Ogilvy On Advertising Quotes

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.

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.

Where people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good work.

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.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

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.

The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers.

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 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.

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.

Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points.

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

The headlines which work best are those which promise the reader a benefit

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.

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

On average, helpful information is read by 75 per cent more people than copy which deals only with the product. This ad told how Rinso gets out stains. It was read and remembered

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.

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?

Only amateurs use short copy.

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.

Said Winston Churchill, ‘PERFECTIONISM is spelled PARALYSIS.

In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. ‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees.

Never allow two people to do a job which one could do. George Washington observed, ‘Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by close application thereto, it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers.

The hallmarks of a potentially successful copywriter include: Obsessive curiosity about products, people and advertising. A sense of humor. A habit of hard work. The ability to write interesting prose for printed media, and natural dialogue for television. The ability to think visually. Television commercials depend more on pictures than words. The ambition to write better campaigns than anyone has ever written before.

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

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.

Whenever you can, make the product itself the hero of your advertising. If you think the product too dull, I have news for you: there are no dull products, only dull writers.

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

committees can criticize, but they cannot create.

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

Truth Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

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

I used to start my questionnaires by asking, ‘Which would you rather hear on the radio tonight – Jack Benny or a Shakespeare play?’ If the respondent said Shakespeare, I knew he was a liar and broke off the interview.

Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease. There is nothing like an occasional all-night push to enliven morale – provided you are part of the push. Never leave the bridge in a storm.

Most good copywriters’, says William Maynard of the Bates agency, ‘fall into two categories. Poets. And killers.

First, study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it.

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.

When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.

Never summon people to your office; it frightens them. Instead, go to see them in their offices, unannounced. A boss who never wanders about his agency becomes an invisible hermit. 3

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

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, founder of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency, in Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1963

The easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising. During one period of seven years, we never failed to win an account for which we competed, and all I did was to show the campaigns we had created.

It is a good idea to start the year by writing down exactly what you want to accomplish, and end the year by measuring how much you have accomplished. McKinsey imposes this discipline on its partners and pays them according to how many of the things on their lists they accomplish. Leadership

When copywriters argue with me about some esoteric word they want to use, I say to them, ‘Get on a bus. Go to Iowa. Stay on a farm for a week and talk to the farmer. Come back to New York by train and talk to your fellow passengers in the day-coach. If you still want to use the word, go ahead.

Aldous Huxley, who was once a copywriter, said, ‘It is easier to write ten passably effective sonnets than one effective advertisement.’ You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.

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 was infinitely more useful to my clients when I wrote copy than when I was Chairman of the Board.

A psychologist flashed hundreds of words on a screen and used an electric gadget to measure emotional reactions. High marks went to darling. So I used it in a headline for Dove.

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.’ Pursuit

advertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.

Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man.

Remember the French saying: ‘He who is absent is always wrong.

Long copy sells more than short copy, particularly when you are asking the reader to spend a lot of money.

Search all he parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees.

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

I like to succeed in public, but to fail in secret.

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead,

Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign. And that’s the way to answer them – not by arguments around the table.

Given sufficient training, any intelligent person can learn to conduct surveys, but getting people to use the results requires salesmanship of a high order.

Promise, large promise is the soul of an advertisement,’ said Samuel Johnson.

Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points. Don

Everyone wants power; let them have it. Your goal is not power. Your goal is the illusion of surrendering power.

The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their characters. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it – and companies cannot grow without innovation. Great leaders almost always exude self-confidence.

Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him. Most

It pays to give most products an image of quality – a First Class ticket. This is particularly true of products whose brand-name is visible to your friends, like beer, cigarettes and automobiles: products you ‘wear.’ If

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

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.

One day a man walked into a London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was about to open it as a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had $500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the office boy, who happened to be the author of this book. I invested his money in penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted blood.

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.

Rosser Reeves: ‘Do you want fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve start moving up?

All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short.

Whatever you do, for goodness sake, don’t change the name of your corporation to initials.

Sales are a function of product-value and advertising. Promotions cannot produce more than a temporary kink in the sales curve.

Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on. All over the world.

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.

I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This is still working 25 years later.

The best way to settle such arguments is to measure the selling effectiveness of your campaign at regular intervals, and to go on running it until the research shows that it has worn out. Word

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.

When asked what was the best asset a man could have, Albert Lasker — the most astute of all advertising men — replied, ‘Humility in the presence of a good idea.’ It is horribly difficult to recognize a good idea.

Do you think it childish to use a set of written principles to guide the management of an advertising agency? I can only tell you that mine have proved invaluable in keeping a complicated enterprise on course. Profit

St Augustine had this to say about pressure: ‘To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.

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?

I saw the head chef at the Hotel Majestic fire a pastry cook because the poor devil could not get his brioches to rise straight. This ruthlessness made all the other chefs feel that they were working in the best kitchen in the world.

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

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?

Agencies add new services the way universities add new courses. Nothing wrong with that if you also discontinue services which have outlived their relevance. To keep your boat moving through the water, keep scraping the barnacles off its bottom. Seven

At the same time President Kennedy invited me - and all the other millions of Europe - to try the novelty of tourism in the U.S., he issued a secret directive to 180,000,000 Americans to be nice to us. How else to explain the embarrassing generosity, the overwhelming kindness, the extreme courtesy at every turn?

In my Confessions, I told how I started by making a list of the clients I most wanted – General Foods, Lever Brothers, Bristol Myers, Campbell Soup Company and Shell. It took time, but in due course I got them all, plus American Express, Sears Roebuck, IBM, Morgan Guaranty, Merrill Lynch and a few others, including

When you are appointed to head an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send you one of these Russian dolls. Inside the smallest you will find 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, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants.’ With

Many security analysts still believe that agencies are a poor investment. Not so Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors in the world. He has taken substantial positions in three publicly held agencies, and is quoted as saying, ‘The best business is a royalty on the growth of others, requiring very little capital itself … such as the top international advertising agencies.’ If

The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers. For example, it is one thing to be a good leader of Americans, who are raised in a tradition of democracy and have a high need for independence. But the American brand of democratic leadership doesn’t work so well in Europe, where executives have a psychological need for more autocratic leadership. That is one of many reasons why it is wise for American agencies to appoint locals to lead their foreign subsidiaries.

The mythical ‘butterfly effect’ does exist, but we don’t spend enough time butterfly hunting. Here are some recent butterfly effect discoveries, from my own experience: A website adds a single extra option to its checkout procedure – and increases sales by $300m per year. An airline changes the way in which flights are presented – and sells £8m more of premium seating per year. A software company makes a seemingly inconsequential change to call-centre procedure – and retains business worth several million pounds. A publisher adds four trivial words to a call-centre script – and doubles the rate of conversion to sales. A fast-food outlet increases sales of a product by putting the price . . . up. All these disproportionate successes were, to an economist, entirely illogical. All of them worked. And all of them, apart from the first, were produced by a division of my advertising agency, Ogilvy, which I founded to look for counter-intuitive solutions to problems. We discovered that problems almost always have a plethora of seemingly irrational solutions waiting to be discovered, but that nobody is looking for them; everyone is too preoccupied with logic to look anywhere else. We also found, rather annoyingly, that the success of this approach did not always guarantee repeat business; it is difficult for a company, or indeed a government, to request a budget for the pursuit of such magical solutions, because a business case has to look logical.

1. First, we admire people who work hard. We dislike passengers who don’t pull their weight in the boat. 2. We admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people. 3. We admire people who avoid politics – office politics, I mean. 4. We despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates. 5. We admire the great professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. We notice that these people always respect the professional expertise of their colleagues in other departments. 6. We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates. 7. We admire people who build up and develop their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. We detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary. 8. We admire people who practice delegation. The more you delegate, the more responsibility will be loaded upon you. 9. We admire kindly people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings – particularly the people who sell things to us. We abhor quarrelsome people. We abhor people who wage paper warfare. We abhor buck passers, and people who don’t tell the truth. 10. We admire well-organized people who keep their offices shipshape, and deliver their work on time. 11. We admire people who are good citizens in their communities – people who work for their local hospitals, their church, the PTA, the Community Chest and so on.

