Quotations of David Ogilvy - 4

COPYWRITING

It is a mistake to use highfalutin language when you advertise to uneducated people. I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 33% of housewives had no idea of what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn’t know what it meant myself.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


ART

Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, “Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of toilet soap if only they hadn’t set the body copy in ten point Garamond.” Don’t you believe it. What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

Most of the art schools which train unsuspecting students for careers in advertising still subscribe to the mystique of the Bauhaus. They hold that the success of an advertisement depends on such things as “balance”, “movement”, sand “design” but can they prove it? My research suggest that these aesthetic intangibles do not increase sales, and I cannot conceal my hostility to the old school of art directors who take such preachments seriously.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

“Making the logo twice the size” is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. “Showing the clients’ faces” is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

H.L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that is pays to make all your layouts project a feeling of good taste, provided that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a firs class ticket through life.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


LAYOUTS

Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it is destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.
Creative Council Reports

Today, almost all our layouts look “addy”. Too bad. How do you sell editorial layouts to clients? Try saying, “Would you like the editors of half a dozen magazines to devote a whole page to your product?” The client will reply, “Yes, of course. But it is impossible.” You say, “It is possible. You buy the space and I will put an editorial in it. Look, here is your editorial. Better than any advertisement, isn’t is?
Creative Council Reports

Most readers look at the photograph first. If you put it in the middle of the page, the reader will start by looking in the middle. Then her eye must go up to read the headline; this doesn’t work, because people have a habit of scanning downwards. However, suppose a few readers do read the headline after seeing the photograph below it. After that, you require them to jump down past the photograph which they have already seen. Not bloody likely.
Creative Council Reports

It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read.
Therefore, study the graphics used by editors and imitate them. Study the graphics used in advertisements, and avoid them.
Creative Council Reports

All too often the bottoms of advertisements are littered with miscellaneous crap, gadgets, etc.
Get rid of them; they contribute to an appearance of untidiness which reduces “impact” and readership.
Creative Council Reports