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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

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
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Copywriter
Advertising
Remembered
Bigs
Business
Ideas

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
David Ogilvy
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Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
David Ogilvy
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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.
David Ogilvy
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When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy
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Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.
David Ogilvy
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I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
David Ogilvy
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The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
David Ogilvy
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Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
David Ogilvy
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The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore...... Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospects shows an interest in.
David Ogilvy
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If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
David Ogilvy
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A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning.
David Ogilvy
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Write the way you talk. Naturally.
David Ogilvy
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The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.
David Ogilvy
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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
David Ogilvy
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People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
David Ogilvy
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I never assign a product to a writer unless I know that he is personally interested in it. Every time I have written a bad campaign, it has been because the product did not interest me.
David Ogilvy
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You can't save souls in an empty church.
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.
David Ogilvy