1.​கல் மேல் நடந்த காலம் – சு. தியோடர் பாஸ்கரன் 2.​அக்னிச் சிறகுகள் – அப்துல் கலாம் 3.​தென்னாப்பிரிக்காவில் காந்தி 4.​Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki 5.​The Art of War - Sunzi 6.​Steal Like an Artist - Austin Kleon 7.​என் இளமைக்கால நினைவுகள் - ஓஷோ 8.​புதுமைப்பித்தன் சிறுகதைகள் 9.​ஜெயகாந்தன் சிறுகதைகள் 10.​அசோகமித்திரன் சிறுகதைகள் 11.​ஓலைப்பட்டாசு சிறுகதைத் தொகுதி, கற்றதும் பெற்றதும் – சுஜாதா 12.​புயலிலே ஒரு தோணி, கடலுக்கு அப்பால் – ப. சிங்காரம் நாவல்கள் 13.​Ogilvy David Advertising Books 14.​இன்றைய காந்தி, சங்கச் சித்திரங்கள், இந்து ஞான மரபில் ஆறு தரிசனங்கள், அறம் சிறுகதைத் தொகுப்பு – ஜெயமோகன் 15.​திருடன் மணியன்பிள்ளை - ஜி. ஆர். இந்துகோபன் 16.​சு. தியோடர் பாஸ்கரனின் சூழியல் நூல்கள் 17.​அன்னா கரினீனா, போரும் வாழ்வும் – லியோ டால்ஸ்டாய் 18.​குற்றமும் தண்டனையும், அசடன் – பியோதர் தஸ்தாயெவ்ஸ்கி 19.​The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann 20.​ரேமண்ட் கார்வர் கதைகள் 21.​ஆண்டன் செகாவ் கதைகள் 22.​என் சரித்திரம் – உ. வே. சாமிநாதய்யர் 23.​The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey 24.​Nudge – Richard Thaler 25.​மூதாதையரைத் தேடி - சு.கி.ஜெயகரன் 26.​இந்திய வரலாறு: காந்திக்குப் பிறகு – ராமச்சந்திர குஹா 27.​எமதுள்ளம் சுடர் விடுக – பிரபஞ்சன் 28.​தேசாந்திரி – எஸ். ராமகிருஷ்ணன் 29.​ஆழமான கேள்விகள் அறிவார்ந்த பதில்கள் – ஸ்டீபன் ஹாக்கிங் 30.​உருவாகி வரும் உள்ளம் - விளையனூர் எஸ். ராமச்சந்திரன் 31.​சேப்பியன்ஸ் - யுவால் நோவா ஹராரி 32.​ஹோமோடியஸ் - யுவால் நோவா ஹராரி 33.​கோபல்ல கிராமம் – கி. ராஜநாராயணன் 34.​அ. முத்துலிங்கம் சிறுகதைகள் & வியத்தலும் இலமே 35.​சோஃபியின் உலகம் - யொஸ்டைன் கார்டேர் 36.​வந்தார்கள் வென்றார்கள் – மதன் 37.​குருதிப்புனல் – இந்திரா பார்த்தசாரதி 38.​இந்தியப் பயணங்கள் – ஏ. கே. செட்டியார் 39.​காலை எழுந்தவுடன் தவளை – பிரையன் டிரேசி 40.​சுதந்திரத்தின் நிறம் – லாரா கோப்பா 41.​கொங்குதேர் வாழ்க்கை – 2 (நவீன தமிழ்க் கவிதைகளின் தொகுப்பு) 42.​மோக முள் – தி.ஜானகிராமன் 43.​பொன்னியின் செல்வன் – கல்கி 44.​எட்டுத் திக்கும் மதயானை, கம்பனின் அம்பறாத்தூணி – நாஞ்சில்நாடன் 45.​புளியமரத்தின் கதை – சுந்தர ராமசாமி 46.​சிலப்பதிகாரம் 47.​காவல் கோட்டம் – சு. வெங்கடேசன் 48.​வேலையைக் காதலி – ஆர். கார்த்திகேயன் 49.​அப்பம் வடை தயிர் சாதம் – பாலகுமாரன் 50.​யேசு கதைகள் – பால் ஸக்காரியா நீங்கள் வாசிப்பிலும் வாழ்க்கையிலும் உயர என் நெஞ்சார்ந்த வாழ்த்துக்கள்! [1] நூல்: புன்னகைக்கும் பிரபஞ்சம். மொழிபெயர்ப்பு: செங்கதிர்

