Quote

Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.

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
Fast
Travel
Meaning
Reader
Stop
Decipher
Headlines
Obscure
Readers

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
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
Image
Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
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
I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have a previous engagement with another client successful polygamy depends upon pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach.
David Ogilvy
Image
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
David Ogilvy
Image
At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
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
Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.
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
Image
It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read.
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
If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
David Ogilvy
Image
Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
David Ogilvy
Image
I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
Image
Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.
David Ogilvy
Image
The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response they have never tasted blood
David Ogilvy
Image
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