If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.
Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.
Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.
The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.
I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.
The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