It is often charged that advertising can persuade people to buy inferior products. So it can – once. But the consumer perceives that the product is inferior and never buys it again. This causes grave financial loss to the manufacturer, whose profits come from repeat purchases. The best way to increase the sale of a product is to improve the product.

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy I have learned more about creativity, and working in a creative field, from this one book than from any other job, course, or person with the exception of my ridiculously smart and talented, but not quite as tall, older brother, William. The book is ostensibly about how to get a job in advertising, how to run an advertising agency, and how to create successful and powerful advertising. But along the way, this brilliant British émigré to the United States (he came fifty-one years before me, in 1938), tells the entire history of advertising, predicts its future, and comes as close to explaining how ideas can be communicated using words and pictures, about the power of persuasion, than anyone who has ever written on the dark art. The book includes the story of how he created the Rolls-Royce print ad which I still think about every time I see a Roller or think about how to sell a high-end TV project.

If they were leaders between the ages of 18 and 22, the odds are that they will emerge as leaders in middle life.

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. Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product. Says Rosser Reeves, of the Ted Bates agency: ‘I’m not saying that charming, witty and warm copy won’t sell. I’m just saying that I’ve seen thousands of charming, witty campaigns that didn’t. Let’s say you are a manufacturer. Your advertising isn’t working and your sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. And you walk in this office and talk to me, and you sit in that chair. Now, what do you want out of me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?

Take whiskey. Why do some people chose Jack Daniel’s, while others choose Grand Dad or Taylor? Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don’t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn’t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is 90 per cent of what the distiller has to sell.

The late David Ogilvy, one of the greats of the American advertising industry and the founder of the company I work for, apparently once said, ‘The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.’* Trivers and Kurzban explained the evolutionary science behind that conundrum: we simply don’t have access to our genuine motivations, because it is not in our interest to know.

The lionfish comes from the tropical waters around Indonesia. Though beautiful to look at, it is a voracious predator of other fish, and is able to eat as many as 30 in half an hour. Furthermore, one female lionfish can produce over two million eggs per year, which was a particular problem in the Caribbean, where it has no natural predators. The decimation of local species threatened the environment and the economics of Colombia, much of which depends on fishing. It was also destroying the ecology of coral reefs. This was when some colleagues of mine borrowed an idea from Frederick the Great; Ogilvy & Mather in Bogotá decided that the solution was to create a predator for the lionfish – humans. The simplest and most cost-effective way to rid Colombia’s waters of lionfish was to encourage people to eat them, which would encourage anglers to catch them. The agency recruited the top chefs in Colombia and encouraged them to create lionfish recipes for the best restaurants. As they explained, a lionfish is poisonous on the outside but delicious on the inside, so they created an advertising campaign titled ‘Terribly Delicious’. Working with the Colombian Ministry of the Environment, they generated a cultural shift by turning the invader into an everyday food. Lionfish soon appeared in supermarkets. Some 84 per cent of Colombians are Roman Catholic, so they asked the Catholic Church to recommend lionfish to their congregations on Fridays and during Lent. That additional element – recruiting the Catholic Church – was the true piece of alchemy. Today, indigenous fish species are recovering and the lionfish population is in decline.

