When copywriters argue with me about some esoteric word they want to use, I say to them, ‘Get on a bus. Go to Iowa. Stay on a farm for a week and talk to the farmer. Come back to New York by train and talk to your fellow passengers in the day-coach. If you still want to use the word, go ahead.

— David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy Quotes

The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.

— David Ogilvy

I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ’your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?

— David Ogilvy

Given sufficient training, any intelligent person can learn to conduct surveys, but getting people to use the results requires salesmanship of a high order.

— David Ogilvy

St Augustine had this to say about pressure: ‘To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.

— David Ogilvy

Rosser Reeves: ‘Do you want fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve start moving up?

— David Ogilvy

When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.

— David Ogilvy

One day a man walked into a London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was about to open it as a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had $500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the office boy, who happened to be the author of this book. I invested his money in penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted blood.

— David Ogilvy

Sales are a function of product-value and advertising. Promotions cannot produce more than a temporary kink in the sales curve.

— David Ogilvy

All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short.

— David Ogilvy

If you choose to ignore these factors, good luck to you. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they are found in oak forests.

— David Ogilvy

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.

— David Ogilvy

You don’t have to be Christian to behave like a gentleman!

— David Ogilvy

Remember the French saying: ‘He who is absent is always wrong.

— David Ogilvy

Long copy sells more than short copy, particularly when you are asking the reader to spend a lot of money.

— David Ogilvy

Promise, large promise is the soul of an advertisement,’ said Samuel Johnson.

— David Ogilvy

Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign. And that’s the way to answer them – not by arguments around the table.

— David Ogilvy

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.

— David Ogilvy

I was infinitely more useful to my clients when I wrote copy than when I was Chairman of the Board.

— David Ogilvy

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

— David Ogilvy

I like to succeed in public, but to fail in secret.

— David Ogilvy
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