David Ogilvy Business Quotations

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.

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.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

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.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.

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.

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

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. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. If I do my job well, I shall contribute as much as the hundred scientists to the success of this product.

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.

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.