Jerry Della Femina
I think people are getting bored of parties, and hosts are terrified nobody's going to show up. So they have to start entertaining them before the party even starts.
I've seen very few Hispanics and blacks who have been able to work their way into the advertising end of business.
No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.
I've never met a client who wants to be the worst.
People who are visiting Long Island find it's very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products.
If the FBI is now in charge of bad taste, we're all doomed.
Sometimes you have to scare people to save their lives. But I'm very much against it if you're trying to sell a product.
People don't generally like advertising that takes a stand.
It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough.
In our quest to tweet, like, and trend, we have forgotten that brands can be built through advertising. Ads can generate big ideas that can never be trumped by tactics. That is the magic of an ad, and that is what is missing from many ads today.
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.
The Google model of targeted advertising is appealing because it claims to cut down on waste. We need to ask how that efficiency can be brought to creative process.
The Internet is king. Newspapers are dead or dying. Magazines are shrinking every day. Ad budgets are being cut. The bottom line is now the only line in advertising.
If they can't suck money out of the Hamptons, a candidate really has to throw in the sponge.
The Hamptons are filled with people who are winners Monday through Friday.
I'm a driver, and I love it.
There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.
I don't remember most of the '60s and '70s.
Imagine there wasn't photography. Where would we be? How would I remember what I looked like as a kid? It links us all. It keeps us all together; it's what our history is.
Most account guys live with fear in their hearts.
The establishment can't change. It can't give people anything different; it can't make the turn.
My grandmother would start making her meat sauce at 7 in the morning on Sunday, and within five or six hours, that smell would be all through the house.
I couldn't get along with the French.
I think it's good to have switched to a much more visual world and that people are not all that interested in words.
There's still a place for someone to come up with a strong headline, some copy in a commercial that's well written. I'm not saying it was better in the old days; it's just a totally different way of communicating.
I have very talented art directors in my agency who start out telling me, 'Well, this is what the picture is... ' I ask, 'Well, what's the headline?' and they say, 'We haven't done that yet, but it looks this way.' But I'm still writing copy, almost every day.
I always had more women working for me than men.
I came into the advertising business in 1952, at the age of sixteen, as a delivery boy for a stuffy, old-line advertising agency named Ruthruff and Ryan, which could have served as the setting for the 'Mad Men' television series without moving a desk.
By 1961, when I got my first copywriting job, 'my kind' were suddenly in demand. The creative revolution had begun. Advertising had turned into a business dominated by young, funny, Jewish copywriters and tough, sometimes violent, Greek and Italian art directors.
I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising.
Whether you're a mafia guy or in advertising, you always end up going back to your family.
I only know two to three people that I grew up with in advertising in the 1960s who are married to the same women.
What I love about the Don Draper character is that he's so real and filled with all these contradictions.
There's an eternal war between a creative person and the business person.
I want to die at my desk.
I have a small vocabulary, which I move around fast.
I invented myself.
A computer is a wonderful thing, but it's cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.
You can't be impatient about growth, because that's what leads people to make mistakes.
On the weekends, some people garden; I slice salmon.
With all my outside activities, I have to remind people I am really in advertising.
'Business Week' is guilty of very shoddy reporting.
The fact is, Joe Isuzu is very successful at selling cars.
There's nothing worse than winning but being told by people that you're losing.
Good products win out.
Why do all our friends and relatives destroy the summer for us? Why can't they get married in February?
I'm happy to pay my fair share - which is whatever the tax is right now.
I don't come from a lot of money. In fact, I don't come from any money.
I'm careful to pay every single penny on my taxes. I don't have any money offshore.