1. If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
2. I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience.
3. Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.
4. Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write.
5. It pays to study the product before writing your advertisements.
6. 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.
7. Never run an advertisement you would not want your own family to see.
8. 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.
9. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising 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.
10. A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
11. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
12. Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
13. The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
14.The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
15. What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
16. What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
17. In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
18. On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.
19. Bad advertising can unsell a product.
20. Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
21. If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.
22. A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning.
23. You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull... When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
24. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.
25. One of the most brilliant colleagues I ever had was black-balled by three clients in one year; the experience hurt him so badly that he left the agency business for ever. If you are too thin-skinned to survive this hazard, you should not join an advertising agency.
Words of the CopyGuru- David Ogilvy
