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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.

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
Night
Detergent
People
Manufacturer
Joke
Jokes
Told
Television
Lasts
Last

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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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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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.
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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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Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
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It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
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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.
David Ogilvy
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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
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
David Ogilvy
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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
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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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Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
David Ogilvy
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Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.
David Ogilvy
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What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
David Ogilvy
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What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.
David Ogilvy
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David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.
David Ogilvy
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It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
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Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough.
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