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. Even

Look for young men and women who can one day lead your agency. Is there any way of predicting the capacity to lead? The only way I know is to look at their college records. If they were leaders between the ages of 18 and 22, the odds are that they will emerge as leaders in middle life. Make

The final test of a leader is the feeling you have when you leave his presence after a conference. Have you a feeling of uplift and confidence?’ Alcoholics

Your alcoholics may include some of your brightest stars. The problem is to identify them, protected as they always are by their secretaries and their colleagues. Invite the alcoholic’s wife to join you in a surprise confrontation with her husband. Start by telling him that all present are devoted to him. Then say how worried you are about his drinking. His wife and his children are about to leave him, and you are about to fire him – unless he does what you ask. A reservation has been made for him to enter a treatment center that very day. Most alcoholics agree to go. It takes a week for the center to dry them out, and another four weeks to rehabilitate them. On returning home, they must go to daily meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for at least a year. This procedure works in about 60 per cent of cases. I have seen it salvage some valuable people of both sexes. If you would like further advice on the subject, consult the nearest chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Written

Most campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of objectives, and try to reconcile the divergent views of too many executives.

If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of being able to advertise anything else?

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.

It follows that your advertising should consistently project the same image, year after year. This is difficult to achieve, because there are always forces at work to change the advertising

Research shows that the readership of an advertisement does not decline when it is run several times in the same magazine. Readership remains at the same level throughout at least four repetitions.

You can do homework from now until doomsday, but you will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas.

Before he became the most brilliant and famous man in the ad business, David Ogilvy sold ovens door-to-door. Because of that, he never forgot that advertising is just a slightly more scalable form of creating demand than door-to-door sales.

I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles. —DAVID OGILVY

Do not make the common mistake of regarding your clients as dopes. Make friends with them. Buy shares in their companies. But try not to become entangled in their politics. Emulate Talleyrand, who served France through seven regimes.

In the words of the Scottish proverb, ‘Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.

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, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants.

Giving out the titles reminds me of Louis XIV: ‘Every time I give someone a title, I make a hundred people angry and one person ungrateful.

Pay peanuts, says Jimmy Goldsmith, and you get monkeys. I

Says John Updike, ‘Serifs exist for a purpose. They help the eye pick up the shape of the letter. Piquant in little amounts, sanserif in page-size sheets repels readership as wax paper repels water; it has a sleazy, cloudy look.

Some years ago a prayer was read from the pulpit in every church in Greece, asking the Almighty to spare the Greeks from the ‘scourge’ of foreign tourism. When

Take whiskey. Why do some people chose Jack Daniel’s, while others choose Grand Dad or Taylor? Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don’t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn’t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is 90 per cent of what the distiller has to sell. Researchers

My brother Francis wrote a letter in Greek to the headmasters of private schools, selling cooking stoves. When some wrote back that they could not read Greek, he sent them another letter – in Latin. This produced orders.

The late David Ogilvy, one of the greats of the American advertising industry and the founder of the company I work for, apparently once said, ‘The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.

So much advice around innovation and creativity amounts to more: more methods, more habits, more techniques. If we don’t simultaneously carve away less important uses of our time to create space for reflection and contemplation—distance from the problem at hand—we only undermine the effort to boost ideaflow. Caught up in the day-to-day, our imaginations become blocked, just as David Ogilvy warned at the top of this chapter. To escape “the tyranny of reason,” we must be as tactical about withdrawing from a losing battle as we are about gathering divergent inputs or vigorously testing our ideas. The “Father of Advertising” was an ace at the mental game of creative output. He intuitively understood that generating more ideas required doing a little less.

If the consumer does not perceive any real benefits in the brand, then no amount of ingenious advertising and selling can save it.

Leo Burnett said it better, ‘When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.

Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

A posture of enthusiasm is not always the one best calculated to succeed.

In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.

