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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.

William Bernbach

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William Bernbach
Age: 71 †
Born: 1911
Born: August 13
Died: 1982
Died: October 2
Art Director
Economist
Entrepreneur
The Bronx
New York City
Help
Lift
Society
Lifts
Use
Onto
Business
Mass
Helping
Level
Higher
Levels
Shapers
Media
Professionally

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Logic and over-analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. It's like love. The more you analyse it, the more it disappears.
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An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
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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.
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Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.
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Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way.
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Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.
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Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.
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Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.
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I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.
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A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something.
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No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway.
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The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.
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In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.
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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.
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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.
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It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say it.
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In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.
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Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature... what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action. If you know these things abut a person, you can touch him at the core of his being.
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Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
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The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.
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