William Bernbach Quotes

• 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.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Right Thing, Gut

• Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Medium, Word

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

  William Bernbach

  Tags in Research, Meant

• Today’s smartest advertising style is tomorrow’s corn.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Tomorrow, Style

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Research, Trap

• The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Element, Powerful

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Persuasive, Properly

• Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Properly, Creativity

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Simplify, Weed

• Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Dead, Facts

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

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Impression, Ad

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gimmick, Skillful

• 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

  Tags in Puts, Communicator

• 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

  Tags in Passive

• I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Believing, Warn

• Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Guarantee, Logical

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

  William Bernbach

  Tags in Rubs, Depending

• Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

  William Bernbach

  Tags in Advertising, Convey

• A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.

  William Bernbach

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ad, Bad

• Advertising isn’t a science. It’s persuasion. And persuasion is an art.

  William Bernbach

  Tags in Advertising

William Bernbach (25)

Birth:	13th August, 1911
Death:	2nd October, 1982
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Advertising Designer

Related Authors

• Rory Sutherland
• William Bernbach

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 2nd January

Births

• 1923 - Philip J. Davis
• 1865 - William Lyon Phelps
• 1956 - Lynda Barry
• 1905 - Michael Tippett
• 1971 - Taye Diggs

Deaths

• 2007 - Robert C. Solomon
• 1963 - Dick Powell
• 1917 - Sir Edward Burnett Tylor