David Ogilvy Quotes

Any brand in the world wants to make desirable product. But we don't shove it down people's throats.

You have to prove that the Freberg way will sell their product better than if they just did straight advertising. Whenever I give a lecture or seminar, that's what I try to get across to people. I hear very few radio commercials that sound like I could have written them or that they got the idea.

You can feel how much money goes into commercials by how swiftly they act on your mind. And they've got, like, a hypnotic quality to the way they present their products.

The advertisement is one of the most interesting and difficult of modern literary forms.

If you make a product good enough... the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you would better construct a highway. Advertising is that highway.

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.

You can define advertising as the science of creating and placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets him or her to take some action.

To be a success in advertising you must want to fill other people with a passion for possession.

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad.

There are a lot of people that don't scour websites regularly or read music reviews. They need whatever, the other kinds of stuff, whether it's an appearance on Lettterman or posters or ads. They need to kind of be hit more in the face and be told that there's something new out there.

The people who flood our living-rooms with a smorgasbord of commercial messages about fetid breath, moist underarms and troubled intestines know this: an appropriate time, place and manner to sell a product is any that sells the product.

The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious.

Sometimes, the advertising is better than the product. Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. Everyone tries the thing and never buys it again.

A Realtor is an old fashioned Real Estate man with a neck tie. A Real Estate man sold you what you wanted, a Realtor sells you what you don't need. A Real Estate man showed you what you could raise on the land, a Realtor tells you what you can build on it.

The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.

Advertising works most effectively when it's in line with what people are already trying to do.

... I have always fallen for ads. The sweetheart of J. Walter Thompson, I have a peasant-like belief in whatever miracle they profess to effect.

Great advertising is the expression of deep emotional sincerity.

I try to get people to see what I have. . . . When you run a computer company, you have to get people to buy into your dreams.

In marketing, the familiar is everything.

Consider our difficulties avoiding junk food and overspending. Such addictions were carefully planned-for by professional marketing teams.

I actually like doing commercials. I don't like doing them to the exclusion of everything else, but I like doing them. The 30-second format is very hard. I sometimes call it American Haiku. And I think some of the commercials I've done are not so bad.

No matter who you are or what kind of company or organization you work for, your number-one job is to tell your story to the consumer wherever they are, and preferably at the moment they are deciding to make a purchase.

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.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.