If you ever find a man who is better than you are – hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
Consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.
Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.
Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
Senior men have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers and others. Encourage this, you need all the ideas you can get.
Play to win, but enjoy the fun.
Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows?
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money...
Within every brand is a product, but not every product is a brand.
Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.