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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
Bigs
Business
Ideas
Like
Copywriter
Advertising
Remembered

More quotes by David Ogilvy

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Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
David Ogilvy
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Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
David Ogilvy
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The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
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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At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
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.
David Ogilvy
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
David Ogilvy
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It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
David Ogilvy
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Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.
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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Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising.
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
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Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?
David Ogilvy
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The best idea is the simplest.
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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Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
David Ogilvy
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Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
David Ogilvy
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Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
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.
David Ogilvy
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It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
David Ogilvy