David Ogilvy

The best idea is the simplest.

— David Ogilvy

Big ideas are usually simple ideas.

— David Ogilvy

People who think well, write well

— David Ogilvy

Play to win, but enjoy the fun.

— David Ogilvy

If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.

— David Ogilvy

Creativity needs discipline and freedom.

— David Ogilvy

Write the way you talk. Naturally.

— David Ogilvy

When you have nothing to say, sing it.

— David Ogilvy

When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.

— David Ogilvy

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

— David Ogilvy

I never write fewer than sixteen headlines for a single advertisement.

— David Ogilvy

Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.

— David Ogilvy

Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.

— David Ogilvy

If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

— David Ogilvy

Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.

— David Ogilvy

Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work.

— David Ogilvy

The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.

— David Ogilvy

It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the…

— David Ogilvy

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.

— David Ogilvy

Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.

— David Ogilvy

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…

— David Ogilvy

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

— David Ogilvy

Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.

— David Ogilvy

Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind

— David Ogilvy

“Look for young men and women who can one day lead your agency. Is there any way of predicting the capacity to…

— David Ogilvy

“A psychologist flashed hundreds of words on a screen and used an electric gadget to measure emotional reactions. High marks went to…

— David Ogilvy

We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor…

— David Ogilvy

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains…

— David Ogilvy

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when…

— David Ogilvy

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his…

— David Ogilvy

I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to…

— David Ogilvy

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. (1958 Rolls-Royce print ad - sometimes…

— David Ogilvy

The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by…

— David Ogilvy

“When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from…

— David Ogilvy

You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. Three million consumers get married every year. The…

— David Ogilvy

“Many security analysts still believe that agencies are a poor investment. Not so Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors in…

— David Ogilvy

I was doing a campaign once for a manufacturer, and I couldn't think of an ideas, and I was kind of desperate…

— David Ogilvy

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And…

— David Ogilvy

Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say…

— David Ogilvy

“Your alcoholics may include some of your brightest stars. The problem is to identify them, protected as they always are by their…

— David Ogilvy