By David Ogilvy.
… there are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.
— p. 170
Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product. I did not know this when I paid Eleanor Roosevelt $35,000 to make a commercial for margarine. She reported that her mail was equally divided. “One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation.” Not one of my proudest memories.
— p. 109
Never summon people to your office; it frightens them. Instead, go to see them in their offices, unannounced. A boss who never wanders about his agency becomes an invisible hermit.
— p. 56
Never hire your friends. I have made this mistake three times, and had to fire all three. They are no longer my friends.
— p. 49
When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
— p. 47
If more copywriters were ambitious, they too would find fame and fortune. This is Touffou, the medieval castle where the author holes up when he is not visiting one of the Ogilvy & Mather offices.
— p. 22
Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. (That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.)
— p. 160
‘When I want a high recall score,’ says my partner David Scott, ‘all I have to do is to show a gorilla in a jock strap.’
— p. 161
When Gone With the Wind was a runaway best seller, we asked a cross-section of the adult population whether they had read it. The number of yes replies was obviously inflated; people did not want to admit that they hadn’t read it. The following week we put the question differently: ‘Do you plan to read Gone With the Wind?’ It was easy for those who hadn’t read it to answer yes, while those who had already read it said so. This produced a credible result.
— p. 164
‘Appeals shall not be used which directly or by implication contend that if children have a product they are better than their peers, or lacking it, will not be accepted by their peers.’
— p. 154
Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. ‘Standing room only’ creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure.
— p. 172