150 Quotes by David Ogilvy
Renowned as the "Father of Advertising," David Ogilvy revolutionized the world of marketing with his innovative and persuasive approach. With a background in psychology, Ogilvy believed that effective advertising should be informative, honest, and emotionally engaging. His iconic campaigns, such as "The Man in the Hathaway Shirt" and "Avis: We Try Harder," showcased his creative genius and knack for connecting with consumers.
Beyond catchy slogans, Ogilvy's insistence on research and data-driven strategies set new standards for the industry. He viewed advertising as an art, guided by a meticulous scientific method. Ogilvy's book, "Confessions of an Advertising Man," remains a timeless guide for marketers, stressing the importance of originality, simplicity, and understanding consumer behavior. Through his innovative thinking and emphasis on ethics, David Ogilvy redefined advertising, leaving a lasting legacy that continues to shape the way brands communicate with the world.
David Ogilvy Quotes
Today's consumer is not a moron. She knows much more about brands than you do. (Meaning)
You'll never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas. (Quote Meaning)
The customer is not a moron. She's your wife. (Meaning)
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself. (Quote Meaning)
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. (Meaning)
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. (Quote Meaning)
I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product. (Meaning)
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon. (Quote Meaning)
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?.
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.
Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
Don't count the people that you reach, reach the people who count
There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.
Play to win, but enjoy the fun. (Meaning)
Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. (Meaning)
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.
Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. (Quote Meaning)
Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
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.
Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
Senior men have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers and others. Encourage this, you need all the ideas you can get.
Don't bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals. (Meaning)
At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?"
Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows?
First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.
The best idea is the simplest.
Every advertisement is part of the long term investment in the personality of the brand. (Quote Meaning)
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.
It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.
Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it. (Meaning)
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.
A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.
Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. (Quote Meaning)
I once used the word Obsolete in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.
It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buckpassers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame.
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 have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive. People love to read stories. They like to know you as a real person who has your struggle, pain, success and failure, etc. One well-known example is Jared Fogle's weight loss story which made millions of dollars for Subway. Start to collect your stories from today and use them in your ad campaigns.
Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.
Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work.
If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?
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.
You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.
Creativity needs discipline and freedom.
It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things. (Meaning)
Never write more than two pages on any subject.
Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.
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 psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising
When you have nothing to say, sing it.
David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.
Within every brand is a product, but not every product is a brand.
Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself
If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.
If you can’t be brilliant, at least be memorable
Write the way you talk. Naturally.
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.
Headlines can be strengthened by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.
The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.
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.
Agencies which frequently work nights and weekends are more stimulating, more successful - and more profitable.
It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative. (Meaning)
People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
I have noticed that agencies which are full of fun and ferment seem to create the best advertising. If you are not happy in advertising, for goodness sake find a job in which you would be happy. For as far as I know, we pass this way only once
You can't save souls in an empty church.
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.
Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.
The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
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
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.
Leaders grasp nettles. (Quote Meaning)
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.
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs.
We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.
People who think well, write well. Woolly-minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters, and woolly speeches. (Meaning)
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
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.
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
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.
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. (Quote Meaning)
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.
Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.
When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
If you want to be interesting, be interested. (Meaning)
Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created
Compete with the immortals
The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.
What you learn is more important than what you earn.
Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious.
It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to 'come up with something new' every six months. It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. But golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with it over a long period.
Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever — create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.
You cannot bore people into buying your product - you can only interest them in buying it. (Meaning)
Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on "teamwork" is bunkum - a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.
Making the logo twice the size is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. Showing the clients' faces is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.
It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.
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.
Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you. (Quote Meaning)
I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
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.
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.
If you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants
You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.
A consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. Don't insult her intelligence, and don't shock her.
Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.
While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes.
I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.
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.
Be more ambitious. Don't bunt. When you get a job to do a story or an ad, try and hit the ball out of the park every time
Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides the reader whether to read the copy.
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.
It's not creative unless it sells. (Meaning)
Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
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.
What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.
You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. Three million consumers get married every year. The advertisement which sold a refrigerator to those who got married last year will probably be just as successful with those who'll get married next year. An advertisement is just like a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as they come into the market. Get a good radar and keep it sweeping.
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
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.
Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society.
Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images
Supposing you've got an acute appendicitis. You've got to be operated on tonight. Would you like to have a surgeon who's read some books of anatomy and knows how to do that operation - or would you prefer to have a surgeon who refused to read all books about anatomy and relied on his own instinct?
If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.
I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.
― David Ogilvy Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
