• “Through maddening repetition, some of my obiter dicta have been woven into our culture. Here are some of them: (1) "We sell - or else." (2) "You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it." (3) "We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they grow in oak forests." (4) "We hire gentlemen with brains." (5) "The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Don't insult her intelligence." (6) "Unless your campaign contains a Big Idea, it will pass like a ship in the night." (I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. I am supposed to be one of the more fertile inventors of big ideas, but in my long career I have not had more than twenty.) (7) "Only First Class business, and that in a First Class way." (8) "Never run an advertisement you would not want your own family to see." 9) "Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees." - intro

The Good Ones Know Their Craft

• “American businessmen are not taught that it is a sin to bore your fellow creatures.” - ads need to show the customer a benefit and be laced with entertaining product facts - “Make advertisements that people want to read. You can't save souls in an empty church. If you will embrace our rules, you will be able to reach more readers per dollar. I once asked Sir Hugh Rigby, Sergeant Surgeon to King George V, "What makes a great surgeon?" Sir Hugh replied, "There isn't much to choose between surgeons in manual dexterity. What distinguishes the great surgeon is that he knows more than other surgeons." It is the same with advertising agents. The good ones know their craft.” (Bill Gurley be the MOST knowledgeable in your field)
• Bill Gurley’s runnin’ down a dream - if you want to get to the top of your field you have to become the MOST knowledgeable! “Set yourself to becoming the best-informed man in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read textbooks on the chemistry, geology, and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client's refineries and research laboratories. Study the advertising of his competitors. At the end of your second year, you will know more about gasoline than your boss; you will then be ready to succeed him.” → this is how you uncover that one unique benefit that will distinguish your ad

The Key to Success is to Promise the Consumer a Benefit

• “The key to success is to promise the consumer a benefit - like better flavor, whiter wash, more miles per gallon, a better complexion.”
• “Your most important job is to decide what you are going to say about your product, what benefit you are going to promise. Two hundred years ago Dr. Johnson said, "Promise, large promise is the soul of an advertisement." → “Another technique is to show consumers cards on which we have printed various promises, asking them to select the one which would be most likely to make them buy the product.” (Like different face cream promises ie cleans deep into pores, prevent dryness, makes skin look younger etc. with the first one being what they name the product: deep cleanser → his version of constantly A/B testing)
• “Give the Facts. Very few advertisements contain enough factual information to sell the product. There is a ludicrous tradition among copywriters that consumers aren't interested in facts. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Study the copy in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue; it sells a billion dollars' worth of merchandise every year by giving facts. In my Rolls-Royce advertisements I gave nothing but facts. No adjectives, no "gracious living." 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.” → long ads > short ads

You’re Not Advertising to a Standing Army, You’re Advertising to a Moving Parade

• “If You Are Lucky Enough To Write a Good Advertisement, Repeat It Until It Stops Pulling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency, largely because their sponsors got sick of seeing them. Sterling Getchel's famous advertisement for Plymouth ("Look at All Three") appeared only once, and was succeeded by a series of inferior variations which were quickly forgotten. But the Sherwin Cody School of English ran the same advertisement ("Do You Make These Mistakes in English?") for forty-two years, changing only the typeface and the colour of Mr. Cody's beard. You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. Three million consumers get married every year. The advertisement which sold a refrigerator to those who got married last year will probably be just as successful with those who get married next year. One million, seven hundred thousand consumers die every year, and 4,000,000 new ones are born. They enter the market and they depart from it. An advertisement is like a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as they come into the market. Get a good radar, and keep it sweeping.”
• You’re not advertising to a standing army, you’re advertising to a moving parade: “Good campaigns can run for many years without losing their selling power. My eyepatch campaign for Hathaway shirts ran for twenty-one years. My campaign for Dove soap has been running for thirty-one years, and Dove is now the best seller.”

Don’t Bunt. Aim Out of the Park. Aim for the Company of Immortals

• “On the day in 1948 when I hung out my shingle, I issued the following Order of the Day: This is a new agency, struggling for its life. For some time we shall be overworked and underpaid. In hiring, the emphasis will be on youth ... We are looking for young turks. I have no use for toadies or hacks. I seek gentlemen with brains. Agencies are as big as they deserve to be. We are starting this one on a shoestring, but we are going to make it a great agency before 1960. The next day I made a list of the five clients I wanted most: General Foods, Bristol-Myers, Campbell Soup Company, Lever Brothers, and Shell.” → “As an Englishman interested in baseball, Ogilvy says: "Don't bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals."
• On setting high standards: “(1) I admire people who work hard, who bite the bullet. I dislike passengers who don't pull their weight in the boat. It is more fun to be overworked than to be underworked. There is an economic factor built into hard work. The harder you work, the fewer employees we need, and the more profit we make. The more profit we make, the more money becomes available for all of us. 2) I admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people. But brains are not enough unless they are combined with intellectual honesty… (4) I admire people who work with gusto. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, I beg you to find another job. Remember the Scottish proverb, "Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead." (5) I despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates. (6) I admire self-confident professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. They always seem to respect the expertise of their colleagues. They don't poach. 7) I admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. I pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferiors as their subordinates. (8) I admire people who build up their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. I detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary.”
• Ogilvy describing the “success disease” of complacency: “Once every few years a great new agency is born. It is ambitious, hard-working, full of dynamite. It gets accounts from soft old agencies. It does great work. The years pass. The founders get rich and tired. Their creative fires go out. They become extinct volcanoes. The agency may continue to prosper. Its original momentum is not yet spent. It has powerful contacts. But it has grown too big. It produces dull, routine campaigns, based on the echo of old victories. Dry rot sets in. The emphasis shifts to collateral services, to conceal the agency's creative bankruptcy. At this stage, it begins losing accounts to vital new agencies, ruthless upstarts who work hard and put all their dynamite into their advertisements. We can all name famous agencies which are moribund. You hear demoralizing whispers in their corridors, long before the truth dawns on their clients.”