Quotes from 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.

Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.

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

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

The consumer is not a moron. She's your wife.

If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.

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.

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.

The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.

Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.

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.

Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work.

Creativity Is a fancy word for the work we have to do by Friday.

Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

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.

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

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.

Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.

Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.

The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money.