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I Do Not Regard Advertising As Entertainment Or An Art Form, But As A Medium Of Information. When I Write An Advertisement, I Don’t Want You To Tell Me That You Find It ‘creative.’ I Want You To Find It So Interesting That You Buy The Product.

-David Ogilvy

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I Do Not Regard

David Ogilvy

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I Do Not Regard Advertising As Entertainment Or An Art Form, But As A Medium Of Information. When I Write An Advertisement, I Don’t Want You To Tell Me That You Find It ‘creative.’ I Want You To Find It So Interesting That You Buy The Product.

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Tell The Truth, But Make The Truth Fascinating.

Telling The Truth

Few Of The Great Creators Have Bland Personalities. They Are Cantankerous Egotists, The Kind Of Men Who Are Unwelcome In The Modern Corporation.

Claude Hopkins.. Maintained That Nobody With A College Education Could Write An Advertisement Addressed To The Mass Millions. That's Absolute Poppycock.

Compete With The Immortals

Advertising Reflects The Mores Of Society, But It Does Not Influence Them.

The More Story-appeal There Is In The Picture Or In The Photograph, The More People Would Look At Your Ad

The Trouble With Many Copywriters In General Agencies Are That They Don't Really Think In Terms Of Selling. They Have Never Written Direct-response; They Have Never Tasted Blood

You Make The Best Products You Can, And You Grow As Fast As You Deserve To.

Good Copy Can't Be Written With Tongue In Cheek, Written Just For A Living. You've Got To Believe In The Product.

When Someone Is Made The Head Of An Office In The Ogilvy & Mather Chain, I Send Him A Matrioshka Doll From Gorky. If He Has The Curiosity To Open It, And Keep Opening It Until He Comes To The Inside Of The Smallest Doll, He Finds This Message: 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 Is Something Important, Get A Colleague To Improve It.

Our Offices Must Always Be Headed By The Kind Of Men Who Command Respect. Not Phonies, Zeros Or Bastards.

I Avoid Clients For Whom Advertising Is Only A Marginal Factor In Their Marketing Mix. They Have An Awkward Tendency To Raid Their Advertising Appropriations Whenever They Need Cash For Other Purposes.

...consumers Do Not Buy One Brand Of Soap, Or Coffee, Or Detergent. They Have A Repertory Of Four Or Five Brands, And Move From One To Another. They Almost Never Buy A Brand Which Has Not Been Admitted To Their Repertory During Its First Year On The Market.

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.

Service Culture

While You Are Responsible To Your Clients For Sales Results, You Are Responsible To Consumers For The Kind Of Advertising You Bring Into Their Homes.

It Has Taken More Than A Hundred Scientists Two Years To Find Out How To Make The Product In Question; I Have Been Given Thirty Days To Create Its Personality And Plan Its Launching. If I Do My Job Well, I Shall Contribute As Much As The Hundred Scientists To The Success Of This Product.

The Mission Of A Great School Is Not To Cram You With Facts So That You Can Regurgitate Them...this Gives Many Boys Such A Distaste For Learning That They Never Read Another Book As Long As They Live. No, The Mission Is To Inspire You With A Taste For Scholarship - A Taste Which Will Last You All Your Life.

I Have Noticed That Agencies Which Are Full Of Fun And Ferment Seem To Create The Best Advertising. If You Are Not Happy In Advertising, For Goodness Sake Find A Job In Which You Would Be Happy. For As Far As I Know, We Pass This Way Only Once

Never Use Jargon Words Like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They Are Hallmarks Of A Pretentious Ass.

There Are Very Few Men Of Genius In Advertising Agencies. But We Need All We Can Find. Almost Without Exception They Are Disagreeable. Don't Destroy Them. They Lay Golden Eggs.

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.

Many Of The Greatest Creations Of Man Have Been Inspired By The Desire To Make Money...if Oxford Undergraduates Were Paid For Their Work, I Would Have Performed Miracles Of Scholarship And Become Regius Professor Of Modern History.

Creation Of Man

Creativity Needs Discipline And Freedom.

Unless Your Campaign Has A Big Idea, It Will Pass Like A Ship In The Night.

It's The Lack Of Ambition That Cripples Most People, And Makes Them So Pedestrian In The Advertising/creative Business

Develop Your Eccentricities While You Are Young. That Way, When You Get Old, People Won't Think You're Going Gaga.

Creativity Is A Fancy Word For The Work We Have To Do By Friday.

You Aren’t Advertising To A Standing Army; You Are Advertising To A Moving Parade.

The Best Idea Is The Simplest.

Senior Men Have No Monopoly On Great Ideas. Nor Do Creative People. Some Of The Best Ideas Come From Account Executives, Researchers And Others. Encourage This, You Need All The Ideas You Can Get.

Supposing You've Got An Acute Appendicitis. You've Got To Be Operated On Tonight. Would You Like To Have A Surgeon Who's Read Some Books Of Anatomy And Knows How To Do That Operation - Or Would You Prefer To Have A Surgeon Who Refused To Read All Books About Anatomy And Relied On His Own Instinct?

Some Manufacturers Illustrate Their Advertisements With Abstract Paintings. I Would Only Do This If I Wished To Conceal From The Reader What I Was Advertising.

Abstract Painting

In The Modern World Of Business, It Is Useless To Be A Creative, Original Thinker Unless You Can Also Sell What You Create.

H. L. Mencken Once Said That Nobody Ever Went Broke Underestimating The Taste Of The American Public. That Is Not True. I Have Come To Believe That It Pays To Make All Your Layouts Project A Feeling Of Good Taste, Provided That You Do It Unobtrusively. An Ugly Layout Suggests An Ugly Product. There Are Very Few Products Which Do Not Benefit From Being Given A First Class Ticket Through Life.

It Is The Inescapable Duty Of Management To Fire Incompetent People.

If You Have All The Research, All The Ground Rules, All The Directives, All The Data - It Doesn't Mean The Ad Is Written. Then You've Got To Close The Door And Write Something - That Is The Moment Of Truth Which We All Try To Postpone As Long As Possible.

Big Ideas Are Usually Simple Ideas.

The More Informative Your Advertising, The More Persuasive It Will Be. Before People Making A Buying Decision, They Have Many Questions. For Example, Why They Should Buy From You, Why Your Product Is Better Than Other Similar Products, Why They Should Trust You, And Why They Should Buy It Now, Etc.

The Relationship Between A Manufacturer And His Advertising Agency Is Almost As Intimate As The Relationship Between A Patient And His Doctor. Make Sure That You Can Life Happily With Your Prospective Client Before You Accept His Account.

If It Doesn't Sell, It Isn't Creative.

At 60 Miles An Hour The Loudest Noise In This Rolls-royce Comes From The Electric Clock.

I Don't Know The Rules Of Grammar... If You're Trying To Persuade People To Do Something, Or Buy Something, It Seems To Me You Should Use Their Language, The Language They Use Every Day, The Language In Which They Think. We Try To Write In The Vernacular.

We All Have A Tendency To Use Research As A Drunkard Uses A Lamppost – For Support, Not For Illumination.

Training Should Not Be Confined To Trainees. It Should Be A Continuous Process, And Should Include The Entire Professional Staff Of The Agency. The More Our People Learn, The More Useful They Can Be To Our Clients.

If You Can’t Advertise Yourself, What Hope Do You Have Of Advertising Anything Else?

You Will Never Win Fame And Fortune Unless You Invent Big Ideas.

On The Average, Five Times As Many People Read The Headlines As Read The Body Copy.

Leaders Grasp Nettles.

Making The Logo Twice The Size Is Often A Good Thing To Do, Because Most Advertisements Are Deficient In Brand Identification. Showing The Clients' Faces Is Also A Better Stratagem Than It May Sound, Because The Public Is More Interested In Personalities Than In Corporations. Some Clients Can Be Projected As Human Symbols Of Their Own Products.

Never Write More Than Two Pages On Any Subject.

Nobody Ever Arrives At A Very Big Idea Through A Conscious, Rational Thought Process. It Comes From Your Unconscious.

I Do Not Regard Advertising As Entertainment Or An Art Form, But As A Medium Of Information. When I Write An Advertisement, I Don’t Want You To Tell Me That You Find It ‘creative.’ I Want You To Find It So Interesting That You Buy The Product.

When You Have Nothing To Say, Sing It.

Try And Inject Into Every Commercial You Make A Touch Of Singularity; A Bird That Will Hook On To The Consumers Mind

The Creative Process Requires More Than Reason. Most Original Thinking Isn't Even Verbal. It Requires 'a Groping Experimentation With Ideas, Governed By Intuitive Hunches And Inspired By The Unconscious.' The Majority Of Business Men Are Incapable Of Original Thinking Because They Are Unable To Escape From The Tyranny Of Reason. Their Imaginations Are Blocked.

