Jerry Della Femina Quotes
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I'm waiting for the candidate who says, 'I'm keeping things exactly the way they are. I like it this way.'
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I gotta be involved. I still write ads; I still run around and rally the creative people.
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I ran for political office in the Hamptons once in a war I was having with the village. I came in, there were four people running, and I came in around third. It was over my food market - they arrested me. I just wanted to go for office because I thought it would be an interesting to do.
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I came into advertising in 1961. I had been turned down for jobs on the Ford account in the late Fifties as 'not their type.' If it hadn't been for Bill Bernbach, I would now be sitting in some luncheonette, continuing my life as a messenger.
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I don't like to work for politicians because I hate to work on anything that you can't give back if it doesn't work. I sell products. I do a commercial for, say, Meow Mix, and you don't like it, you get your money back. You can return it. Politicians, you can't return. You're with them for four more years. And that's scary.
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I think it's good to have switched to a much more visual world and that people are not all that interested in words.
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Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.
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Good products win out.
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There's an eternal war between a creative person and the business person.
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I'm a driver, and I love it.
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Husbands and wives fight, and when the wife is packing up, the husband says, 'Don't leave! I'm gonna change!' Marriages stay together because people promise to change.
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The French are simply incapable of telling the truth.
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In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.
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Money is being wasted on adverts that go right over a consumer's head. They may win awards at Cannes, but they lose at the cash register.
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At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.
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Once you're not No. 1, it doesn't matter where you are.
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In my world - advertising - the Super Bowl is judgment day. If politicians have Election Day and Hollywood has the Oscars, advertising has the Super Bowl.
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No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.
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Once people feel comfortable with something, they say, 'Let's try it.'
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I don't want people ever to think I'm not in advertising. It's such a business of enthusiasm that if you're not totally excited about it, you should leave it.
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On the weekends, some people garden; I slice salmon.
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Everybody sat around thinking about Panasonic, the Japanese electronics account. Finally I decided, what the hell, I'll throw a line to loosen them up. 'The headline is, the headline is: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.'
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Everybody makes a lot of money when the French come to town.
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Kids don't know what life was like without cell phones.