David Ogilvy

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

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

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

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 did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

I never insisted that I was a good student.

I cannot remember a time when the Golden Rule was not my motto and precept, the torch that guided my footsteps.

Men are not great or small because of their material possessions. They are great or small because of what they are.

If you love what you do, if you love going to the office, if you really like it – not just say it, but really like it – it keeps you young and energised. I really love what I do.

[On Laura Nyro] I said to Laura ‘You know Laura, I think we should sell your music publishing company. I think right now is the right time you have three songs in the top ten this may never happen again and I think we can get a lot of money for it.’ And I made a deal with Clive Davis to sell Tuna Fish Music for $4 million. And that was a hell of a lot of money in 1969. It made her famous, it made her rich. It got people to listen to her music with her singing.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

The epiphany for me at William Morris was realizing, ‘They bullshit on the phone! I can bullshit on the phone too!’

On Beverly Hills we paid too much. One hundred per cent, we did over-pay. We didn’t do our research properly.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

My advice to budding property developers: do it on the cheap and you’ll get a cheap price. Don’t avoid putting in skirting just because it’s hidden by a sofa.

I was the most productive when I was in a flex situation. Do not check for me for needless meetings.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.