Talent, I Believe, Is Most Likely To Be Found Among Nonconformists, Dissenters, And Rebels.

The Worst Fault A Salesman Can Commit Is To Be A Bore...... Pretend To Be Vastly Interested In Any Subject The Prospects Shows An Interest In.

Shakespeare Wrote His Sonnets Within A Strict Discipline, Fourteen Lines Of Iambic Pentameter, Rhyming In Three Quatrains And A Couplet. Were His Sonnets Dull? Mozart Wrote His Sonatas Within An Equally Rigid Discipline - Exposition, Development, And Recapitulation. Were They Dull?.

Does Advertising Corrupt Editors? Yes It Does, But Fewer Editors Than You May Suppose... The Vast Majority Of Editors Are Incorruptible.

Write The Way You Talk. Naturally.

I Have An Inviolable Rule Against Employing Nepots And Spouses, Because They Breed Politics. Whenever Two People Get Married, One Of Them Must Depart - Preferably The Female, To Look After The Baby.

Headlines Can Be Strengthend By The Inclusion Of Emotional Words Like Darling, Love, Fear, Proud, Friend And Baby.

Do Not Address Your Readers As Though They Were Gathered Together In A Stadium. When People Read Your Copy, They Are Alone. Pretend You Are Writing To Each Of Them A Letter On Behalf Of Your Client.

Candor Compels Me To Admit That I Have No Conclusive Research To Support My View That Jingles Are Less Persuasive Than The Spoken Word. You'd Run Like Hell If A Salesman Came To Your Door And Began Singing At You. Why Do It In Advertising?

Don't Bunt. Aim Out Of The Ball Park. Aim For The Company Of Immortals.

Experience Has Taught Me That Advertisers Get The Best Results When They Pay Their Agency A Flat Fee. It Is Unrealistic To Expect Your Agency To Be Impartial When Its Vested Interest Lies Wholly In The Direction Of Increasing Your Commissionable Advertising.

The Majority Of Business Men Are Not Capable Of An Original Thought, Simply Because They Cannot Escape The Tyranny Of Reason.

Original Thought

Much Of The Messy Advertising You See On Television Today Is The Product Of Committees. Committees Can Criticize Advertisements, But They Should Never Be Allowed To Create Them.

I Know Of A Brewer Who Sells More Of His Beer To The People Who Never See His Advertising Than To The People Who See It Every Week. Bad Advertising Can Unsell A Product.

You Can't Save Souls In An Empty Church.

Advertising Is Only Evil When It Advertises Evil Things.

Advertising Business

I Once Used The Word Obsolete In A Headline, Only To Discover That 43 Per Cent Of 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.

Most Headlines Are Set Too Big To Be Legible In The Magazines Or Newspaper. Never Approve A Layout Until You Have Seen It Pasted Into The Magazine Or Newspaper For Which It Was Destined. If You Pin Up The Layouts On A Bulletin Board And Appraise Them From Fifteen Feet, You Will Produce Posters.

Readers Travel So Fast They Don't Stop To Decipher The Meaning Of Obscure Headlines.

I Notice Increasing Reluctance On The Part Of Marketing Executives To Use Judgment; 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.

Remove Advertising, Disable A Person Or Firm From Proclaiming Its Wares And Their Merits, And The Whole Of Society And Of The Economy Is Transformed. The Enemies Of Advertising Are The Enemies Of Freedom.

Madison Avenue Is Full Of Masochists Who Unconsciously Provoke Rejection By Their Clients. I Know Brilliant Men Who Have Lost Every Account They Have Ever Handled.

The General Advertisers And Their Agencies Know Almost Nothing For Sure, Because They Cannot Measure The Results Of Their Advertising. They Worship At The Altar Of Creativity, Which Really Means 'originality': The Most Dangerous Word In The Lexicon Of Advertising

When You Advertise Fire Extinguishers, Open With The Fire.

Fire Extinguishers

Positioning Should Be Decided Before The Advertising Is Created

Agencies Which Frequently Work Nights And Weekends Are More Stimulating, More Successful - And More Profitable.

Don’t Just Create Content To Get Credit For Being Clever — Create Content That Will Be Helpful, Insightful, Or Interesting For Your Target Audience.

