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If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?

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
Advertise
Advertising
Hope
Else
Anything

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If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.
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Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself
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Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
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Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
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Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
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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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Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
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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.
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Creativity needs discipline and freedom.
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...consumers do not buy one brand of soap, or coffee, or detergent. They have a repertory of four or five brands, and move from one to another. They almost never buy a brand which has not been admitted to their repertory during its first year on the market.
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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.
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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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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
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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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Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.
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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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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.
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