Quotes By David Ogilvy

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

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.

Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.