David Ogilvy

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

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

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.

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.

I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.

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

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.

Only one thing makes prosperity, and that is work.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

I never trust an executive who tends to pass the buck. Nor would I want to deal with him as a customer or a supplier.

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.

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.

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 is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

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

When you are in real estate, you are going to make some mistakes.

[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.’

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.

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

Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No.1.