David ogilvy quotes

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

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.

It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read.

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.

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work.

Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.

Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.

The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.

Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.

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.

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.

Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever — create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.

To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?"

Write the way you talk. Naturally.

If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?

The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore...... Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospects shows an interest in.

Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself

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

You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.

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

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.

Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.

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

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.

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.

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

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.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

Leaders grasp nettles.

I never assign a product to a writer unless I know that he is personally interested in it. Every time I have written a bad campaign, it has been because the product did not interest me.

When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.

Agencies which frequently work nights and weekends are more stimulating, more successful - and more profitable.

If you want to be interesting, be interested.

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

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

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.

Every advertisement is part of the long term investment in the personality of the brand.

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.

If you can’t be brilliant, at least be memorable

What you learn is more important than what you earn.

Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society.

If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.

Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.

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.

I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.

Play to win, but enjoy the fun.

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.

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

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. People love to read stories. They like to know you as a real person who has your struggle, pain, success and failure, etc. One well-known example is Jared Fogle's weight loss story which made millions of dollars for Subway. Start to collect your stories from today and use them in your ad campaigns.

The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising

People who think well, write well

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

The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response; they have never tasted blood

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?.

Never write more than two pages on any subject.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

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.

We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.

Big ideas are usually simple ideas.

As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?

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.

If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.

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.

When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.

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

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 made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.

You can't save souls in an empty church.

The best idea is the simplest.

We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.

It's not creative unless it sells.

Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created

Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious.

The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides the reader whether to read the copy.

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

Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.

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.

I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.

Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising.

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.

Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.

Creativity needs discipline and freedom.

It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.

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.

Compete with the immortals

It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to 'come up with something new' every six months. It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. But golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with it over a long period.

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

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.

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it.

While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes.

A consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. Don't insult her intelligence, and don't shock her.

Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.

Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

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

When you have nothing to say, sing it.

Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.

Within every brand is a product, but not every product is a brand.

You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. Three million consumers get married every year. The advertisement which sold a refrigerator to those who got married last year will probably be just as successful with those who'll get married next year. An advertisement is just like a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as they come into the market. Get a good radar and keep it sweeping.

The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

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?

Don't count the people that you reach, reach the people who count

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.

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.

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.

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.

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.

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.

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.

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

Be more ambitious. Don't bunt. When you get a job to do a story or an ad, try and hit the ball out of the park every time