David Ogilvy

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.

The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.

The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.

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.

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

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

Profits made out of the distress of the people are always much smaller than profits made out of the most lavish service of the people at the lowest prices that competent management can make possible.

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.

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.

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.

This is serious business. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun along the way.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Oprah.

What right have you, save service to the world, to think that other men’s labor should contribute to your gains?

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.

Although Mr. Edison was called ‘The Wizard’ of the electrical world and everyone thought that electricity was the coming thing, he actually encouraged me to go with my second car.

In business, cooperation is essential to success.

Change is vital, improvement the logical form of change.

Success will always be measured by the extent to which we serve the buying public.

Owning a great golf course gives you great power.

Too many would-be executives are slaves of routine.