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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.

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
Full
Unconsciously
Lost
Avenues
Ever
Provoking
Every
Clients
Masochists
Men
Rejection
Provoke
Account
Handled
Accounts
Madison
Brilliant
Avenue

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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.
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If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.
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If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
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Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself
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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.
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Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
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You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
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Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
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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.
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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.
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
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The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.
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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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The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife.
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
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Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.
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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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In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
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