Quotes from David Ogilvy

The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their characters. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it – and companies cannot grow without innovation. Great leaders almost always exude self-confidence.

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.

The day after a new business presentation, send the prospect a three-page letter summarizing the reasons why he should pick your agency. This will help him make the right decision. If

Most good copywriters', says William Maynard of the Bates agency, 'fall into two categories. Poets. And killers.

Aldous Huxley, who was once a copywriter, said, 'It is easier to write ten passably effective sonnets than one effective advertisement.' You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.

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.

First, study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it.

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.' Pursuit

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

When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.

advertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.

One day a man walked into a London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was about to open it as a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had $500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the office boy, who happened to be the author of this book. I invested his money in penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted blood.

Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease. There is nothing like an occasional all-night push to enliven morale – provided you are part of the push. Never leave the bridge in a storm.

Never summon people to your office; it frightens them. Instead, go to see them in their offices, unannounced. A boss who never wanders about his agency becomes an invisible hermit. 3

It pays to give most products an image of quality – a First Class ticket. This is particularly true of products whose brand-name is visible to your friends, like beer, cigarettes and automobiles: products you 'wear.' If

The easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising. During one period of seven years, we never failed to win an account for which we competed, and all I did was to show the campaigns we had created.

A psychologist flashed hundreds of words on a screen and used an electric gadget to measure emotional reactions. High marks went to darling. So I used it in a headline for Dove.

Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man.

Remember the French saying: 'He who is absent is always wrong.

Long copy sells more than short copy, particularly when you are asking the reader to spend a lot of money.

I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. 'Suppose,' I asked, 'your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

I like to succeed in public, but to fail in secret.

I saw the head chef at the Hotel Majestic fire a pastry cook because the poor devil could not get his brioches to rise straight. This ruthlessness made all the other chefs feel that they were working in the best kitchen in the world.