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Write the way you talk. Naturally.

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
Talk
Write
Writing
Way
Naturally

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
David Ogilvy
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Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life
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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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
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy
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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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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
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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
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The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
David Ogilvy
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If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
David Ogilvy
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Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
David Ogilvy
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If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.
David Ogilvy
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
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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Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
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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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Creativity needs discipline and freedom.
David Ogilvy