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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

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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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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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.
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I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
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If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants
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If you have a truly big idea, the wrong technique won't kill it. And if you don't have a big idea, the right technique won't help you
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Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.
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.
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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
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Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
David Ogilvy
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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
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What you learn is more important than what you earn.
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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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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The consumer isn't a moron she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.
David Ogilvy
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I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
David Ogilvy
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Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.
David Ogilvy