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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

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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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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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
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If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
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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.
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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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It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
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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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Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.
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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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What you learn is more important than what you earn.
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Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
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The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.
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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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Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
David Ogilvy
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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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We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
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