Target Audience

Never Use Tricky Or Irrelevant Headlines… People Read Too Fast To Figure Out What You Are Trying To Say.

Never Stop Testing, And Your Advertising Will Never Stop Improving.

Testing Yourself

As A Private Person, I Have A Passion For Landscape, And I Have Never Seen One Improved By A Billboard. Where Every Prospect Pleases, Man Is At His Vilest When He Erects A Billboard. When I Retire From Madison Avenue, I Am Going To Start A Secret Society Of Masked Vigilantes Who Will Travel Around The World On Silent Motor Bicycles, Chopping Down Posters At The Dark Of The Moon. How Many Juries Will Convict Us When We Are Caught In These Acts Of Beneficent Citizenship?

If You Want To Be Interesting, Be Interested.

I'd Like To Be Remembered, As A Copywriter Who Had Some Big Ideas. That's What The Advertising Business Is All About. Big Ideas

Advertising Business

Consumers Don't Think How They Feel. They Don't Say What They Think And They Don't Do What They Say.

I Have A Theory That The Best Ads Come From Personal Experience. Some Of The Good Ones I Have Done Have Really Come Out Of The Real Experience Of My Life, And Somehow This Has Come Over As True And Valid And Persuasive.

I Always Said That Mega-mergers Were For Megalomaniacs.

It Is Important To Admit Your Mistakes, And To Do So Before You Are Charged With Them. Many Clients Are Surrounded By Buckpassers Who Make A Fine Art Of Blaming The Agency For Their Own Failures. I Seize The Earliest Opportunity To Assume The Blame.

You Have Only 30 Seconds In A Tv Commercial. If You Grab Attention In The First Frame With A Visual Surprise, You Stand A Better Chance Of Holding The Viewer. People Screen Out A Lot Of Commercials Because They Open With Something Dull. When You Advertise Fire-extinguishers, Open With The Fire.

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.

Don't Hire A Dog, Then Bark Yourself

I Admire People With Gentle Manners Who Treat Other People As Human Beings.

Why Should A Manufacturer Bet His Money, Perhaps The Future Of His Company, On Your Instinct?

There Isn’t Any Significant Difference Between The Various Brands Of Whiskey, Or Cigarettes Or Beer. They Are All About The Same. And So Are The Cake Mixes And The Detergents, And The Margarines… The Manufacturer Who Dedicates His Advertising To Building The Most Sharply Defined Personality For His Brand Will Get The Largest Share Of The Market At The Highest Profit.

Play To Win, But Enjoy The Fun.

Advertising Is A Business Of Words, But Advertising Agencies Are Infested With Men And Women Who Cannot Write. They Cannot Write Advertisements, And They Cannot Write Plans. They Are Helpless As Deaf Mutes On The Stage Of The Metropolitan Opera.

Most Agencies Run Scared, Most Of The Time. . . .frightened People Are Powerless To Produce Good Advertising. . . . If I Were Aclient, I Would Do Everything In My Power To Emancipate My Agencies From Fear, Even To The Extent Of Giving Them Long-term Contracts.

I Had A Friend Who Was The King's Surgeon In England. One Day I Asked Him What Makes A Great Surgeon. He Replied, "what Distinguishes A Great Surgeon Is His Knowledge. He Knows More Than Other Surgeons. During An Operation He Finds Something Which He Wasn't Expecting, Recognizes It And Knows What To Do About It." It's The Same Thing With Advertising People. The Good Ones Know More. How Do You Get To Know More? By Reading Books About Advertising. By Picking The Brains Of People Who Know More Than You Do. From The Magic Lanterns. And From Experience.

Every Advertisement Is Part Of The Long Term Investment In The Personality Of The Brand.

Within Every Brand Is A Product, But Not Every Product Is A Brand.

Many Manufacturers Secretly Question Whether Advertising Really Sells Their Product, But Are Vaguely Afraid That Their Competitors Might Steal A March On Them If They Stopped.

The Business Community Wants Remarkable Advertising, But Turns A Cold Shoulder To The Kind Of People Who Can Produce It. That Is Why Most Advertisements Are So Infernally Dull.... Our Business Needs Massive Transfusions Of Talent. And Talent, I Believe, Is Most Likely To Be Found Among Nonconformists, Dissenters, And Rebels.

