David Ogilvy Quotes
The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising
David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.
Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
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.
Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.
Agencies which frequently work nights and weekends are more stimulating, more successful - and more profitable.
It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.
Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.
Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.
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
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.
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.
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
You now have to decide what 'image' you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
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.
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
