David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy
David Mackenzie Ogilvy CBEwas an advertising executive who was widely hailed as "The Father of Advertising". In 1962, Time called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry". He founded Ogilvy & Mather...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth23 June 1911
ambition people creative
It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business
thinking emotion advertising
Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.
thinking blood agency
The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response; they have never tasted blood
business thinking honest
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.
personality may corporations
Making the logo twice the size is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. Showing the clients' faces is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.
Compete with the immortals
book school boys
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.
men eggs agency
There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs.
writing people together
Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.
business agency worry
If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.
business writing thinking
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.
fire-extinguishers people attention
You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
humor marketing failing
Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.
believe people community
The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.