The Headline Is The 'ticket On The Meat.' Use It To Flag Down Readers Who Are Prospects For The Kind Of Product You Are Advertising.

It Follows That Unless Your Headline Sells Your Product, You Have Wasted 90 Percent Of Your Money.

There Is One Catagory Of Advertising Which Is Totally Uncontrolled And Flagrantly Dishonest: The Television Commercials For Candidates In Presidential Elections.

Television Commercials

Advertising Is The Place Where The Selfish Interests Of The Manufacturer Coincide With The Interests Of Society.

We Like People Who Are Honest. Honest In Argument, Honest With Clients, Honest With Suppliers, Honest With The Company - And Above All, Honest With Consumers.

Don't Count The People That You Reach, Reach The People Who Count

One Half Was Sad Because I Had Damaged My Reputation. The Other Half Was Happy Because I Had Damaged My Reputation.

Our Business Is Infested With Idiots Who Try To Impress By Using Pretentious Jargon.

I Prefer The Discipline Of Knowledge To The Anarchy Of Ignorance.

Why Do Eight Out Of Ten New Consumer Products Fail? Sometimes Because They Are Too New. The First Cold Cereals Were Rejected By Consumers. More Often New Products Fail Because They Are Not New Enough.

Any Damn Fool Can Put On A Deal, But It Takes Genius, Faith And Perseverance To Create A Brand.

If You Ever Find A Man Who Is Better Than You Are - Hire Him. If Necessary, Pay Him More Than You Pay Yourself.

Better Than You

The Best Ideas Come As Jokes. Make Your Thinking As Funny As Possible.

The Best Leaders Are Apt To Be Found Among Those Executives Who Have A Strong Component Of Unorthodoxy In Their Character. Instead Of Resisting Innovation, They Symbolize It.

David Ogilvy Made His Copywriters Come Up 100 Different Headlines For Every Ad They Wrote.

Every Ad Is An Investment In The Long-term Image Of A Brand.

Develop Your Eccentricities Early, And No One Will Think You're Going Senile Later In Life

Set Exorbitant Standards, And Give Your People Hell When They Don't Live Up To Them. There Is Nothing So Demoralizing As A Boss Who Tolerates Second Rate Work.

If You Ever Have The Good Fortune To Create A Great Advertising Campaign, You Will Soon See Another Agency Steal It. This Is Irritating, But Don't Let It Worry You; Nobody Has Ever Built A Brand By Imitating Somebody Else's Advertising.

There Is No Need For Advertisements To Look Like Advertisements. If You Make Them Look Like Editorial Pages, You Will Attract About 50 Per Cent More Readers.

The Pursuit Of Excellence Is Less Profitable Than The Pursuit Of Bigness, But It Can Be More Satisfying.

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 You Have A Truly Big Idea, The Wrong Technique Won't Kill It. And If You Don't Have A Big Idea, The Right Technique Won't Help You

Lazy And Superficial Men And Women Do Not Produce Superior Work.

A Consumer Is Not A Moron. She's Your Wife. Don't Insult Her Intelligence, And Don't Shock Her.

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.

Hard Work Never Killed A Man. Men Die Of Boredom, Psychological Conflict, And Disease. They Do Not Die Of Hard Work.

The Only Marketers Who Know What The Hell They're Doing Are Those Who Have Worked In Sales

The Success Of A Meeting Often Depends On Having The Right Documents - Proofs, Artwork, Schedules, Research Charts, Etc. - Present At The Start Of The Meeting. All Too Often We Arrive Like Plumbers, Leaving Our Tools Behind.

It Strikes Me As Bad Manners For A Magazine To Accept One Of My Advertisements And Then Attack It Editorially - Like Inviting A Man To Dinner Then Spitting In His Eye.

Always Hold Your Sales Meetings In Rooms Too Small For The Audience, Even If It Means Holding Them In The Wc. 'standing Room Only' Creates An Atmosphere Of Success, As In Theatres And Restaurants, While A Half-empty Auditorium Smells Of Failure.

Consumers Do Not Buy Products. They Buy Product Benefits.

Consumers Still Buy Products Whose Advertising Promises Them Value For Money, Beauty, Nutrition, Relief From Suffering, Social Status And So On.

Great Marketing Only Makes A Bad Product Fail Faster.

