I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.
You now have to decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.
Training should not be confined to trainees. It should be a continuous process, and should include the entire professional staff of the agency. The more our people learn, the more useful they can be to our clients.
I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
Encourage innovation. Change is our lifeblood, stagnation our death knell.
Don’t count the people that you reach, reach the people who count.
The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions.
A consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence, and don’t shock her.
The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore. Foster any attempt to talk about other things; the longer you stay the better you get to know the prospect, and the more you will be trusted.
The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.
When you have nothing to say, sing it.
It’s not creative unless it sells.
I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses, because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one of them must depart – preferably the female, to look after the baby.
We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.
If you can’t be brilliant, at least be memorable.
People who think well, write well.
Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. ‘Standing room only’ creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure.
If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data – it doesn’t mean the ad is written. Then you’ve got to close the door and write something – that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.
Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.