Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image. |
Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising. |
First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them go get on with it. |
Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images. |
Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product. |
H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that it pays to make all your layouts project a feeling of good taste, provided that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a first class ticket through life. |
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. |
I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs. |
I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners. |
I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes. |
I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years. |
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. |
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. |
I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive. |
I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product. |