David Ogilvy Quotes

All too often the bottoms of advertisements are littered with miscellaneous crap, gadgets, etc. Get rid of them; they contribute to an appearance of untidiness which reduces “impact” and readership.

It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read. Therefore, study the graphics used by editors and imitate them. Study the graphics used in advertisements and avoid them.

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.

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?”

Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspapers. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it is destined. If you pin and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.

H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that it pays to make all your layouts project that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a first-class ticket through life.

“Making the logo twice the size” is advertisements are deficient in brand identification. “Showing the clients’ faces” is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in the corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.

Most of the art schools which train unsuspecting students for careers in advertising still subscribe to the mystique of the Bauhaus. They hold that the success of an advertisement depends on such things as “balance,” “movement,” and “design,” but can they prove it? My research suggests that these aesthetic intangibles do conceal my hostility to the old school of art directors who take such preachments seriously.

Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, “Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of toilet soap if only they hadn’t set the body copy in ten-point Garamond.” Don't you believe it. What really decides consumers to buy or not buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles.

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. Test your premise. Test your media. Test your headlines and your illustrations. Test the size of your advertisements. Test your frequency. Test your level of expenditure. Test your commercials. Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

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.

Ogilvy & Mather does two things: We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.

If you tell lies about your product you will be found out – either by the government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.