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When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.

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
Advertise
Fire
Open

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.
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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Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
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
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Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.
David Ogilvy
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Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
David Ogilvy
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Leaders grasp nettles.
David Ogilvy
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
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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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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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
David Ogilvy
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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
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No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.
David Ogilvy
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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
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
David Ogilvy
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Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.
David Ogilvy
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A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
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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The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.
David Ogilvy
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Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
David Ogilvy