
David Ogilvy
#39. Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind
David Ogilvy
#40. It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy
#41. Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.
David Ogilvy
#42. Don't count the people that you reach, reach the people who count
David Ogilvy
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.
David Ogilvy
#46. Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy
#47. What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.
David Ogilvy
#48. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money ...
David Ogilvy
#49. One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation.
David Ogilvy
#51. I don't believe in tricky advertising, I don't believe in cute advertising, I don't believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives
David Ogilvy
#52. Supposing you've got an acute appendicitis. You've got to be operated on tonight. Would you like to have a surgeon who's read some books of anatomy and knows how to do that operation - or would you prefer to have a surgeon who refused to read all books about anatomy and relied on his own instinct?
David Ogilvy
#53. Within every brand is a product, but not every product is a brand.
David Ogilvy
#54. If you have a truly big idea, the wrong technique won't kill it. And if you don't have a big idea, the right technique won't help you
David Ogilvy
#55. Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.
David Ogilvy
#56. Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
David Ogilvy
#57. Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created
David Ogilvy
#59. I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.
David Ogilvy
#60. Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images
David Ogilvy
#61. I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product.
David Ogilvy
#62. 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
#63. Nobody should be allowed to create general advertising until he has served his apprenticeship in direct-response
David Ogilvy
#64. The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.
David Ogilvy
#65. Most agencies run scared, most of the time ... Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising ... If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.
David Ogilvy
#66. At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
David Ogilvy
#68. We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.
David Ogilvy
#69. I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.
David Ogilvy
#70. If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
David Ogilvy
#71. Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
David Ogilvy
#72. Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
David Ogilvy
#73. Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society.
David Ogilvy
#74. The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
David Ogilvy
#75. To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?"
David Ogilvy
#76. 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
#77. You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.
David Ogilvy
#78. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
David Ogilvy
#79. The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.
David Ogilvy
#80. 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 Ogilvy
#81. In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. 'Search the parks in all your cities You'll find no statues of committees.
David Ogilvy
#82. Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
David Ogilvy
#84. There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections.
David Ogilvy
#85. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it,
David Ogilvy
#86. 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.
David Ogilvy
#87. Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.
David Ogilvy
#88. My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
David Ogilvy
#89. I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
David Ogilvy
#90. In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows?
David Ogilvy
#91. The only marketers who know what the hell they're doing are those who have worked in sales
David Ogilvy
#92. We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost - for support, but not for illumination
David Ogilvy
#93. 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
#94. I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.
David Ogilvy
#95. 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
#96. Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
David Ogilvy
#97. Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
David Ogilvy
#98. The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.
David Ogilvy
#99. I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
#100. People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
David Ogilvy
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