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All Quotes by author - David Ogilvy

" 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. "

" Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible. "

" Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals. "

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

" 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. "

Surround Yourself

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Leaders grasp nettles. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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