David Ogilvy Quotes - Page 3

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

You can't save souls in an empty church.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad

No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.

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?.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

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.

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.