Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious.
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Before people making a buying decision, they have many questions. For example, why they should buy from you, why your product is better than other similar products, why they should trust you, and why they should buy it now, etc.
Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money.
The headline is the most important element in most advertisements. It is the telegram which decides whether the reader will read the copy.
Supposing you’ve got an acute appendicitis. You’ve got to be operated on tonight. Would you like to have a surgeon who’s read some books of anatomy and knows how to do that operation – or would you prefer to have a surgeon who refused to read all books about anatomy and relied on his own instinct?
We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.
We like people who are honest. Honest in argument, honest with clients, honest with suppliers, honest with the company – and above all, honest with consumers.
While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes.
You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.
Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.
Readers travel so fast they don’t stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.
People don’t buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night.
If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.
It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.
Lazy and superficial men and women do not produce superior work.
Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled.
Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
Most headlines are set too big to be legible in the magazines or newspaper. Never approve a layout until you have seen it pasted into the magazine or newspaper for which it was destined. If you pin up the layouts on a bulletin board and appraise them from fifteen feet, you will produce posters.