39 David Ogilvy Quotes

David Ogilvy quotes

1. 'At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.' 1958

2. '... 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.'

3. 'Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure.'

4. '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.'

5. 'When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: 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.'

6. '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.'

7. 'We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost -- for support, but not for illumination.'

8. '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.'

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

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

11. 'Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, 'Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of toilet soap if only they hadn't set the body copy in ten point Garamond.' Don't you believe it. What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.'

12. 'H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that it pays to make all your layouts project a feeling of good taste, provided that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a first class ticket through life.'

13. '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. Therefore, study the graphics used by editors and imitate them. Study the graphics used in advertisements, and avoid them.'

1. I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.

2. I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.

3. 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?

4. 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.

5. Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

6. You can't save souls in an empty church.

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

8. Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.

9. You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.

10. The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore. Foster any attempt to talk about other things; the longer you stay the better you get to know the prospect, and the more you will be trusted.

11. 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.

12. Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

13. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.

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

15. 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?.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides the reader whether to read the copy.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.

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

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

25. Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

26. 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.