David Ogilvy Quotes - Page 7

The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response; they have never tasted blood

I had a friend who was the King's surgeon in England. One day I asked him what makes a great surgeon. He replied, "What distinguishes a great surgeon is his knowledge. He knows more than other surgeons. During an operation he finds something which he wasn't expecting, recognizes it and knows what to do about it." It's the same thing with advertising people. The good ones know more. How do you get to know more? By reading books about advertising. By picking the brains of people who know more than you do. From the Magic Lanterns. And from experience.

The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

Leaders grasp nettles.

I have noticed that agencies which are full of fun and ferment seem to create the best advertising. If you are not happy in advertising, for goodness sake find a job in which you would be happy. For as far as I know, we pass this way only once

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company - and above all, honest with consumers.

...consumers do not buy one brand of soap, or coffee, or detergent. They have a repertory of four or five brands, and move from one to another. They almost never buy a brand which has not been admitted to their repertory during its first year on the market.

We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.

Most readers look at the photograph first. If you put it in the middle of the page, the reader will start by looking in the middle. Then her eye must go up to read the headline; this doesn't work, because people have a habit of scanning downwards. However, suppose a few readers do read the headline after seeing the photograph below it. After that, you require them to jump down past the photograph which they have already seen. Not bloody likely.

I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.

Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product. I did not know this when I paid Eleanor Roosevelt $35,000 to make a commercial for margarine. She reported that her mail was equally divided. "One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation." Not one of my proudest memories.

Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life

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.

It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.

Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.

The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money.

There are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough.