Quotations of David Ogilvy - 1

PEOPLE

I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings. I abhor quarrel-some people. I abhor people who wage paper-warfare.
Confessions of on Advertising Man

If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.
Viewpoint

If you ever find a man who is better than you are – hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
Principles of Management


ADVERTISING PEOPLE

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They are as helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

I don’t believe in this specialisation. Who said that there’s one breed of cat which in an account executive, and then there are the creative people – and they are quite different? This has been perpetuated by both sides for years. It’s nonsense.
Viewpoint

In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows?
Viewpoint


CREATIVE PEOPLE

Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

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.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

One of the most brilliant colleagues I ever had was blackballed by three clients in one year; the experience hurt him so badly that he left the agency business for ever. If too are too thin-skinned to survive this hazard, you should not become an account executive in an advertising agency.
Confessions of an Advertising Man