David Ogilvy
Full Name: David Mackenzie Ogilvy
Birthdate: June 23, 1911
Birthplace: West Horsley, Surrey, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: July 21, 1999
Occupation: Advertising Executive and Author
Profile: Chairman and Founder of Ogilvy & Mather.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid
Number of Quotes: 12
A chairman who never wanders about his agency becomes a hermit, out of touch with his staff.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
Fear leads to self-doubt, which is the worst enemy of creativity.
Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease, not hard work.
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But
if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
It is a mistake to use highfalutin language when you advertise to uneducated people. I once used the word
obsolete
in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of the housewives had no idea what it meant. In
another headline, I used the word
ineffable
, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.
On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.
The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more
orders you will get. But never mistake quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship.
There is one category of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly
dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections.
You don't stand a tinker's chance of producing successful advertising unless you start doing
your homework. I have always found this extremely tedious, but there is no way around it.
Last on Earth
