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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

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
Really
Decides
Insightful
Consumers
Marketing
Advertising
Content
Business
Form

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
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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Compete with the immortals
David Ogilvy
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A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
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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Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
David Ogilvy
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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
David Ogilvy
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Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough.
David Ogilvy
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
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.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes.
David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
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You can't save souls in an empty church.
David Ogilvy
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Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled.
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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Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
David Ogilvy
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Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
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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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.
David Ogilvy