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.
David OgilvyRead
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.
Interpretation
Advertising cannot successfully promote a poor-quality product; consumers will reject it.
David Ogilvy emphasizes the powerful role of consumer judgment in advertising. He argues that no matter how compelling an advertisement may be, it cannot mask the inherent quality of a product, and promoting an inferior product will ultimately lead to failure. This highlights the importance of honesty and product quality in effective marketing strategies.
In practice
This quote could be used in a presentation about the importance of product quality in marketing strategies.
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.
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising.
Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.
Most ads are ignored because every customer has a mental filter that evaluates and dismisses both of these languages of Ad-Speak with a single question: What are they not telling me?
Content is king, but marketing is queen, and runs the household.
People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.
You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after.
Personalizatio n wasn't supposed to be a cleverly veiled way to chase prospects around the web, showing them the same spammy ad for the same lame stuff as everyone else sees. No, it is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.
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