David Ogilvy

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

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

I have a theory that the best advertisements come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

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.

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.

No serious-minded man should have time for the mediocre in any phase of his living.

The golden rule for every businessman is this: Put yourself in your customer’s place.

There should be rivalry between men and between business.

A merchant who approaches business with the idea of serving the public well has nothing to fear from the competition.

Do not primarily train men to work. Train them to serve willingly and intelligently.

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

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard working and pragmatic.

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

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

The other people I don’t take too seriously are the critics-except when they stand in the way of my projects. In my opinion, they mostly write to impress each other, and they’re just as swayed by fashions as anyone else. One week it’s spare glass towers they are praising to the skies. The next week, they’ve rediscovered old, and they’re celebrating detail and ornamentation.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

The greatest teacher I know is the job itself.

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

No human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient [for] the duty of superintending the industry of private people … towards the employment most suitable to the interest of the society.

People in the beauty community don’t like copycats, so I think it’s important to stay true to who you are and people will stay your customer.