Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by Jerry Della Femina - Page 2

I don't remember most of the '60s and '70s.

Most account guys live with fear in their hearts.

What I love about the Don Draper character is that he's so real and filled with all these contradictions.

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.

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.

My first marriage ended after 24 years.

I don't come from a lot of money. In fact, I don't come from any money.

On the weekends, some people garden; I slice salmon.

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.

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 establishment can't change. It can't give people anything different; it can't make the turn.

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.

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.

Good products win out.

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.

I'm happy to pay my fair share - which is whatever the tax is right now.

There's an eternal war between a creative person and the business person.

If they can't suck money out of the Hamptons, a candidate really has to throw in the sponge.

I always had more women working for me than men.

I'm a driver, and I love it.

There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.

I have a small vocabulary, which I move around fast.

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.

Why do all our friends and relatives destroy the summer for us? Why can't they get married in February?

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.

The fact is, Joe Isuzu is very successful at selling cars.

I only know two to three people that I grew up with in advertising in the 1960s who are married to the same women.

You can't be impatient about growth, because that's what leads people to make mistakes.

'Business Week' is guilty of very shoddy reporting.

'Mad Men' is celebrating a time that no longer exists.

A computer is a wonderful thing, but it's cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.

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.

The Hamptons are filled with people who are winners Monday through Friday.

Whether you're a mafia guy or in advertising, you always end up going back to your family.

I invented myself.

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.

There's nothing worse than winning but being told by people that you're losing.

With all my outside activities, I have to remind people I am really in advertising.

I want to die at my desk.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Sometimes, the advertising is better than the product. Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. Everyone tries the thing and never buys it again.

I learned much from my father just by watching his example. If I saw him hold a door open for someone, I learned to do the same. Kids always observe their parents and I always watched my daddy.

Marketers are making retirement respectable. Instead of being the beginning of the end, it sounds like Nirvana-do what you want without any responsibilities. The boomers think that they're 16. Marketers try to keep the charade going. Retirement will look so good, others are going to be jealous.

Everybody sat around thinking about Panasonic, the Japanese electronics account. Finally I decided, what the hell, I'll throw a line to loosen them up. 'The headline is, the headline is: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.'

The Creative Revolution is over. Everybody is justholding onto their jobs and no one is ever going to say toa client... ‘Buy this or I’ll resign your account.’ You don’tdo it anymore. It’s now, the majority of the time... ‘How do you like it? When can I change it for you?’

I'm hard-nosed about luck...If you're persistent in trying and doing and working, you almost always make your own fortune.

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.

Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.

I'm hard-nosed about luck. I think it sucks. Yeah, if you spend seven years looking for a job as a copywriter, and then one day somebody gives you a job, you can say, Gee, I was lucky I happened to go up there today. But, dammit, I was going to go up there sooner or later in the next seventy years. If you're persistent in trying and doing and working, you almost make your own fortune.

Because I'm in advertising, not electricity!