David Ogilvy Quotes

The day after a new business presentation, send the prospect a three-page letter summarizing the reasons why he should pick your agency. This will help him make the right decision.

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

Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself five questions: 1 Did it make me gasp when I first saw it? 2 Do I wish I had thought of it myself? 3 Is it unique? 4 Does it fit the strategy to perfection? 5 Could it be used for 30 years?

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

Training should not be confined progress, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.

Do you think it childish to use a set of written principles to guide the management of an advertising agency? I can only tell you that mine have proved invaluable in keeping a complicated enterprise on course.

Only amateurs use short copy.

Remember the French saying: ‘He who is absent is always wrong.

I frequently hear the Magic Lanterns described as rules. They are not rules. They are reports. Reports on how consumers react to different stimuli. If it were possible to create great advertising merely by studying the Lanterns, any damn fool could do it. More is required: innovative genius. The Lanterns only light the way for genius, indicating the most fruitful path to explore.

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

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.

Take whiskey. Why do some people chose Jack Daniel’s, while others choose Grand Dad or Taylor? Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don’t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn’t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is 90 per cent of what the distiller has to sell.

Never summon people to your office; it frightens them. Instead, go to see them in their offices, unannounced. A boss who never wanders about his agency becomes an invisible hermit. 3

Aldous Huxley, who was once a copywriter, said, ‘It is easier to write ten passably effective sonnets than one effective advertisement.’ You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.