David Ogilvy

“The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.”

“Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.”

“The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.”

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

“Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.”

“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.”

“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.”

“Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.”

“I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.”

“Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.”

“Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.”

“Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.”

“Leaders grasp nettles.”

“The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.”