Quotes from William Bernbach

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.

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?

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.

You cannot sell a man who isn't listening; word of mouth is the best medium of all; and dullness won't sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance.

Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.

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

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.

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

Advertising is the art of persuasion.

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.

Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.

Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

Research can trap you into the past.

Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.

Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.

A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something.

Never do anything yourself that you can hire someone else to do, especially if they can do it better.

Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!

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.

A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.

Imitation can be commercial suicide.