Bernbach On...Advertising"Advertising isn't a science, it's persuasion. And persuasion is an art." "Execution can become content. It can be just as important as what you say." "Finding out what to say is the beginning of the communication process. How you
say it makes people look and listen and behave. And if you are not successful at that you
have wasted all the work and intelligence and skill that went into discovering what you
should say." "To succeed, an ad (or a persona or product, for that matter) must establish it's
own unique personality, or it will never be noticed." "As soon as you become a slave to the rules, you're doing what everybody else
does: when you do what everybody else does, you don't stand out. And if you don't stand
out, you don't do advertising that gets attention." Creativity"Properly practiced, creativity can make one ad do the work of ten." "To keep your ads fresh, you've got to keep yourself fresh. Live in the current
idiom and you will create in it. If you follow and enjoy and are excited by the new trails
in art, in writing, in industry, in personal relationships...whatever you do will
naturally be of today." "An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against
it." "If you can sell with good taste as well as bad taste, why not make it good taste?
More fun!" Clients"If your ads are talked about, you will grow in the proper way. We increase sales
for clients. If you make money for someone else, they forget all the firmness you
exercise, all the toughness you've shown, and they remember that you made money for
them." "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." The Media"The world turns on public opinion, and that's formed by communications. They're
looking for a provocative story above everything else." "All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We
can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher
level." Introduction | Early
Career | Doyle Dane Bernbach | The Creative Revolution |