David Ogilvy

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

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

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

Work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. The day’s work is the center of everything.

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

I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice – in giving a failure another chance.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

No one loses anything by raising wages as soon as he is able. It has always paid us. Low wages are the most costly any employer can pay. It is like using low-grade material–the waste makes it very expensive in the end. There is no economy in cheap labor or cheap material. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to reduce wages. I think we were the last big company to come to it. Now I am mighty glad that wages are climbing again.

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.

Investors have very short memories.

I remember flying in, driving down 101 in a cab, and passing by all these tech companies like Yahoo! I remember thinking, ‘Maybe someday we’ll build a company. This probably isn’t it, but one day we will.’

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves. but they can get very excited by those who do. That is why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest, the greatest and the most spectacular.

We pay attention to every demographic in every country, so we’re going to focus on building things that teens are going to like, and we’re also going to focus on building things that other folks are going to like.

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

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

When people are ‘stung’ in false investment schemes there are three causes; greed of something for nothing; sheer inability to know their mind; or infantile trustfulness.

Did I have a problem with lying to get the job? None whatsoever.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.