Top 59 Quotes & Sayings by 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.

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.

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.

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

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

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.

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.

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

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

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.

In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal.

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.

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

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

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

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

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.

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

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?

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

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.

The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.

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

Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way.

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.

Imitation can be commercial suicide.

Persuasion is not a science but an art

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

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

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

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.

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

Advertising is the art of persuasion.

Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.

Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.

The heart of creativity is discipline.

It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say it.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Research can trap you into the past.

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

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.

Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.

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

In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.

It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.

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.

You have to live with your product, you have to know it through and through, you have to look at it, understand it, love it then, and only then, you can crystallize in one clear thought, one single theme, what must be conveyed about the product to the consumer.

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

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!