You Aren't Advertising To A Standing Army; You Are Advertising To A Moving Parade. Three Million Consumers Get Married Every Year. The Advertisement Which Sold A Refrigerator To Those Who Got Married Last Year Will Probably Be Just As Successful With Those Who'll Get Married Next Year. An Advertisement Is Just Like A Radar Sweep, Constantly Hunting New Prospects As They Come Into The Market. Get A Good Radar And Keep It Sweeping.

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 Them To Mine.

Make Sure You Have A Vice President In Charge Of Your Revolution, To Engender Ferment Among Your More Conventional Colleagues.

If You Always Hire People Who Are Bigger Than You Are, We Shall Become A Company Of Giants

Nobody Has Ever Built A Brand By Imitating Somebody Else's Advertising.

Advertisement Negative

If You Can’t Be Brilliant, At Least Be Memorable

The Most Important Word In The Vocabulary Of Advertising Is Test. If You Pretest Your Product With Consumers, And Pretest Your Advertising, You Will Do Well In The Marketplace.

It's Not Creative Unless It Sells.

I Do Not Regard Advertising As Entertainment Or An Art Form, But As A Medium Of Information.

The More Informative Your Advertising, The More Persuasive It Will Be.

If You Want Action, Don’t Write. Go And Tell The Guy What You Want.

What You Say In Advertising Is More Important Than How You Say It.

Sound An Alarm! Advertising, Not Deals, Builds Brands.

The Advertisers Who Believe In The Selling Power Of Jingles Have Never Had To Sell Anything.

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.

Political Advertising Ought To Be Stopped. It's The Only Really Dishonest Kind Of Advertising That's Left. It's Totally Dishonest.

You Now Have To Decide What 'image' You Want For Your Brand. Image Means Personality. Products, Like People, Have Personalities, And They Can Make Or Break Them In The Market Place.

I Figure That My Staff Will Be Less Reluctant To Work Overtime If I Work Longer Hours Than They Do.

It Is Flagrantly Dishonest For An Advertising Agent To Urge Consumers To Buy A Product Which He Would Not Allow His Own Wife To Buy.

Every Advertisement Should Be Thought Of As A Contribution To The Complex Symbol Which Is The Brand Image.

People Who Think Well, Write Well

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.

In Most Agencies, Account Executives Outnumber The Copywriters Two To One. If You Were A Dairy Farmer, Would You Employ Twice As Many Milkers As You Had Cows?

Ninety-nine Percent Of Advertising Doesn't Sell Much Of Anything.

The Secret Of Long Life Is Double Careers. One To About Age Sixty, Then Another For The Next Thirty Years.

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.

The Consumer Isn't A Moron; She Is Your Wife. You Insult Her Intelligence If You Assume That A Mere Slogan And A Few Vapid Adjectives Will Persuade Her To Buy Anything. She Wants All The Information You Can Give Her.

My Motto Has Always Been: Only First Class Business And That In A First Class Way

I Never Assign A Product To A Writer Unless I Know That He Is Personally Interested In It. Every Time I Have Written A Bad Campaign, It Has Been Because The Product Did Not Interest Me.

I Once Found Myself Conspiring With A British Cabinet Minister As To How We Might Persuade Her Majesty's Treasury To Cough Up More Money For The British Travel Advertising In America. Said He, "why Does Any American In His Senses Spend His Vacation In The Cold Damp Of An English Summer When He Could Equally Well Bask Under Italian Skies? I Can Only Suppose That Your Advertising Is The Answer." Damn Right.

Like A Midwife, I Make My Living Bringing New Babies Into The World, Except That Mine Are New Advertising Campaigns.

Be More Ambitious. Don't Bunt. When You Get A Job To Do A Story Or An Ad, Try And Hit The Ball Out Of The Park Every Time

Many People - And I Think I Am One Of Them - Are More Productive When They've Had A Little To Drink. I Find If I Drink Two Or Three Brandies, I'm Far Better Able To Write.

A Lot Of Today's Campaigns Are Based On Optimum Positioning But Are Totally Ineffective - Because They Are Dull, Or Badly Constructed, Or Ineptly Written. If Nobody Reads Your Advertisement Or Looks At Your Commercial, It Doesn't Do You Much Good To Have The Right Positioning.

Repeat Your Winners. If You Are Lucky Enough To Write A Good Advertisement, Repeat It Until It Stops Selling. Scores Of Good Advertisements Have Been Discarded Before They Lost Their Potency.

