William Bernbach Quotations

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

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

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

In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.

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.

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.

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.

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

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

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

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.

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

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

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

Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.

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.

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

With our industry being watched so carefully by governmental agencies, with the FTC ready to pounce on every claim we make, what we CAN say in our ads is forever narrowing and the sharpest tool left for us is HOW we say it.

Advertising isn't a science. It's persuasion. And persuasion is an art.

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 about a man you can touch him at the core of his being.

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.

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

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

Advertising is the art of persuasion.

Persuasion is not a science but an art

The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Imitation can be commercial suicide.

Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.

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.

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

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

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

The heart of creativity is discipline.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Research can trap you into the past.

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

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.