David Ogilvy

Businessman

1911-06-23

Books by David Ogilvy

Confessions of an advertising man
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Ogilvy on advertising
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The unpublished David Ogilvy
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Quotes by David Ogilvy

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.
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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.
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The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
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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.
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It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.
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I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
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Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
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First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.
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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
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In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
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The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
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I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.
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I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.
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Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
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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, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
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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.
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Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
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The secret of a long life is double careers. One to about age 60, then another for the next thirty years.
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