There’s no such thing as ‘hard sell’ and ‘soft sell.’ There’s only ‘smart sell’ and ‘stupid sell.’
Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.
Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate and pretty low estimate of people – and he won’t do very well in advertising.
Good advertising is a happy wedding of words and pictures, not a contest between them.
Before you can have a share of market, you must have a share of mind.
Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.
Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.
I have learned that you can’t have good advertising without a good client, that you can’t keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy better advertising than he understands or has an appetite for.
There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.
I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.
If you can’t turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn’t be in the ad writing bsuiness at all.
Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.
Plan the sale when you plan the ad.
Let’s gear our advertising to sell goods, but let’s recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.
Keep it simple. Let’s do the obvious thing -the common thing- but let’s do it uncommonly well.
Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations.
Too many ads that try not to go over the reader’s head end up beneath his notice.
The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its ‘product’ cannot be turned out on an assembly line.
Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide.
I am often asked how I got into the business. I didn’t. The business got into me.