David Ogilvy Quotes

I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.

~ David Ogilvy

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

~ David Ogilvy

Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.

~ David Ogilvy

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

~ David Ogilvy

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

~ 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

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

~ David Ogilvy

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

~ David Ogilvy

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

~ David Ogilvy

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

~ David Ogilvy

Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.

~ David Ogilvy

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

~ David Ogilvy

Leaders grasp nettles.

~ David Ogilvy

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

~ David Ogilvy

The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.

~ David Ogilvy

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

~ David Ogilvy

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

~ David Ogilvy