David Ogilvy People Quotations

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

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

You now have to decide what 'image' you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: 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.

People who think well, write well

Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work.

I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.

Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.

I don't believe in tricky advertising, I don't believe in cute advertising, I don't believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives

Most readers look at the photograph first. If you put it in the middle of the page, the reader will start by looking in the middle. Then her eye must go up to read the headline; this doesn't work, because people have a habit of scanning downwards. However, suppose a few readers do read the headline after seeing the photograph below it. After that, you require them to jump down past the photograph which they have already seen. Not bloody likely.

The more story-appeal there is in the picture or in the photograph, the more people would look at your ad

It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.

People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.

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.

Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.

Don't count the people that you reach, reach the people who count

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.

If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants

You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it.

It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business

Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.

You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.

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.

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.

We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company - and above all, honest with consumers.

If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.

If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.