William Bernbach
Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.Collection: Science
Word of mouth is the best medium of all.Collection: Business
I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.Collection: Science
In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.Collection: Communication
An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.
If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.
In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal.
Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.
Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.
Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.
Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.
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.
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.
Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.
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.
In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.
Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed... but dull?
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.
Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.
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.
No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway.
Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.
We don't ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.
It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say it.Collection: People
The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.Collection: Believe
In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.Collection: Suicide
If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some people against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you.Collection: People
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.Collection: Listening
Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature... what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action. If you know these things abut a person, you can touch him at the core of his being.Collection: Powerful
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.Collection: People
Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.Collection: Creativity
Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.Collection: Ideas
The heart of creativity is discipline.Collection: Heart
Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Wise
Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.Collection: Memorable
Never do anything yourself that you can hire someone else to do, especially if they can do it better.Collection: Design
It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.Collection: Creativity
If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!Collection: Business
The world has progressed to the point where it's most powerful force is public opinion. And I believe that in this world it is not the great book or epic play, as once was the case, that will shape that opinion, but those who understand mass media and the techniques of mass persuasion...We must not just believe in what we sell. We must sell what we believe in. And we must pour a vast energy into those causes.Collection: Powerful
Persuasion is not a science but an artCollection: Art
The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.Collection: Real
Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.Collection: Art
Logic and over-analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. It's like love. The more you analyse it, the more it disappears.Collection: Like Love
Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.Collection: Brave
Imitation can be commercial suicide.Collection: Suicide
Advertising is the art of persuasion.Collection: Art
All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalise it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.Collection: Business