Top 53 Quotes by David Ogilvy

If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.

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.

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 pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.

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

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.

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.

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.

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