David Ogilvy

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

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.

You now have to decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

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.

First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.

The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning; to create a product or service to make the world a better place.

We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

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

If you find out what men want and give them that, you are pleasing them. If you find out what is good for them and give them that, you are performing a service. That’s what we are trying to do.

If your dreams don’t scare you they are too small.

I think I’ve got the best staff in television.

[On his first job in the mailroom of William Morris a casting agency] It was the first time in the my life that I thought ‘I can do that.’

Nothing can be made except by makers, nothing can be managed except by managers. Money cannot make anything and money cannot manage anything.

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.

Depressions aren’t acts of God; like wars, they are the work of a small group of men who profit by them.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about ‘hard work’ without having a corresponding result to show for it.

Our aim is to compete with any luxury brand. Candy & Candy will be a luxury brand, recognised in Rodeo Drive, New York, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and London. Those are the major centres in the world. It will be synonymous with the design of homes, houses, flats, yachts, aircraft and retail.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

From the start I had my own ideas about how the business should run. I wanted it to benefit everybody who contributed to its success-stockholders, labor and the American public.