Quote

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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David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Enough
Eight
Sometimes
Products
Cereals
Failure
Cereal
Failing
Consumer
Cold
Rejected
Often
Consumers
Firsts
Ten
First
Fail

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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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A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning.
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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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I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
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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.
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No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.
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Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
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Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.
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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
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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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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.
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I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
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If you have a truly big idea, the wrong technique won't kill it. And if you don't have a big idea, the right technique won't help you
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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