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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
Techniques
Technique
Idea
Ideas
Adapt

More quotes by William Bernbach

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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.
William Bernbach
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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.
William Bernbach
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Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.
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Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.
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Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.
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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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Research can trap you into the past.
William Bernbach
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Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.
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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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.
William Bernbach
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Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste.
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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.
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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Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.
William Bernbach
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No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway.
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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The heart of creativity is discipline.
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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Rules are what the artist breaks the memorable never emerged from a formula.
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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