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

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
Enemy
Business
Adverts
People
Generals
Signals
Ignore
Advertising
Research
Dangerous

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The best idea is the simplest.
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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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Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
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Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
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We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
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The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore...... Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospects shows an interest in.
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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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Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
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Leaders grasp nettles.
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I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product.
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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
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Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money...If Oxford undergraduates were paid for their work, I would have performed miracles of scholarship and become Regius Professor of Modern History.
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