Jerry Della Femina Quotes

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

In my world - advertising - the Super Bowl is judgment day. If politicians have Election Day and Hollywood has the Oscars, advertising has the Super Bowl.

I ran for political office in the Hamptons once in a war I was having with the village. I came in, there were four people running, and I came in around third. It was over my food market - they arrested me. I just wanted to go for office because I thought it would be an interesting to do.

It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough.

'Business Week' is guilty of very shoddy reporting.

I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'm a great believer that you can't have too conservative a President nor too liberal a Supreme Court. So I'm a walking contradiction. I believe that you should try to really protect people's rights in every way, and also, people should be allowed to do what they do.

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.

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.

I came from a poor family in Coney Island. I learned to write by reading the 'Post.' This was my education.

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

No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.

Most account guys live with fear in their hearts.

The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.

A guy's reputation is the first thing you hear about

I want to die at my desk.

The object of advertising is to get people to feel better about the product you're selling.

There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.

If the FBI is now in charge of bad taste, we're all doomed.

At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.

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

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.

Advertising should always be in good taste without a question.

In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.

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.

Most of the people in advertising now - mention Bill Bernbach to them, they don't know.

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

My first marriage ended after 24 years.

Let's face it: in advertising, you are paid more, but you die younger. It's not very forgiving. Like sports stars, you're in it during your better years, and then you're out looking for work.

Advertising is what I do. It's got me everything I have, and I'm not going to leave it.

Sad to say, negative advertising really works.

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.

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

I don't want people ever to think I'm not in advertising. It's such a business of enthusiasm that if you're not totally excited about it, you should leave it.

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

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.

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

Pictures bring you inside, whether you see yourself driving a new car or as a hapless prisoner who is being abused.

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

Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.

The French are simply incapable of telling the truth.

No kid ever graduated school and said, 'I want to go into advertising.' Advertising is almost everyone's second or third choice.

I'm careful to pay every single penny on my taxes. I don't have any money offshore.

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

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.

Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.

The bad guys always fight dirty, and the good guys always fight clean.

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.

I am a temporary amusement.

I've seen very few Hispanics and blacks who have been able to work their way into the advertising end of business.

There's something that goes on in a new-business meeting that's wonderful to watch. It's like showtime. There are people who are nervous, and there are people who are jittery, and there's so much drama and so much at stake.

Good products win out.

Once people feel comfortable with something, they say, 'Let's try it.'

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

There will always be nervousness wherever big money is at stake. And above everything else, Madison Avenue is big money.

If you look at 'Mad Men,' it's set in the wrong decade. The style of Mad Men is really the 1950s, not the 1960s.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

People who are visiting Long Island find it's very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products.

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

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

Kids don't know what life was like without cell phones.

I'm a driver, and I love it.