Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.
Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.
You can’t save souls in an empty church.
I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.
I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.
I never assign a product to a writer unless I know that he is personally interested in it. Every time I have written a bad campaign, it has been because the product did not interest me.
I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn’t know what it meant myself.
One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation.
It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read.
Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever – create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.
Managing an advertising agency isn’t all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same.
Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.
When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on “teamwork” is bunkum – a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.
Creativity needs discipline and freedom.
You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it’s Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it’s Jack Daniel’s. Ask them which they prefer. They’ll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images.
Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.