David Ogilvy

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

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.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

I don’t know the rules of grammar. If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

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

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.

It took only 10 minutes to do Chelsea deal with Roman Abramovich but I had to Google him first … I wasn’t sure if Jeremy Beadle was going to jump out.

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.

I myself never make any notes. Usually, if I write something down, I can’t read it afterwards.

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.

There’s no better friend to any merchant than a fair competitor.

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 epiphany for me at William Morris was realizing, ‘They bullshit on the phone! I can bullshit on the phone too!’

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules, you learn by doing and by falling over.

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

A monopoly of jobs in this country is just as bad as a monopoly of bread!

My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.

Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force. Without straightforward feedback, entrepreneurs cannot make sound decisions.

The way I run my business seems to be easier than the way I run my life.