David Ogilvy Quotes
160 David Ogilvy Quotes
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Avoid clients whose ethos is incompatible with yours. I refused Charles Revson of Revlon and Lew Rosentiel of Schenley.
David Ogilvy
Once upon a time, the head of a big corporation went into Cartier’s and ordered a diamond bracelet for his wife, ‘Send the bill to my office,’ said he. Nothing doing – Cartier had never heard of his corporation. The next morning he instructed his agency to prepare a corporate advertising campaign.
David Ogilvy
When you have nothing to say, sing it.
David Ogilvy
The secret of a long life is double careers. One to about age 60, then another for the next thirty years.
David Ogilvy
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
David Ogilvy
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or as an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that it is ‘creative’. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
David Ogilvy
[On Martin Sorrell] When he tried to take over our company I would have liked to have killed him. But it was not legal. I wish I had known him 40 years ago. I like him enormously now.
David Ogilvy
The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.
David Ogilvy
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.
David Ogilvy
I know other writers who are much more fluent, and facile, and surer-footed, and can write their stuff down, and that’s the way it runs. I’m not that good. I’m awfully slow. I’ve done as many as 19 drafts on a single piece of copy before I’ve presented it to anyone to edit. I wrote 37 headlines for Sears Roebuck last week and I think three that I thought were good enough to submit to other people for their comment. So, you see, the writing business is not easy for me.
David Ogilvy
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.
David Ogilvy
Five times as many people read the headline than do the body copy in a sales message. This means that unless your headline actually helps sell what you’ve got to offer, you’ll have wasted 90 percent of your time, money and energy.
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 80 cents out of your dollar.
David Ogilvy
[His favorite headline he wrote] Send us your dollar and we’ll cure your hemorrhoids. Or keep your dollar, and keep your hemorrhoids.
David Ogilvy
Most original thinking isn’t even verbal. It requires a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.
David Ogilvy
I try to write from one human being to another being in the second person, singular.
David Ogilvy
It’s not creative unless it sells.
David Ogilvy
Products, like people, are most interesting when they are first born.
David Ogilvy
Write headlines that will sell. Do not worry about the length. Twelve-word headlines get almost as much readership as three-word headlines.
David Ogilvy
Do not try to be too clever.
David Ogilvy
Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
David Ogilvy
At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
David Ogilvy
Researchers have not yet found a way to quantify the effectiveness of emotion, but I have come to believe that commercials with a large content of nostalgia, charm, and even sentimentality can be enormously effective… I hasten to add that consumers also need a rational excuse to justify their emotional decisions.
David Ogilvy
I am astonished to find how many manufacturers, on both sides of the Atlantic, still believe that women can be persuaded by logic and argument to buy one brand in preference to another. The greater the similarity between products, the less part reason plays in brand selection.
David Ogilvy
Demonstrations don’t have to be dull. To demonstrate how strong paper-board can be, International Paper spanned a canyon with a bridge made of paper-board – and then drove a heavy truck over it.
David Ogilvy
For food advertising ‘build your advertisement around appetite appeal. The larger your food illustration, the more appetite appeal.
David Ogilvy
Agencies are indulging in a lot of campaigns which burnish their reputations for ‘creativity’ but do not try to sell the product.
David Ogilvy
Until 1976, Procter and Gamble eschewed music, but they are now using it, albeit in only 10 percent of their commercials. And they now use a touch of humor in some of their commercials.
David Ogilvy
You should try to charm to consumer into buying your product.
David Ogilvy
Your new book is remarkable – even if it is over my head. The only parts I can understand are the quotations from me and such like… I wonder who your target audience is?… Forgive me for being so damn dumb.
David Ogilvy
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.
David Ogilvy
I have learned from my own mistakes, from the counsel of my partners, from the literature, from George Gallup, RaymondRubicam and Marvin Bower.
David Ogilvy
My partners are sick to death of hearing me exhort them to conduct our business the way McKinsey conducts theirs.
David Ogilvy
The great leaders I have known have been curiously complicated men. Howard Johnson, the former President of MIT, has described it as ‘a visceral form of spiritual energy which provides the element of mystery in leadership.’
David Ogilvy
Superior service to our clients depends on making the most of our people. Give them challenging opportunities, recognition for achievement, job enrichment, and the maximum responsibility. Treat them as grown-ups – and they will grow up. Help them when they are in difficulty. Be affectionate and human.
David Ogilvy
Ask their advice – and listen to it.
David Ogilvy
It does a company no good when its leader refuses to share his leadership functions with his lieutenants.
David Ogilvy
The more centers of leadership you find in a company, the stronger it will become.
David Ogilvy
It is said that if you send an engraved wedding-invitation to my friend Marvin Bower, the great man of McKinsey, he will return it to you – with revisions.
David Ogilvy
[On his written set of principles and purpose] On the first page I had listed seven purposes, starting with ‘earn an increased profit each year.’ Marvin gave me holy hell. He said that any service business that gave higher priority to profits than to serving its clients deserved to fail. So I relegated profit to seventh place on my list.
David Ogilvy
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
David Ogilvy
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