Quotes from David Ogilvy

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.