Quotations of David Ogilvy - 6

RESEARCH

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. Test your promise. Test your media. Test your headlines and your illustrations. Test the size of your advertisements. Test your frequency. Test your level of expenditure. Test your commercials.
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


PROMOTIONS

A steady diet of price-off promotions lowers the esteem in which the consumer holds the product; can anything which is always sold at a discount be desirable?
Confessions of an Advertising Man


JARGON

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon. They say that commercials for food products must include “an affirmative eating experience”. The latest horror is SUBOPTIMIZE.
Creative Council Reports


WORK

I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

I believe in the Scottish proverb: “Hard work never killed a man”.
Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work.
Principles of Management

Agencies which frequently work nights and weekends are more stimulating, more successful – and more profitable. A tight ship is a happy ship – provided it is an informal ship.
Principles of Management


EFFICIENCY

In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.
Confessions of an Advertising Man

To keep your ship moving through the water at maximum efficiency, you have to keep scraping the barnacles off its bottom. It is rare for a department head to recommend the abolition of a job, or even the elimination of a man; the pressure from below is always for adding. If the initiative for barnacle-scraping does not come from management, barnacles will never be scraped.
Principles of Management

It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
Principles of Management


EXCELLENCE

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


MONEY

Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money. When George Frederick Handel was on his beam ends, he shut himself up for twenty one days and emerged with the complete score of “Messiah” – and hit the jackpot. Few of the themes of Messiah were original; Handel dredged them up from his unconscious, where they had been stored since he heard them in other composers’ work, or since he had composed them for his own forgotten operas.
Confessions of an Advertising Man


TRAINING

Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be continuous progress, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.
Principles of Management


HOBBIES

The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising.
Confessions of an Advertising Man