Quotes from Leo Burnett

I have learned that you can't have good advertising without a good client, that you can't keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy better advertising than he understands or has an appetite for.

A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin'.

What helps people, helps business.

The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders.

Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.

The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

Plan the sale when you plan the ad.

The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is to swear off having ideas.

When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.

Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret . . . to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all.

When you reach for the stars, you may not get one, but you won't get a handful of mud either.

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.

A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin'.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.

Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.

If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.

I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency

Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.

Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.

We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'