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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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David Ogilvy
Age: 88 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 23
Died: 1999
Died: July 21
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Writer
West Horsley
Surrey
David MacKenzie Ogilvy
Obscure
Readers
Fast
Travel
Meaning
Reader
Stop
Decipher
Headlines

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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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
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The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
David Ogilvy
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The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
David Ogilvy
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It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
David Ogilvy
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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
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Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
David Ogilvy
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You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
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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.
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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Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?
David Ogilvy
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No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.
David Ogilvy
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
David Ogilvy
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...consumers do not buy one brand of soap, or coffee, or detergent. They have a repertory of four or five brands, and move from one to another. They almost never buy a brand which has not been admitted to their repertory during its first year on the market.
David Ogilvy
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It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.
David Ogilvy
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I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad
David Ogilvy
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
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