Leo Burnett Quotes

If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.

Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.

Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.

Don't tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.

Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'

Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret ... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.

When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.

I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.

The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.

The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders.

The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.

We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all.

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.

There's no such thing as 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' There's only 'smart sell' and 'stupid sell.'

Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.

Too many ads that try not to go over the reader's head end up beneath his notice.

I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency

Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.

Plan the sale when you plan the ad.

A company in which anyone is afraid to speak up, to differ, to be daring and original, is closing the coffin door on itself.

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.

If you are writing about baloney, don't try and make it Cornish hen, because that's the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darn good baloney.

What helps people, helps business.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.

Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide.

A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin'.

I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.

I am often asked how I got into the business. I didn't. The business got into me.

Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.

There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.

Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate and pretty low estimate of people - and he won't do very well in advertising.

Before you can have a share of market, you must have a share of mind.

The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its 'product' cannot be turned out on an assembly line.

Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.

Good advertising is a happy wedding of words and pictures, not a contest between them.