David Ogilvy Quotes about Business

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.

Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

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

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.

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.

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

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.