David Ogilvy

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

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

Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your wife.

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 I had to think where I could live if not Moscow, London would be my first choice and second would be New York.

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

When people are ‘stung’ in false investment schemes there are three causes; greed of something for nothing; sheer inability to know their mind; or infantile trustfulness.

An imitation may be quite successful in its own way, but imitation can never be Success. Success is a first-hand creation.

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

In Moscow I feel most comfortable. I’m used to four different seasons; it’s difficult for people in London to understand. People brought up in Russia like my kids want to play in the snow.

While several parties have expressed interest in buying the company, I’m not shopping it, I haven’t sold it and I’m not about to sell it.

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.

I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life’s problems.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

Building a brand may be more important than building a business.

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

Our modern industrialism, changed to motives of public service, will provide means to remove every injustice that gives soil for prejudice.