David Ogilvy

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

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.

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.

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

Money will ruin the life of any man who treats it like anything but a tool with which to work.

I believe that any stock that is sold should have real value as automobile or bushel of potatoes, and stock market should be run as a vegetable market.

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.

There should be rivalry between men and between business.

It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.

The greatest teacher I know is the job itself.

The best way to make money in business is not to think too much about making it.

Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.

My motto is: Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.

You should consider an employment change before you consider selling out.

Nobody buys a farm based on whether they think it’s going to rain next year. They buy it because they think it’s a good investment over 10 or 20 years.

I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual produce of the fields. I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine.

Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!

If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.