Quotes from William Bernbach

Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.

An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgerize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.

An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.

Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.

Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste.

For the Flower to blossom, you need the right soil as well as the right seed. The same is true to cultivate good thinking.

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.

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

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.

The creative man with an insight into human nature, with the artistry to touch and move people, will succeed. Without them he will fail.

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.

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.

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.

Logic and over-analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. It's like love. The more you analyse it, the more it disappears.

We don't ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.