David Ogilvy Quotes

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

If you ever find a man who is better than you are – hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.

I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings. I abhor quarrelsome people. I abhor people who wage paper warfare.

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

Our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

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

I had a friend who was the king's surgeon in England. One day I asked him what makes a great surgeon. He replied, "What distinguishes a great surgeon is his knowledge. He knows more than other surgeons. During an operation he finds something which he wasn't expecting, recognizes it and knows what to do about it." It's the same thing with advertising people. The good ones know more. How do you get to know more? By reading books about advertising. By picking the brains of people who know more than you do. From the Magic Lanterns. And from experience. I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.

Suppose you’ve got an acute appendicitis. You’ve got to be operated on tonight. Would you like to have a surgeon who's read some books of anatomy and knows how to do that operation – or would you prefer to have a surgeon who refused to read all books about anatomy and relied on his own instinct? Why should a manufacturer bet his money – perhaps the future of his company – on your instinct?

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets with of iambic pentameter, rhyming in his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote sonatas within an equally rigid discipline – exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?

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.

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

I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.

Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money. When George Frederick Handel was on his beam ends, he shut himself up for twenty-one days and emerged with the complete score of Messiah – and hit the jackpot. Few of the themes of Messiah were original; Handel dredged them up from his unconscious, where they had been stored since he heard them in other composers’ work, or since he had composed them for his own forgotten operas.

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

Raise your sights! Blaze new trails!! Compete with the immortals!!!