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It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.

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
Take
Allowed
Advantage
Creativity
Lasts
Last
May
Legally
Wells
Competitors
Well
Unfair

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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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Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
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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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Find the simple story in the product, and present it in an articulate and intelligent, persuasive way.
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Rules are what the artist breaks the memorable never emerged from a formula.
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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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Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.
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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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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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A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.
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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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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.
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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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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?
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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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Imitation can be commercial suicide.
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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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The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.
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Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.
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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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