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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.

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
Doesn
Anything
Ninety
Much
Advertising
Sell
Sells
Nine
Percent
Business

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We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.
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Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
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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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Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
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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.
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The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
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I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
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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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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
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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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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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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
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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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Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.
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We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
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Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
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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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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life
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Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
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