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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
Society
Lifts
Use
Onto
Business
Mass
Helping
Level
Higher
Levels
Shapers
Media
Professionally
Help
Lift

More quotes by William Bernbach

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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.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach
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Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.
William Bernbach
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Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
William Bernbach
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Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.
William Bernbach
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The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.
William Bernbach
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Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed... but dull?
William Bernbach
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An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
William Bernbach
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Research can trap you into the past.
William Bernbach
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In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.
William Bernbach
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The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.
William Bernbach
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Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.
William Bernbach
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In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.
William Bernbach
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A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.
William Bernbach
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It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.
William Bernbach
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Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.
William Bernbach
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Never do anything yourself that you can hire someone else to do, especially if they can do it better.
William Bernbach
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Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach