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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.

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
Prefer
Discipline
Ignorance
Knowledge
Anarchy

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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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.
David Ogilvy
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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
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
David Ogilvy
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Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
David Ogilvy
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Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.
David Ogilvy
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Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
David Ogilvy
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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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
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Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.
David Ogilvy
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Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore...... Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospects shows an interest in.
David Ogilvy
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
David Ogilvy