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. |
Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, "Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of toilet soap if only they hadn't set the body copy in ten point Garamond." Don't you believe it. What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form. |
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon. |
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest. |
Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom. |
Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work. |
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull? |
Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising. |
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything. |
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. |
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. |
The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her. |
The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife. |
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. |
The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions. |