110+ David Ogilvy Quotes On Copywriting, Creativity And Advertising

David Ogilvy was an English businessman and the founder of Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. He is often referred to as the "Father of Advertising" and was one of the first to apply consumer research to the process of advertising. Ogilvy was also an author, writing several books on the subject of advertising and business. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David Ogilvy on copywriting, creativity, advertising.

Top 10 David Ogilvy Quotes

1. The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.
2. A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
3. The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
4. 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.
5. Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.
6. 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.
7. Play to win, but enjoy the fun.
8. The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
9. The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
10. Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

David Ogilvy Image Quotes

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Short Quotes

• Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
• Every ad is an investment in the long-term image of a brand.
• At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.
• Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
• Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
• The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.
• Leaders grasp nettles.
• I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.
• I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
• The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

David Ogilvy Quotes About Copywriting

In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows? — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote. — David Ogilvy

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. — David Ogilvy

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 — David Ogilvy

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her. — David Ogilvy

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. — David Ogilvy

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

I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas — David Ogilvy

Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits. — David Ogilvy

It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Quotes About Creativity

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

Senior men have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers and others. Encourage this, you need all the ideas you can get. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?" — David Ogilvy

If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative. — David Ogilvy

Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work. — David Ogilvy

It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business — David Ogilvy

Don't hire a dog, then bark yourself — David Ogilvy

The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the altar of creativity, which really means 'originality': The most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising — David Ogilvy

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

David Ogilvy Quotes About Advertising

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

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

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

Every advertisement is part of the long term investment in the personality of the brand. — David Ogilvy

Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising. — 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

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

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

I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement. — David Ogilvy

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Quotes About People

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. — David Ogilvy

When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom. — David Ogilvy

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine. — David Ogilvy

Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better able to write. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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. — 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

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

People don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. — David Ogilvy

You now have to decide what 'image' you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Quotes About Product

Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on. — David Ogilvy

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

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. — David Ogilvy

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous. — David Ogilvy

I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product. — David Ogilvy

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Quotes About Business

Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. — David Ogilvy

Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels. — David Ogilvy

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

Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues. — David Ogilvy

My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way — David Ogilvy

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

Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct? — David Ogilvy

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible. — David Ogilvy

We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have. — David Ogilvy

It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. If I do my job well, I shall contribute as much as the hundred scientists to the success of this product. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Quotes About Wife

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. — David Ogilvy

The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife. — David Ogilvy

There are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife. — David Ogilvy

A consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. Don't insult her intelligence, and don't shock her. — David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Famous Quotes And Sayings

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. — David Ogilvy

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?. — David Ogilvy

I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself. — David Ogilvy

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

The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore...... Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospects shows an interest in. — David Ogilvy

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

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. — David Ogilvy

I have noticed that agencies which are full of fun and ferment seem to create the best advertising. If you are not happy in advertising, for goodness sake find a job in which you would be happy. For as far as I know, we pass this way only once — David Ogilvy

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes. — David Ogilvy

...consumers do not buy one brand of soap, or coffee, or detergent. They have a repertory of four or five brands, and move from one to another. They almost never buy a brand which has not been admitted to their repertory during its first year on the market. — David Ogilvy

Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency. — David Ogilvy

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image. — David Ogilvy

Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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

We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. — David Ogilvy

We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company - and above all, honest with consumers. — David Ogilvy

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

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. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account. — 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

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything. — David Ogilvy

Most agencies run scared, most of the time. . . .Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising. . . . If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts. — David Ogilvy

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

Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on "teamwork" is bunkum - a conspiracy of the mediocre majority. — David Ogilvy

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. Testing was used in advertising decades ago. The internet has made testing so easy that every online marketer can use it to improve advertising results. Google content experiment is a free tool for you to do split testing. — David Ogilvy

There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

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. — David Ogilvy

When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire. — David Ogilvy

Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life — David Ogilvy

Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock. — David Ogilvy

We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else. — David Ogilvy

I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. — David Ogilvy

Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled. — David Ogilvy

Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever — create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience. — David Ogilvy

Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious. — David Ogilvy

Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure. — David Ogilvy

The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore. Foster any attempt to talk about other things; the longer you stay the better you get to know the prospect, and the more you will be trusted. — David Ogilvy

Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass. — David Ogilvy

No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me. — David Ogilvy

Life Lessons by David Ogilvy

1. David Ogilvy taught that hard work and dedication are essential to success. He believed that it is important to stay focused on the task at hand and to never give up.
2. He also stressed the importance of understanding the customer and having a clear message when advertising. He believed that the customer should always be at the center of any marketing strategy.
3. Finally, Ogilvy taught that it is important to take risks and be creative in order to stand out from the competition. He believed that innovation was key to success.