David Ogilvy Quotes - Page 5

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.

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

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

Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

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

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

It's not creative unless it sells.

It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.

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

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.

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

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

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

If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

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

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

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.

Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself

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.

Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.

I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled.

Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?