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If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.

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
Another
Built
Agency
Ever
Nobody
Campaign
Great
Somebody
Brands
Good
Worry
Stealing
Imitating
Economy
Campaigns
Irritated
Create
Advertising
Irritating
Business
Fortune
Steal
Else
Soon
Brand

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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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.
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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
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If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
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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.
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If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
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The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.
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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.
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I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.
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It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
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You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
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I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
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In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
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The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
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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.
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Creativity needs discipline and freedom.
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I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas
David Ogilvy
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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.
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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.
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