Quote

What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.

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
Please
Style
Good
Advertisement
Advertisements
Pleases
Seldom
Sells

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
David Ogilvy
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Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself
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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I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the baby.
David Ogilvy
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Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.
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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We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
David Ogilvy
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If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
David Ogilvy
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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
David Ogilvy
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
David Ogilvy
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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy
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When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy
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I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
David Ogilvy
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You can't save souls in an empty church.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Compete with the immortals
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants
David Ogilvy
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
David Ogilvy
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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