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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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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.
David Ogilvy
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Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled.
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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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A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.
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The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
David Ogilvy
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I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
David Ogilvy
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While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read.
David Ogilvy
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Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.
David Ogilvy
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If you have a truly big idea, the wrong technique won't kill it. And if you don't have a big idea, the right technique won't help you
David Ogilvy
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Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
David Ogilvy
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A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning.
David Ogilvy
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On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.
David Ogilvy
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Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money...If Oxford undergraduates were paid for their work, I would have performed miracles of scholarship and become Regius Professor of Modern History.
David Ogilvy
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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.
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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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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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
David Ogilvy