Quote

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

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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
Hell
Tolerates
Give
Demoralizing
Live
Tolerate
Nothing
Boss
Giving
Excellence
Work
Rate
People
Standards
Second
Exorbitant

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I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas
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If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
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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.
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Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life
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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.
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The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
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It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
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You can't save souls in an empty church.
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The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
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If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
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The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad
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The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response they have never tasted blood
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
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I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
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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.
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The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them...This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life.
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Leaders grasp nettles.
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