Quotes By David Ogilvy

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.

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

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.

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.

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.

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.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

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, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

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.

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.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

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.

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

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.

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