Quote

We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.

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
Company
Assets
Term
Companies
Interest
Regard
Business
Build
Earns
Without
Exist
Recommendations
Make
Short
Asset
Would
Respect
Owned
Greatest
Clients

More quotes by David Ogilvy

Image
Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
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
I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
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
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
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
David Ogilvy
Image
I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
David Ogilvy
Image
I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product.
David Ogilvy
Image
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.
David Ogilvy
Image
Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
David Ogilvy
Image
The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife.
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
David Ogilvy
Image
It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy
Image
My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
David Ogilvy
Image
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
Image
Write the way you talk. Naturally.
David Ogilvy
Image
Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
David Ogilvy
Image
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.
David Ogilvy