David Ogilvy Quotes

160 David Ogilvy Quotes

1 2 3 4



Top bananas have no monopoly on ideas.
David Ogilvy

If you know how to make yourself indispensable to a client, you will never get fired.
David Ogilvy

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 should become a company of giants.
David Ogilvy

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.
David Ogilvy

You cannot bore people into buying your product.
David Ogilvy

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
David Ogilvy

The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. And she is grown up.
David Ogilvy

Twenty-four out of twenty-five products do not survive the test of the marketplace.
David Ogilvy

Don’t call a meeting in your office – it scares people. Go and see them in their offices.
David Ogilvy

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



Advertise what is unique.
David Ogilvy

The greater the similarity between products, the less part reason plays in brand selection.
David Ogilvy

Treat them as grown-ups – and they will grow up.
David Ogilvy

The motivation which makes a man a good student is not the kind of motivation which makes him a good leader.
David Ogilvy

Great leaders are always fanatically committed to their jobs.
David Ogilvy

Good leaders are decisive.
David Ogilvy

People do their best work in a happy atmosphere.
David Ogilvy

Big ideas come from the unconscious.
David Ogilvy

If the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.
David Ogilvy

In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.
David Ogilvy



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

Try to make working at Ogilvy and Mather fun. When people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good advertising. Kill grimness with laughter. Maintain an atmosphere of informality. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.
David Ogilvy

No creative organization… will produce a great body of work unless it is led by a formidable individual.
David Ogilvy

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.
David Ogilvy

Arrange your business so people can take pleasure in working for you. When your employees are bored, they rarely do good work.
David Ogilvy

In the modern business world, being an original and creative brain is useless if you are not able to sell what you create. Don’t expect the management of a company to recognize a good idea if it is not presented to them by a good sales person.
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognise a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.
David Ogilvy

You cannot bore people into buying your product. You must interest them into buying it. You cannot save souls in an empty church.
David Ogilvy

I want all of our people to believe they are working for the best agency in the world. A sense of pride works wonders.
David Ogilvy

Some people use research like a drunkard uses a lamppost; for support, not illumination.
David Ogilvy

The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.
David Ogilvy



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

When the client moans and sighs Make his logo twice the size. If he should still prove refractory, Show a picture of his factory. Only in the gravest cases Should you show the clients’ faces.
David Ogilvy

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs, The homely hen lays one. The codfish never cackles To tell you what she’s done – And so we scorn the codfish While the humble hen we prize, It only goes to show you That is pays to advertise!
David Ogilvy

Carnation milk is the best in the land; Here I sit with my can in my hand- No tits to pull, no hay to pitch, You just punch a hole in the son-of-a-bitch.
David Ogilvy

They copied my ideas But they couldn’t copy my mind So I left them a’sweatin’ and a stealin’ A year and a half behind.
David Ogilvy

Manufacturers who don’t test their products incur the colossal cost (and disgrace) of having their products fail on a national scale, instead of dying inconspicuously and economically in test markets.
David Ogilvy

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

I find extravagance esthetically repulsive. I find the New England Puritan tradition more attractive. And more profitable. It is a matter of posture, manners, style and habit.
David Ogilvy

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.
David Ogilvy

The wrong advertising can actually reduce the sales of a product. I am told that George Hay Brown, at one time head of marketing research at Ford, inserted advertisements in every other copy of the Reader’s Digest. At the end of the year, the people who had not been exposed to the advertising had bought more Fords than those who had.
David Ogilvy



1 2 3 4


Return from David Ogilvy Quotes to Quoteswise.com