Some David Ogilvy quotes to inspire - useful for Client presentations, essays and blogs…

Ogilvy on Brands:

• Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.
• The image of any brand has been created over a long period of years. It is the result of many different factors - advertising and pricing, and the name itself, and the packaging, and the kind of TV shows the brand has sponsored and the length of time the brand has been on the market, and so on.
• Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol, which is the brand image.
• Most manufacturers are reluctant to accept any limitation on the image of their brand. They want it to be all things to all people. They want their brand to be a male brand and a female brand. An upper-class brand and a plebeian brand. They generally end up with a brand that has no personality of any kind, a wishywashy neuter. No capon ever rules the roost.

Ogilvy on Advertising

• 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.
• You cannot bore people into buying a product, you can only interest them.
• Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
• You cannot bore people into buying a product, you can only interest them.
• We sell – or else.

Ogilvy on Ideas

• Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
• Unless your advertising is built on a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night.
• 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.
• Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.

Ogilvy on Running an Ad Agency:

• I don’t believe in this specialization. Who said that there’s one breed of cat, which is an account executive, and then there are creative people - and they are quite different? This has been perpetuated by both sides for years. It’s nonsense.
• I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings. I abhor quarrelsome people. I abhor people who wage paper-warfare.
• We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
• If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger then you are, we shall become a company of giants.
• I believe in the Scottish proverb: “Hard work never killed a man.” Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work.
• We hire gentlemen with brains.