William Bernbach

In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.

Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste.

You cannot sell a man who isn't listening; word of mouth is the best medium of all; and dullness won't sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance.

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.

In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.

Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.

You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.

A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

Imitation can be commercial suicide.

The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past.

If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some people against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you.

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

Never do anything yourself that you can hire someone else to do, especially if they can do it better.