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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.

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
Wells
Advertising
Well
Test
Important
Product
Tests
Products
Leadership
Marketplace
Word
Vocabulary
Business
Consumers

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If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.
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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.
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Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
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Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.
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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
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Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
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Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
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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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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
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Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
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What you learn is more important than what you earn.
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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?
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You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
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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.
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At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
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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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