Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.
Today’s smartest advertising style is tomorrow’s corn.
All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalise it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.
Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.
A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.
We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget we can create them.
Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.
Research can trap you into the past.
Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way.
It’s not just what you say that stirs people. It’s the way that you say it.
You have to live with your product, you have to know it through and through, you have to look at it, understand it, love it then, and only then, you can crystallize in one clear thought, one single theme, what must be conveyed about the product to the consumer.
Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.
The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.
Imitation can be commercial suicide.
Persuasion is not a science but an art.
Advertising is the art of persuasion.
A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something.
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, believed, persuasive, urgent.
Logic and over-analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. It’s like love. The more you analyse it, the more it disappears.
Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.
For the Flower to blossom, you need the right soil as well as the right seed. The same is true to cultivate good thinking.