Quotations of David Ogilvy - 3

THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

I once found myself conspiring whit a President of the Board of Trade as to how we might persuade H.M. Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said Sir David Eccles, “Why does any American in his senses spend his holidays in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian skies? I can only suppose that your advertising is the answer. “Quite so.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINE

I frequently hear the Magic Lanterns described as rules. They are not rules. They are reports. Reports on how consumers react to different stimuli. If it were possible to create great advertising merely be studying the Lanterns, any damn fool could do it. More is required: innovative genius. The Lanterns only light the way for genius. Indicating the most fruitful path to explore.
Creative Council Reports

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote sonatas within an equally rigid discipline – exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?
Confessions of an Advertising Man

Supposing you’ve got an acute appendicitis. You’ve got to be operated on tonight., Would you like to have a surgeon who’s read some books of anatomy and knows how to do that operation – or would you prefer to have a surgeon who refused to read all books about anatomy and relied on his own instinct? Why should a manufacturer bet his money – perhaps the future of his company – on your instinct?
Viewpoint

I had a friend who was the King’s surgeon in England. One day I asked him what makes a great surgeon. He replied, “What distinguishes a great surgeon is his knowledge. He knows more than other surgeons. During an operation he finds something which he wasn’t expecting, recognizes it and knows what to do about it.”
It’s the same thing with advertising people. The good ones know more. How do you get to know more? By reading books about advertising. By picking the brains of people who know than you do. From the Magic Lanterns. And from experience.I can’t stand callow amateurs who aren’t sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
Creative Council Reports


POSITIONING

The most important decision is how to position your product.
How to Create Advertising that Sells

A lot of successful advertising was created before POSITIONING was invented. And a lot of today’s campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective – because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn’t do you much good to have the right positioning.
Creative Council Reports


BRAND IMAGE

Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol which is the brand image.
How to Create Advertising that Sells

Most manufactures are reluctant to accept any limitation on the image of their brand. They want it to be all things to all people. They want their brand to be a male brand and a female brand. An upper class brand and a plebeian brand. They generally end up with a brand which neuter. No capon ever rules the roost.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to “come up with something new” every six months.
It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. Bur golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with it over a long period.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

The mail order advertiser has no retailers to shrink and expand their inventories, to push his product or to hide it under the counter. He must rely on his advertisements to do the entire selling job. Either the reader clips the coupon or he doesn’t, A few days after his advertisement appears. The mail order writer knows whether it is profitable or not. For twenty seven years I have kept my eyes riveted on what mail order advertisers do in their advertisements.
Confessions of an Advertising Man