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.

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.

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

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.

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.

If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.

Nations are great as they are prosperous as they are industrious as they are just.

We started learning ourselves, understanding ourselves, reading, researching, going around the world and looking at what was defined as the very best.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

People in the beauty community don’t like copycats, so I think it’s important to stay true to who you are and people will stay your customer.

The union organizers are asking us to sit still while it sells our men the jobs that have always been free.

You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.

I must have had a dozen jobs and I got fired from all of them.

The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.

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.

I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with them.

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about ‘hard work’ without having a corresponding result to show for it.

I have had the top people in the world into One Hyde Park, and they have seen everything and they say there is nothing quite like this.

There’s no better friend to any merchant than a fair competitor.

A nation that knows how to work will never suffer.