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.