David Ogilvy Quotes

David Ogilvy (57)

Birth:	23rd June, 1911
Death:	21st July, 1999
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Businessman

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Today's Anniversary - 19th June

Births

• 1914 - Alan Cranston
• 1896 - Wallis Simpson
• 1954 - Richard Wilkins
• 1910 - Abe Fortas
• 1978 - Zoe Saldana

Deaths

• 1984 - Lee Krasner
• 1820 - Joseph Banks
• 1878 - Charles Hodge
• 1939 - Grace Abbott
• 1786 - Nathanael Greene

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Language, Humour

• If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sell

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Business

  Tags in Advertising

• Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Advertising

• Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Consumer

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

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Think

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Reputation

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

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Believe

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Better

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Experience, Life

  Tags in Good

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Illumination

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Company

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

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Business

• It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Buy

• It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Advertisements

• 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Consumers

• Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Wife

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Manufacturers

• Many people – and I think I am one of them – are more productive when they’ve had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I’m far better able to write.

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Think, Productive

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

  David Ogilvy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Improving