Quote

Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.

David Ogilvy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Would
Advertisements
Conceal
Wished
Paintings
Abstract
Advertising
Reader
Illustrate
Painting
Manufacturers

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.
David Ogilvy
Image
Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
David Ogilvy
Image
Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.
David Ogilvy
Image
I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
David Ogilvy
Image
If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.
David Ogilvy
Image
Creativity needs discipline and freedom.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
David Ogilvy
Image
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
David Ogilvy
Image
I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the baby.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
David Ogilvy
Image
Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
David Ogilvy