David Ogilvy

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your own family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out — either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

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.

I was the most productive when I was in a flex situation. Do not check for me for needless meetings.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

I built a great company, one of the – some of the most iconic assets in the world, $10 billion of net worth, more than $10 billion of net worth, and frankly, I had a great time doing it.

Chris and I came from nothing. We’re selfmade. We started with nothing, so we have nothing to lose. And we have everything to gain.

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

No serious-minded man should have time for the mediocre in any phase of his living.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

It is regrettable that people think about our monetary system, and of our economic structure, only in times of depression.

A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions would be just a much better world.

The golden rule for every businessman is this: Put yourself in your customer’s place.

We can serve our customers well only if our buying jobs are right. You cannot sell if you haven’t ordered wanted goods into your store.

Do not primarily train men to work. Train them to serve willingly and intelligently.