Quote

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

William Bernbach

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Bernbach
Age: 71 †
Born: 1911
Born: August 13
Died: 1982
Died: October 2
Art Director
Economist
Entrepreneur
The Bronx
New York City
Wells
Competitors
Well
Unfair
Take
Allowed
Advantage
Creativity
Lasts
Last
May
Legally

More quotes by William Bernbach

Image
Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.
William Bernbach
Image
Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste.
William Bernbach
Image
Rules are what the artist breaks the memorable never emerged from a formula.
William Bernbach
Image
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
Image
The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.
William Bernbach
Image
Logic and over-analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. It's like love. The more you analyse it, the more it disappears.
William Bernbach
Image
In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.
William Bernbach
Image
Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.
William Bernbach
Image
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
Image
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.
William Bernbach
Image
In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.
William Bernbach
Image
If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!
William Bernbach
Image
Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
William Bernbach
Image
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
Image
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.
William Bernbach
Image
I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.
William Bernbach
Image
Nobody counts the number of ads you run they just remember the impression you make.
William Bernbach
Image
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
Image
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.
William Bernbach
Image
Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.
William Bernbach