David Ogilvy

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

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

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.

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.

I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.

I used to be able to read memo’s upside down… It was like going to the college of the entertainment business.

No human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient [for] the duty of superintending the industry of private people … towards the employment most suitable to the interest of the society.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

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

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

Selling is our No. 1 job. Never get away from selling a lot of merchandise personally. The more you sell the more you learn.

Our modern industrialism, changed to motives of public service, will provide means to remove every injustice that gives soil for prejudice.

Salesmanship is limitless. Our very living is selling. We are all salespeople.

Anyone who criticises me for talking about fair trade is a few pebbles short of a beach. Because everyone should care about it, just like everyone should care about the environment, because we all live here.

I think everybody thought I was crazy that I quit my job and started a management company in which I was managing one client – Laura Nyro.

No company can afford not to move forward. It may be at the top of the heap today but at the bottom of the heap tomorrow, if it doesn’t.

Our aim is to compete with any luxury brand. Candy & Candy will be a luxury brand, recognised in Rodeo Drive, New York, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and London. Those are the major centres in the world. It will be synonymous with the design of homes, houses, flats, yachts, aircraft and retail.

I believe that any stock that is sold should have real value as automobile or bushel of potatoes, and stock market should be run as a vegetable market.