David Ogilvy Quotes - Page 6

Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising.

I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.

When you have nothing to say, sing it.

Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better able to write.

Making the logo twice the size is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. Showing the clients' faces is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.

Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society.

Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on "teamwork" is bunkum - a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.

A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.

There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections.

If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.

I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.

It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business

People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes.

Most agencies run scared, most of the time. . . .Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising. . . . If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.

If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.