William Bernbach famous quotes

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Writing #Skills #Keys

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Believe #Interesting #People

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.
-- William Bernbach

#People #Way #Feels

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

#Design

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

#Real #Men #Ideas

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

#Memorable #Artist #Design

Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.
-- William Bernbach

#Jobs #Design #Facts

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

#Real #Evil #World

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Powerful #Knowledge #Men

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.
-- William Bernbach

#Communication #Apathy #Familiarity

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

#Positive #Ideas #Dust

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

#Art #Writing #World

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?
-- William Bernbach

#People #Looks #Dull

In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.
-- William Bernbach

#Suicidal #Marketing #Different

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

#Running #Business #Numbers

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!
-- William Bernbach

#Design #Advertising #Academic

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.
-- William Bernbach

#Business #Mouths #Mediums

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.
-- William Bernbach

#People

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.
-- William Bernbach

#Powerful #Marketing #Elements

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Past #Design #Research

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

#Art #Business #Advertising

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

#Flower #Thinking #Soil

Advertising is the art of persuasion.
-- William Bernbach

#Art #Advertising #Persuasion

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Listening #Public Opinion #Statistics

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

#Creativity #May #Lasts

Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.
-- William Bernbach

#Creativity #Ads

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Business #Men #Listening

The heart of creativity is discipline.
-- William Bernbach

#Creativity #Heart #Discipline

Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste.
-- William Bernbach

#Taste #Absence

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

#Success #Moving #Men

Imitation can be commercial suicide.
-- William Bernbach

#Suicide #Design #Imitation

Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.
-- William Bernbach

#Business #Style #Corn

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Weed #Jobs #Shining

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Substance #Advertising #Forget

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Business #Media #Levels

Research can trap you into the past.
-- William Bernbach

#Business #Past #Research

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

#People #Campaigns #Failing

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Creativity #Design #Swamps

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

#Ideas #Analysis #Logic

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.
-- William Bernbach

#Believe #Design #Advertising

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

#Guarantees #Logical #Appeals

There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules ... but there's one little rub. They forget that advertising is persuasion, and persuasion is not a science, but an art. Advertising is the art of persuasion.
-- William Bernbach

#Wise #Witty #Art

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

#Principles #Cost

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Powerful #Believe #Book

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

#Mind #Desire #Information

Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
-- William Bernbach

#Business #Advertising #Advantage

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.
-- William Bernbach

#Fall #Matter #Gimmicks

Persuasion is not a science but an art
-- William Bernbach

#Art #Persuasion