William Bernbach Quotes

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

Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

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

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

Persuasion is not a science but an art

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.

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

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

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.

The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.