Quote

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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David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Product
Secretly
Products
Competitors
Afraid
Steal
Question
March
Whether
Stealing
Might
Stopped
Many
Advertising
Manufacturers
Really
Sells
Vaguely

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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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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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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
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If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
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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.
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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
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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
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If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
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It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.
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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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The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
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