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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
Competitors
Exact
Methods
Opposite
Opposites
Method
Study

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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
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You can't save souls in an empty church.
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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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I don't believe in tricky advertising, I don't believe in cute advertising, I don't believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives
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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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Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
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The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.
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Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
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Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
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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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Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
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The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them...This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life.
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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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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.
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
David Ogilvy
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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.
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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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If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.
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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.
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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.
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