Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by David Ogilvy (British Advertising Executive)

David Mackenzie Ogilvy (1911–99) was a British-American advertising executive. The organizer of the agency of Ogilvy & Mather, he was a spearhead in the post-World War II “creative revolution” in American advertising. He is celebrated for his emphasis on creative copy and campaign themes.

Born in West Horsley, Surrey, Ogilvy was the son of a classics scholar and financial broker. After leaving Oxford without a degree, Ogilvy worked as a trainee-chef at a select Parisian hotel and as a stove sales clerk. He then joined the British advertising agency of Mather & Crowther, where he became an account executive and moved to the United States to learn American advertising techniques. Ogilvy worked for the American pollster George Gallup; Ogilvy later credited much of his accomplishment in advertising to this experience.

During World War II, Ogilvy served in British Intelligence and at the British embassy in Washington, D.C. In 1948, Ogilvy and Anderson Hewitt formed Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather. Ogilvy’s successful ad campaigns for initial clients soon reaped for the agency such major American ad accounts as General Foods and American Express. In 1966, with Ogilvy at the helm, the firm of Ogilvy & Mather became one of the first advertising firms to go public. The company grew during the 1970s and ’80s, and, in 1989, the WPP Group PLC bought it.

Ogilvy & Mather created compelling ads that were prominent for a graceful, sensible copy that shows consideration for the consumers’ intelligence. His foremost campaigns were for Hathaway shirts, Shell Oil, Sears, KLM, American Express, International Paper, IBM, Schweppes tonic water, Rolls-Royce, and Pepperidge Farm.

Ogilvy’s legacy embraces the notion of “branding,” an approach that closely links a product name with a product in the hope of inspiring “brand” loyalty in the consumer.

Ogilvy’s most celebrated publication, Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963,) contains 11 perennial points of advice on how to build great advertising campaigns. His other significant books on advertising include Ogilvy on Advertising (1983) and An Autobiography (1997.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by David Ogilvy

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member’s talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Teamwork, Teams

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of the immortals.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Excellence

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.
—David Ogilvy

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

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
Topics: Advertising

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Try not to insult her intelligence.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Business

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
Topics: Management

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Career

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
Topics: Persuasion

If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Business

I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have a previous engagement with another client; successful polygamy depends upon pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach.
—David Ogilvy

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is test. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Business, Advertising

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Attention

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. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a 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. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising, Business

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising, Attention

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Thinking, Jokes

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
—David Ogilvy

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don’t live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Excellence

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
—David Ogilvy
Topics: Advertising

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