Top 200 David Ogilvy Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself five questions: 1 Did it make me gasp when I first saw it? 2 Do I wish I had thought of it myself? 3 Is it unique? 4 Does it fit the strategy to perfection? 5 Could it be used for 30 years? You.”

— David Ogilvy

152. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

153. “Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.”

— David Ogilvy

154. “However able they may be, ambitious people won’t stay in outfits which practice nepotism. This is one mistake I did not make; my son is in the real estate business, secure in the knowledge that he owes nothing of his success to his father. Think.”

— David Ogilvy

155. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

156. “If you choose to ignore these factors, good luck to you. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they are found in oak forests.”

— David Ogilvy

157. “Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.”

— David Ogilvy

158. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

159. “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?”

— David Ogilvy

160. “Down with committees Most campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of objectives, and try to reconcile the divergent views of too many executives. By attempting to cover too many things, they achieve nothing. Many commercials and many advertisements look like the minutes of a committee. In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. ‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees’ Agencies.”

— David Ogilvy

161. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

162. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

163. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

164. “No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That made an impression on me.”

— David Ogilvy

165. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

166. “Leaders grasp nettles.”

— David Ogilvy

167. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

168. “It isn’t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image.”

— David Ogilvy

169. “It is usually assumed that marketers use scientific methods to determine the price of their products. Nothing could be further from the truth. In almost every case, the process of decision is one of guesswork.”

— David Ogilvy

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

— David Ogilvy

171. “Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.”

— David Ogilvy

172. “I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.”

— David Ogilvy

173. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

174. “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?”

— David Ogilvy

175. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

176. “Readers travel so fast they don’t stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.”

— David Ogilvy

177. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

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

— David Ogilvy

179. “Some copywriters write tricky headlines – double meanings, puns and other obscurities. This is counter-productive. In the average newspaper your headline has to compete with 350 others. Readers travel fast through this jungle. Your headline should telegraph what you want to say.”

— David Ogilvy

180. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

181. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

182. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

183. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

184. “I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.”

— David Ogilvy

185. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

186. “I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ’your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?”

— David Ogilvy

187. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

188. “The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.”

— David Ogilvy

189. “Said Winston Churchill, ‘PERFECTIONISM is spelled PARALYSIS.”

— David Ogilvy

190. “The day after a new business presentation, send the prospect a three-page letter summarizing the reasons why he should pick your agency. This will help him make the right decision. If.”

— David Ogilvy

191. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

192. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

193. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

194. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

195. “Advertising is the place where the selfish interests of the manufacturer coincide with the interests of society.”

— David Ogilvy

196. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

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

— David Ogilvy

198. “There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections.”

— David Ogilvy

199. “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.”

— David Ogilvy

200. “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.”

— David Ogilvy