David Ogilvy Quotes

You don't want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don't want to be - Facebook is not the first in social media. They're the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs' history, he's never been first.

A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.

Now if you go exactly where your competitors are, you're dead.

It's not easy being number two. As a marketer, you have limited choices - you can pretend you're not defined by the market leader, or, you can embrace your position and go directly after your nemesis.

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

If you want to be around in 10 years you've got to do something to differentiate yourself from the pack.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

One thing I always think about in making a market, and it again is something I have learned from Sam [Palmisano] as well, he always says, "Be first and be lonely."

Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It's not a matter of being better at what you do - it's a matter of being different at what you do.

Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete.

All this improvement is great, but all that does is get us in the game to play for improvements that we need in the future, so that we can be aggressive in the marketplace.

The founder of Dell found ways of delivering Hewlett Packard's most profitable products for much lower prices but forgot to deliver their quality so within a few years had fallen behind again. Ideas need constant renewal. A great idea will never be perfect and will never work perfectly in all markets and all seasons.

If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

Smart companies fail because they do everything right. They cater to high-profit-margin customers and ignore the low end of the market, where disruptive innovations emerge from.

Microsoft, Apple, Facebook all bought huge patent portfolios to further their strategic game. They're doing what I'm doing!

Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.

If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.

We are always focused on how can we differentiate ourselves. In today's world, where people are gravitating toward experiences, it is even more important.

We don't go into a market without a chance of a 40 percent share and sustainable differentiation. We wouldn't get into wiring oil rigs if we didn't believe we could get 40 percent.

In any competitive environment, whether you're in sales or marketing or whatever it is, you have to know your competition, understand who they are, do intelligent analysis on them and then you have to know yourself - who you are and what you're capable of doing.

If you haven't created the time as an owner to understand why people are choosing your model over your competition, then you are only managing the business that comes in the door, not actively seeking it out.

If you're entering anything where there's an existing marketplace, against large, entrenched competitors, then your product or service needs to be much better than theirs. It can't be a little bit better, because then you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer... you're always going to buy the trusted brand unless there's a big difference.

Business is the systematic playing of games.

I feel very good about our business and the speed at which we are executing our strategy to drive differentiation for Accenture and accelerate our rotation to The New.