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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

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
Right
Kill
Truly
Wrong
Help
Bigs
Idea
Helping
Ideas
Technique

More quotes by 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.
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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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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.
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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.
David Ogilvy
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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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Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.
David Ogilvy
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No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.
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Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled.
David Ogilvy
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Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.
David Ogilvy
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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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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
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The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
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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.
David Ogilvy
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Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created
David Ogilvy
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You can't save souls in an empty church.
David Ogilvy
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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 prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
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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
David Ogilvy
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Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
David Ogilvy
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My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way
David Ogilvy