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If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.

David Ogilvy

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David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Creative
Doesn
Witty
Advertising
Sell
Sells
Design
Humor
Wise

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.
David Ogilvy
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At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
David Ogilvy
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Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.
David Ogilvy
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What you learn is more important than what you earn.
David Ogilvy
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Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
David Ogilvy
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Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
David Ogilvy
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...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.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
David Ogilvy
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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. Testing was used in advertising decades ago. The internet has made testing so easy that every online marketer can use it to improve advertising results. Google content experiment is a free tool for you to do split testing.
David Ogilvy
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
David Ogilvy
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
David Ogilvy
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You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy
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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
David Ogilvy
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
David Ogilvy
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.
David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy