David Ogilvy Quotes - Page 8

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• Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough.

  David Ogilvy

  Failure, Eight, Cereal

  5 Copy quote

• The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.

  David Ogilvy

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  5 Copy quote

• I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

  David Ogilvy

  Business, Mergers, Mega

  8 Copy quote

• Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

  David Ogilvy

  Rare Occasion, Tests, Fields

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  7 Copy quote

• Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind

  David Ogilvy

  Bird, Mind, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

  David Ogilvy

  Use, Jargon, Ass

  David Ogilvy (2012). “The Unpublished David Ogilvy”, p.54, Profile Books

  6 Copy quote

• Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images

  David Ogilvy

  Thinking, Two, People

  4 Copy quote

• The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.

  David Ogilvy

  Leaving, Tools, Schedules

  David Ogilvy (2012). “The Unpublished David Ogilvy”, p.28, Profile Books

  5 Copy quote

• Supposing 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?

  David Ogilvy

  Book, Tonight, Instinct

  4 Copy quote

• Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.

  David Ogilvy

  President, Vices, Revolution

  8 Copy quote

• Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

  David Ogilvy

  Editors, Majority, Doe

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  8 Copy quote

• I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners.

  David Ogilvy

  Good Man, Use, Isms

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  4 Copy quote

• I was doing a campaign once for a manufacturer, and I couldn't think of an ideas, and I was kind of desperate about it. The night before I had to show something to my client I had a dream, an interesting dream. I woke up and for once in my life I wrote it down and went back to sleep Next morning I went to the office and had that dream out into a TV commercial which is still running thirty years after and which has made that particular product the leader in its field.

  David Ogilvy

  Running, Dream, Morning

  4 Copy quote

• I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas

  David Ogilvy

  Ideas, Advertising Business, Bigs

  4 Copy quote

• If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.

  David Ogilvy

  Art, Winning, Awards

  4 Copy quote

• I don't believe in tricky advertising, I don't believe in cute advertising, I don't believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives

  David Ogilvy

  Cute, Believe, People

  5 Copy quote

• My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way

  David Ogilvy

  Class, Way, Firsts

  6 Copy quote

• Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.

  David Ogilvy

  Agency, People, Training

  6 Copy quote

• It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

  David Ogilvy

  Wife, Agents, Advertising

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  9 Copy quote

• Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

  David Ogilvy

  Baby, Campaigns, World

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  32 Copy quote

• I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the baby.

  David Ogilvy

  Baby, Money, Two

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  6 Copy quote

• The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them...This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life.

  David Ogilvy

  Book, School, Boys

  7 Copy quote

• 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 a feeling of good taste, provided 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.

  David Ogilvy

  Believe, Class, Feelings

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  8 Copy quote

• Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.

  David Ogilvy

  Men, Personality, Corporations

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  8 Copy quote

• 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 shall become a company of giants.

  David Ogilvy

  Office, People, Curiosity

  4 Copy quote

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