William Bernbach Quotes
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Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.
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Imitation can be commercial suicide.
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Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.
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There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there's one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.
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Word of mouth is the best medium of all.
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We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget we can create them.
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I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.
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Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.
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Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before.
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The heart of creativity is discipline.
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If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!
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You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.
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Logic and over-analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. It's like love. The more you analyse it, the more it disappears.
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The creative man with an insight into human nature, with the artistry to touch and move people, will succeed. Without them he will fail.
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It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.
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Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.
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Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste.
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There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past.
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Properly practiced creativity MUST result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.
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Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.
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Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way.
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Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.
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It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say it.
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Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.