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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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William Bernbach
Age: 71 †
Born: 1911
Born: August 13
Died: 1982
Died: October 2
Art Director
Economist
Entrepreneur
The Bronx
New York City
Products
Failing
Design
Ads
Great
Campaign
Make
Campaigns
People
Faster
Product
Fail

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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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Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
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Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.
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Never do anything yourself that you can hire someone else to do, especially if they can do it better.
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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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It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say 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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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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The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.
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Word of mouth is the best medium of all.
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The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.
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Rules are what the artist breaks the memorable never emerged from a formula.
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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.
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The creative man with an insight into human nature, with the artistry to touch and move people, will succeed. Without them he will fail.
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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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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.
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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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Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.
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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.
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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.
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