David Ogilvy Quotes

I have learned that you can't have good advertising without a good client, that you can't keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy better advertising than he understands or has an appetite for.

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

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.

Impact in advertising today is 80 percent strategy, 20 percent copy. This makes it nearly impossible for good copy to compensate for weak strategy.

Advertising is like learning - a little is a dangerous thing. If a man has not the pluck to keep on advertising, all the money he has already spent is lost.

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.

We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'

A good ad which is not run never produces sales.

Advertisements may be evaluated scientifically; they cannot be created scientifically.

Too many ads that try not to go over the reader's head end up beneath his notice.

Most advertisers spend millions upon millions of dollars to buy commercial time during the Super Bowl, and millions in creating eye-popping ads, hoping to create catchy, unforgettable commercials. Unfortunately, most Super Bowl commercials end up being unmemorable. Costly mistakes for brands and creative flameouts for advertising firms.

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

The power of ads rests more in the repetition of obvious exhortations than in the subtle transmission of values.

I've done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they're going to be compared directly against other ads.

You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after.

The more facts you tell, the more you sell. An advertisement's chance for success invariably increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in the advertisement increases.

The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment.

Despite the volume of 'junk' mail that students receive each year, companies that have an interest in selling their product to students say direct mailing is a key to their success.

I set up Droga5 because I really believe in the power of advertising. But I believe in the power of advertising that's in synch with what consumers want.

The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.

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

Can somebody explain to me why Pepsi and Coke advertise? Are we missing something? Seriously, everyone in this room has drank enough Pepsi and Coke in their lifetime they could piss it for a week.

Advertising is not a rifle; it is a shotgun, and any campaign featuring outdoor boards of a cartoon animal inevitably will catch children in its spray.

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