David Ogilvy Quotes - Page 2

What you learn is more important than what you earn.

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

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.

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.

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.

Play to win, but enjoy the fun.

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.

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

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

The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.

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

Compete with the immortals

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created

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

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

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

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.

Big ideas are usually simple ideas.

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