David Ogilvy

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.

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.

Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.

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

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.

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

Once you have a product that you are happy with, you the need to centralize things to continue growth.

Acquiring the habit of note-taking is therefore a wonderfully complementary skill to that of listening.

I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terribly what I will at all.

You can’t tell me you can make any system or country work with low wages and high prices, and high wages with high prices don’t mean anything when the prices eat up the wages and don’t leave anything over.

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.

If I had asked them what they had wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

Anything that is not right, whether it temporarily favors the employees or the employers, cannot last-because it is not right.

Without a customer, you don’t have a business, all you have is a hobby.

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.

It’s true we’ve got some fantastic clients. We’re very fortunate to be connected with the movers and shakers of all the global cities of the world. You can usually tell when we’ve got a client in here because their bodyguards are all over the place: two outside the front door, two in the lobby, one in the lift…

The thought in my mind was that I must be a good merchant. If I were a good merchant, the rest would probably take care of itself.

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

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

Men are not great or small because of their material possessions. They are great or small because of what they are.