Quote

Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

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
Truth
Make
Fascinating
Tell

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
David Ogilvy
Image
If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
David Ogilvy
Image
If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
David Ogilvy
Image
Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
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
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
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
David Ogilvy
Image
I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have a previous engagement with another client successful polygamy depends upon pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach.
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
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
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
Leaders grasp nettles.
David Ogilvy
Image
I don't believe in tricky advertising, I don't believe in cute advertising, I don't believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives
David Ogilvy
Image
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
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
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
David Ogilvy
Image
Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
David Ogilvy
Image
The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
David Ogilvy
Image
Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.
David Ogilvy