Quotes from David Ogilvy

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.

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

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.

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.

My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.

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.