Quote

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.

David Ogilvy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Would
Business
Products
Thinking
Write
Lies
Advertisement
Tell
Wouldn
Advertisements
Found
Honest
Consumers
Government
Wife
Buying
Done
Lying
Advertising
Writing
Read
Mines
Never
Family
Mine

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
David Ogilvy
Image
Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
David Ogilvy
Image
Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.
David Ogilvy
Image
I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the baby.
David Ogilvy
Image
Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.
David Ogilvy
Image
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.
David Ogilvy
Image
Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. Testing was used in advertising decades ago. The internet has made testing so easy that every online marketer can use it to improve advertising results. Google content experiment is a free tool for you to do split testing.
David Ogilvy
Image
Compete with the immortals
David Ogilvy
Image
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.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
David Ogilvy
Image
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