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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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David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Giants
Bigger
Shall
Company
Become
Always
People
Hire

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I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
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On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.
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There are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.
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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?
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Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
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I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product.
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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
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Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.
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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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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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Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life
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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.
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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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Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
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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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