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

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
Confuse
Absence
Taste
Good

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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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We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget we can create them.
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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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Advertising is the art of persuasion.
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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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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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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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I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.
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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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Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before.
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Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
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A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something.
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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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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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Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.
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In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.
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The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.
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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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Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.
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