Quote

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

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
Hope
Else
Anything
Advertise
Advertising

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them...This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life.
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
What you learn is more important than what you earn.
David Ogilvy
Image
The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
David Ogilvy
Image
The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad
David Ogilvy
Image
If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
David Ogilvy
Image
Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
David Ogilvy
Image
Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
David Ogilvy
Image
The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response they have never tasted blood
David Ogilvy
Image
I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
David Ogilvy