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Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.

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
Exact
Methods
Opposite
Opposites
Method
Study
Competitors

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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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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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The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad
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Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life
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I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.
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If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
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If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
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Leaders grasp nettles.
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David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.
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Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
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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.
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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
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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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