David Ogilvy Quotes

I despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.

Today, almost all our layouts look “addy.” Too bad. How do you sell editorial layouts to clients? Try saying, “Would you like the editors of a half a dozen magazines to devote a whole page to your product?” The client will reply, “Yes, of course. But it is impossible.” You say, “It is possible. You buy the space and here is your editorial. Better than any advertisement, isn't it?”

If each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

When you are appointed to head an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send you one of these Russian dolls. Inside the smallest you will find this message: ‘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, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants.’ With

I used to start my questionnaires by asking, ‘Which would you rather hear on the radio tonight – Jack Benny or a Shakespeare play?’ If the respondent said Shakespeare, I knew he was a liar and broke off the interview.

Do not make the common mistake of regarding your clients as dopes. Make friends with them. Buy shares in their companies. But try not to become entangled in their politics. Emulate Talleyrand, who served France through seven regimes.

In my Confessions, I told how I started by making a list of the clients I most wanted – General Foods, Lever Brothers, Bristol Myers, Campbell Soup Company and Shell. It took time, but in due course I got them all, plus American Express, Sears Roebuck, IBM, Morgan Guaranty, Merrill Lynch and a few others, including

While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are also responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes. I abhor advertising that is blatant, dull, or dishonest. Agencies which transgress this principle are not widely respected.

I believe in the Scottish proverb: “Hard work never psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.”

The easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising. During one period of seven years, we never failed to win an account for which we competed, and all I did was to show the campaigns we had created.

In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.

… there are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.

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.

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.

In recruitment and promotion, we are fanatical in our hatred for all forms of prejudice.