The Fearless Flyer began life in 1969 during the Good Time Charley phase of Trader Joe’s as the Insider’s Wine Report, a sheet of gossip of “inside” information on the wine industry at a time where there weren’t any such gossip sheets, for the excellent reason that few people were interested in wine. As of the writing of this book, 11 percent of Americans drink 88 percent of the wine according to contemporary wine gossip magazine the Wine Spectator. In the Insider’s Wine Report we gave the results of the wine tastings that we were holding with increasing frequency, as we tried to gain product knowledge. This growing knowledge impressed me with how little we knew about food, so in 1969, we launched a parallel series of blind tastings of branded foods: mayonnaise, canned tuna, hot dogs, peanut butter, and so on. The plan was to select the winner, and sell it “at the lowest shelf price in town.” To report these results, I designed the Insider’s Food Report, which began publication in 1970. It deliberately copied the physical layout of Consumer Reports: the 8.5” x 11” size, the width of columns, and the typeface (later changed). Other elements of design are owed to David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man. The numbered paragraphs, the boxes drawn around the articles, are all Ogilvy’s ideas. I still think his books are the best on advertising that I’ve ever read and I recommend them. Another inspiration was Clay Felker, then editor of New York magazine, the best-edited publication of that era. New York’s motto was, “If you live in New York, you need all the help you can get!” The Insider’s Food Report borrowed this, as “The American housewife needs all the help she can get!” And in the background was the Cassandra-like presence of Ralph Nader, then at the peak of his influence. I felt, however, that all the consumer magazines, never mind Mr. Nader, were too paranoid, too humorless. To leaven the loaf, I inserted cartoons. The purpose of the cartoons was to counterpoint the rather serious, expository text; and, increasingly, to mock Trader Joe’s pretensions as an authority on anything.

Let me tell you, Ryan, that's a stupid idea," Nour said. “I love stupid ideas. All great things happened because someone had a stupid idea.” Ryan smiled.

All the money in the world can’t get you what power can. Without power, all the money in the world is like being great-looking and having sex alone,” Ryan said. “But isn’t that more fun sometimes?” Nour smiled.

All the money in the world can’t get you what power can. Without power, all the money in the world is like being great-looking and having sex alone,” Ryan said. “But isn’t that more fun sometimes?” Nour smiled

All the money in the world can’t get you what power can. Without power, all the money in the world is like being great-looking and having sex alone,” Ryan said. “But isn’t that more fun sometimes?” She smiled

Down with advertising that forgets to promise the consumer any benefit. Down with creative show-offs. Too clever by half.    If you spend your advertising budget entertaining the consumer, you are a bloody fool. Housewives don’t buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. They buy it because it promised a benefit. If I could persuade the lunatics to give up their pursuit of awards, I would die happy.

Bill Phillips, one of his successors as chairman, captured the spirit in his mantra: “Work hard. Play hard. Sleep fast.

Ogilvy never wrote an advertisement in the office: “Too many interruptions.” He started by looking at every advertisement for competing products for the past 20 years: “Study the precedents.” Then he’d go to work on a headline. Finally, when he could no longer postpone the actual copy, he would start writing, usually throwing away the first 20 attempts. “If all else fails, I drink a half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces a gush of copy.” The next morning, he would get up early and edit the gush. “I am a lousy copywriter,” he would say, “but a good editor.

On minimizing office politics: “Sack incurable politicians. Crusade against paper warfare.” On morale: “When people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good advertising. Get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom.” On professional standards: “Top men must not tolerate sloppy plans or mediocre creative work.” On partnership: “Top Management in each country should function like a round table, presided over by a Chairman who is big enough to be effective in the role of primus inter pares.

The Gary Halbert Letter (también conocido como The Boron Letters) y Ogilvy on Advertising.

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

No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat. That left a mark on me.

Try to do something really good today, and we'll let the future take care of itself.

To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.

Queen Victoria complained that Gladstone talked to her as if he were addressing a public meeting. She preferred Disraeli, who talked to her like a human being. When you write copy, follow Disraeli’s example.

The late David Ogilvy, one of the greats of the American advertising industry and the founder of the company I work for, apparently once said, ‘The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.’*

He tells us that commercials which start by setting up a problem, then wheel up your product to solve the problem, then prove the solution by demonstration, sell four times as many people as commercials which merely preach about the product.

Tolerate genius. My observation has been that mediocre men recognize genius, resent it, and feel compelled to destroy it. There are very few men of genius. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception, they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs.