William Bernbach

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

“In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.”

“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...”

“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...”

“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.”

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

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

“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,...”

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

“In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal.”

“If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.”

“I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.”