Bill Bernbach Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.

Bill Bernbach
An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.

Bill Bernbach
Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

Bill Bernbach
In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

Bill Bernbach
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.

Bill Bernbach
Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

Bill Bernbach
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.

Bill Bernbach
Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

Bill Bernbach
In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal.

Bill Bernbach
It is ironic that the very thing that is most suspect by business, that intangible thing called artistry, turns out to be the most practical tool available to it. For it is only an original talent that can vie with all the shocking news events and violence in the world for the attention of the consumer.

Bill Bernbach
It's that creative spark that I'm so jealous of for our agency and that I'm so desperately fearful of losing. I don't want scientists. I don't want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things.

Bill Bernbach
Getting a product known isn't the answer. Getting it WANTED is the answer. Some of the best known product names have failed.

Bill Bernbach
The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.

Bill Bernbach
Maybe we're getting bogged down in too much detail. Maybe our advertising ideas are being ground up in that multi-level American efficiency machine.

Bill Bernbach
There is practically nothing that is not capable of boring us.

Bill Bernbach
It took millions of years for man's instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.

Bill Bernbach
In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.

Bill Bernbach
We don't ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.

Bill Bernbach
A unique selling proposition is no longer enough. Without a unique selling talent, it may die.

Bill Bernbach
Be provocative. But be sure your provocativeness stems from your product. You are NOT right if in your ad you stand a man on his head JUST to get attention. You ARE right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets.

Bill Bernbach
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.

Bill Bernbach
Today, everybody is talking 'Creativity,' and frankly, that's got me worried. I fear lest we keep the good taste and lose the sell. I fear all the sins we may commit in the name of 'Creativity.' I fear that we may be entering an age of phonies.

Bill Bernbach
The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.

Bill Bernbach
Working from a method or a formula is guaranteed to do the same thing to the effectiveness of an idea that time does to a loaf of bread. Ideas must be hot out of the oven if they are to arouse the appetite. That is why, in communications, imitation is commercial suicide.

Bill Bernbach
The purpose of advertising is to sell. That is what the client is paying for and if that goal does not permeate every idea you get, every word you write, every picture you take, you are a phony and you ought to get out of the business.

Bill Bernbach
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.

Bill Bernbach
Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.

Bill Bernbach
Dullness won't sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance.

Bill Bernbach
The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

Bill Bernbach
Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.

Bill Bernbach