David Ogilvy Quotes
160 David Ogilvy Quotes
1 2 3 4
Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the image of the brand.
David Ogilvy
The wickedest of all sins is to run an advertisement without a headline.
David Ogilvy
Advertisements in four-color cost 50 percent more than black and white, but… they are 100 percent more memorable. A good bargain.
David Ogilvy
I always use my clients’ products. This is not toadyism, but elementary good manners. Almost everything I consume if manufactured by one of my clients.
David Ogilvy
My scholarly Sir Humphry Rolleston used to say of physicians, ‘First they get on, then they get honor, then they get honest.’
David Ogilvy
People don’t buy from clowns.
David Ogilvy
Words and pictures must march together, reinforcing each other. The only function of the words is to explain what the pictures are doing.
David Ogilvy
When I started writing advertisements, I was determined to blaze new trails, to make every one of my campaigns the most successful in the history of the industry concerned. I have not always failed.
David Ogilvy
I want to buy almost everything I see advertised.
David Ogilvy
I spend my life speaking well of products in advertisements; I hope that you get as much pleasure out of buying them as I get out of advertising them.
David Ogilvy
Cooks, like copywriters, work under ferocious pressures, and are apt to be quarrelsome.
David Ogilvy
I praise my staff…rarely… in the hope that they too will appreciate it more than a steady gush of appreciation.
David Ogilvy
Today I see red when anybody at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather tells a client that we cannot produce an advertisement or a television commercial on the day we have promised it. In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.
David Ogilvy
A messy office creates an atmosphere of sloppiness, and leads to the disappearance of secret papers.
David Ogilvy
I inspect every campaign before it goes to the client, and send back many of them for more work.
David Ogilvy
I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.
David Ogilvy
In the advertising industry to be successful you must, of necessity, accumulate a group of creative people. This probably means a fairly high percentage of high strung, brilliant, eccentric nonconformists.
David Ogilvy
I admire people who work hard, who bite the bullet. I dislike passengers who don’t pull their weight in the boat.
David Ogilvy
You cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people. But brains are not enough unless they are combined with intellectual honesty.
David Ogilvy
I admire people who work with gusto. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, I beg you to find another job.
David Ogilvy
I despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.
David Ogilvy
I admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. I pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferiors as their subordinates.
David Ogilvy
I abhor people who wage paper-warfare.
David Ogilvy
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
David Ogilvy
My success or failure as the head of an agency depends more than anything else on my ability to find people who can create great campaigns, men with fire in their bellies.
David Ogilvy
Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
David Ogilvy
Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money.
David Ogilvy
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
David Ogilvy
Few of the great creators have bland personalities.
David Ogilvy
Play to win, but enjoy the fun.
David Ogilvy
I regard the hunt for new clients as a sport. If you play it grimly, you will die of ulcers. If you play it with lighthearted gusto, you will survive your failures without losing sleep.
David Ogilvy
I have had the galling experience of helping to make clients into multimillionaires while losing my shirt in their service.
David Ogilvy
Next to the theater, advertising is probably the least secure of all careers.
David Ogilvy
If you aspire to manage an agency, you must accept the fact that you are always going to be traveling on the edge of a precipice.
David Ogilvy
I have always tried to sit on the same side of the table as my clients, to see problems through their eyes. I buy shares in their company, so that I can think like a member of their family.
David Ogilvy
When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds 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, we should become a company of giants.
David Ogilvy
It is more fun to be overworked than to be underworked.
David Ogilvy
There is an economic factor built into hard work. The harder you work, the fewer employees we need, and the more profit we make. The more profit we make, the more money becomes available for all of us.
David Ogilvy
I sometimes think a good commercial should only have two words in the beginning that said simply, ‘Watch this.’
David Ogilvy
If you stop adding new clients, you start bleeding to death.
David Ogilvy
1 2 3 4
Return from David Ogilvy Quotes to
Quoteswise.com