13 Rules for Cost-Effective Advertising from David Ogilvy

13 Rules for Cost-Effective Advertising from David Ogilvy

  • The function of advertising is to sell.

  • Advertising is the cheapest form of selling.

  • People do not buy from clowns. Permanent success has rarely been built on frivolity.

  • Concentrate on your successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers.

  • Use eye-easy typography. Text set in all-caps is extremely difficult to read… sans-serif fonts are particularly difficult to read…reverse type is almost impossible to read.

  • Do not end your headline with a period. It signals the reader to stop, just when you want him or her to go on.

  • When you need to communicate many different points, use call-outs, which score above average in reader recall.

  • Nostalgic, charming, and sentimental advertising can be enormously effective.

  • Show your package and lead off your copy with your brand name.

  • Use close-ups. The closer you zoom in on your product, the more you make people’s mouths water for it.

  • Avoid visual banality. You want your readers to pay attention to your advertising—so show them something fresh that they have never seen before.

  • Show your product in use and, if possible, the benefits that result from using it.

  • I hate rules.



See also:

Advertising Copy Home Page

Marketing Tactics Home Page

Marketing Home Page

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