Quote

Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

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
Unless
Bigs
Ship
Idea
Campaign
Night
Ships
Ideas
Campaigns
Like
Consumers
Marketing
Pass

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
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
Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
David Ogilvy
Image
I never assign a product to a writer unless I know that he is personally interested in it. Every time I have written a bad campaign, it has been because the product did not interest me.
David Ogilvy
Image
The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.
David Ogilvy
Image
You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy
Image
It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy
Image
If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
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
Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
David Ogilvy
Image
The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife.
David Ogilvy
Image
Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
David Ogilvy
Image
I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
David Ogilvy
Image
You can't save souls in an empty church.
David Ogilvy
Image
Compete with the immortals
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
Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
David Ogilvy
Image
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
David Ogilvy