I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes. – David Ogilvy
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. – David Ogilvy
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. – David Ogilvy
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals. – David Ogilvy
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything. – David Ogilvy
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. – David Ogilvy
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. – David Ogilvy
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. – David Ogilvy
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
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
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. – David Ogilvy
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
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
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
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image. – David Ogilvy
The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years. – David Ogilvy
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. – David Ogilvy
