David Ogilvy

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

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

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

“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.”

“If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.”

“The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.”

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

“Leaders grasp nettles.”

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

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

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

“… 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.”

“The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

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