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" 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. "

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" 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

Results

Experience

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

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

" The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying. "

" 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

Language

Think

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon. "

" The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years. "

David Ogilvy

Age

Double

" The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "