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Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.

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
Figures
Read
Use
Trying
Headlines
Never
Tricky
People
Irrelevant
Fast
Figure

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.
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You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
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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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What you learn is more important than what you earn.
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Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
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When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
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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.
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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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Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.
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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
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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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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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On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.
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We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
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Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. Testing was used in advertising decades ago. The internet has made testing so easy that every online marketer can use it to improve advertising results. Google content experiment is a free tool for you to do split testing.
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Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
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It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy