David Ogilvy

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.

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

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

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

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.

There are good examples of companies – Coca-Cola is one – that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

I don’t make deals for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it.

Selling is our No. 1 job. Never get away from selling a lot of merchandise personally. The more you sell the more you learn.

I used to be able to read memo’s upside down… It was like going to the college of the entertainment business.

It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

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

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.

We get real results only in proportion to the real values we give.

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

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

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.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.

I have very good executives and great children. They’re very good.

I never aspired to be a public figure. I have always been interested primarily in real business and the development of business strategies.