Jerry Della Femina
Sad to say, negative advertising really works.Collection: Sad
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.Collection: Family
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.Collection: Medical
Kids don't know what life was like without cell phones.
I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.
Almost everything looks better from a distance, Long Island included.
Thank you for making me nouveau riche.
My first marriage ended after 24 years.
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.
'Mad Men' is celebrating a time that no longer exists.
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.
The whole idea of a spokesman is a joke and a fraud if you drop someone like a hot potato if there's controversy.
It goes back to all of us wanting to be in Hollywood. We're all dying to win an Oscar.
A lot of its readers are of an age where they forget to cancel.
That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in.
I came from a poor family in Coney Island. I learned to write by reading the 'Post.' This was my education.
I was the first advertising person who people could identify with.
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.
Life was easy was back in the days before human resource departments controlled business and someone decided we all should be politically correct.
Did I grow up thinking I'd ever be paged at the Beverly Hills Hotel? Did I ever think I'd make so much money writing ads? No.
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.
Advertising is what I do. It's got me everything I have, and I'm not going to leave it.
I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'm a great believer that you can't have too conservative a President nor too liberal a Supreme Court. So I'm a walking contradiction. I believe that you should try to really protect people's rights in every way, and also, people should be allowed to do what they do.
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.
Advertising should always be in good taste without a question.
Probably the best advertising jobs of all are done by governments to convince people to go to war.
If people ever talked the way advertising sounded, they would be put away.
Once people feel comfortable with something, they say, 'Let's try it.'
As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then automobile advertising will continue to be wretched.
Every automobile ad looks alike.
Once you're not No. 1, it doesn't matter where you are.
The object of advertising is to get people to feel better about the product you're selling.
If you look at 'Mad Men,' it's set in the wrong decade. The style of Mad Men is really the 1950s, not the 1960s.
Let's face it: in advertising, you are paid more, but you die younger. It's not very forgiving. Like sports stars, you're in it during your better years, and then you're out looking for work.
I gotta be involved. I still write ads; I still run around and rally the creative people.
There's something that goes on in a new-business meeting that's wonderful to watch. It's like showtime. There are people who are nervous, and there are people who are jittery, and there's so much drama and so much at stake.
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.
The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.
Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.
My day is spent hiding from people.
Most of the people in advertising now - mention Bill Bernbach to them, they don't know.
I am a temporary amusement.
Humor works, and it's the best way to get attention without spending a lot of money.
Nobody can write a good 30-second commercial.
Pictures bring you inside, whether you see yourself driving a new car or as a hapless prisoner who is being abused.
The bad guys always fight dirty, and the good guys always fight clean.
No kid ever graduated school and said, 'I want to go into advertising.' Advertising is almost everyone's second or third choice.
I'm waiting for the candidate who says, 'I'm keeping things exactly the way they are. I like it this way.'
Everybody makes a lot of money when the French come to town.