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Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.

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
Adapt
Techniques
Technique
Idea
Ideas

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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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
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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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The heart of creativity is discipline.
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Rules are what the artist breaks the memorable never emerged from a formula.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach
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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.
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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It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say it.
William Bernbach
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Nobody counts the number of ads you run they just remember the impression you make.
William Bernbach
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In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.
William Bernbach
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Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.
William Bernbach
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For the Flower to blossom, you need the right soil as well as the right seed. The same is true to cultivate good thinking.
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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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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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.
William Bernbach
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The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.
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