First, Make Yourself A Reputation For Being A Creative Genius. Second, Surround Yourself With Partners Who Are Better Than You Are. Third, Leave Them To Go Get On With It.

No Sale, No Commission. No Commission, No Eat. That Made An Impression On Me.

A Good Advertisement Is One Which Sells The Product Without Drawing Attention To Itself.

The Line Between Pride In Our Work And Neurotic Obstinacy Is A Narrow One. We Make Our Recommendations Clear. But We Do Not Grudge Our Clients The Right To The Final Say. It Is Their Money.

Where People Aren't Having Any Fun, They Seldom Produce Good Work.

The Headline Is The Most Important Element In Most Advertisements. It Is The Telegram Which Decides The Reader Whether To Read The Copy.

We Admire People Who Work Hard, Who Are Objective And Thorough. We Detest Office Politicians, Toadies, Bullies, And Pompous Asses. We Abhor Ruthlessness. The Way Up Our Ladder Is Open To Everybody. In Promoting People To Top Jobs, We Are Influenced As Much By Their Character As Anything Else.

The Manufacturer Who Finds Himself Up The Creek Is The Short-sighted Opportunist Who Siphons Off All His Advertising Dollars For Short-term Promotions.

Managing An Advertising Agency Isn't All Beer And Skittles. After Fourteen Years Of It, I Have Come To The Conclusion That The Top Man Has One Principle Responsibility: To Provide An Atmosphere In Which Creative Mavericks Can Do Useful Work.

I Never Tell One Client That I Cannot Attend His Sales Convention Because I Have A Previous Engagement With Another Client; Successful Polygamy Depends Upon Pretending To Each Spouse That She Is The Only Pebble On Your Beach.

Advertising People Who Ignore Research Are As Dangerous As Generals Who Ignore Decodes Of Enemy Signals.

I Was Doing A Campaign Once For A Manufacturer, And I Couldn't Think Of An Ideas, And I Was Kind Of Desperate About It. The Night Before I Had To Show Something To My Client I Had A Dream, An Interesting Dream. I Woke Up And For Once In My Life I Wrote It Down And Went Back To Sleep Next Morning I Went To The Office And Had That Dream Out Into A Tv Commercial Which Is Still Running Thirty Years After And Which Has Made That Particular Product The Leader In Its Field.

It Takes Uncommon Guts To Stick To One Style In The Face Of All The Pressures To 'come Up With Something New' Every Six Months. It Is Tragically Easy To Be Stampeded Into Change. But Golden Rewards Await The Advertiser Who Has The Brains To Create A Coherent Image, And The Stability To Stick With It Over A Long Period.

I Can't Stand Callow Amateurs Who Aren't Sufficiently Interested In The Craft Of Advertising To Assume The Posture Of Students.

People Don't Buy A New Detergent Because The Manufacturer Told A Joke On Television Last Night.

Study The Methods Of Your Competitors And Do The Exact Opposite.

Encourage Innovation. Change Is Our Lifeblood, Stagnation Our Death Knell.

To Advertisers: "do Not Compete With Your Agency In The Creative Area. Why Keep A Dog And Bark Yourself?"

If You, My Fellow Copywriters Or Art Directors, Want To Win The Award, Devote Your Genius To Making The Cash Register Ring.

I Don't Believe In Tricky Advertising, I Don't Believe In Cute Advertising, I Don't Believe In Comic Advertising. The People Who Perpetrate That Kind Of Advertising Never Had To Sell Anything In Their Lives

Never Stop Testing, And Your Advertising Will Never Stop Improving. Testing Was Used In Advertising Decades Ago. The Internet Has Made Testing So Easy That Every Online Marketer Can Use It To Improve Advertising Results. Google Content Experiment Is A Free Tool For You To Do Split Testing.

What You Learn Is More Important Than What You Earn.

I Did Not Feel 'evil' When I Wrote Advertisements For Puerto Rico. They Helped Attract Industry And Tourists To A Country Which Had Been Living On The Edge Of Starvation For 400 Years.

What Is A Good Advertisement? An Advertisement Which Pleases You Because Of Its Style, Or An Advertisement Which Sells The Most? They Are Seldom The Same.

The Worst Fault A Salesman Can Commit Is To Be A Bore. Foster Any Attempt To Talk About Other Things; The Longer You Stay The Better You Get To Know The Prospect, And The More You Will Be Trusted.

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