Bernbach was born in the Bronx, New York on August 13, 1911, to Jacob Bernbach, an "austere but elegant"; in Bill’s words, designer of women’s clothes, and Rebecca (Reiter) Bernbach. He had a well-rounded college career, during which he majored in English, and also studied music, business administration, and philosophy. He was a Leo who played the piano. He was highly intelligent, observant, articulate, and many would feel that he was a cut above many of the people around him. On the other hand, he was slight, pale, unathletic, and physically inadequate, some would say. After completing his public school education in New York, he was graduated from New York University in 1932 with a B.A. degree.

During the Depression, in 1932, this almost tiny, five-foot-seven-inch, blond, blue-eyed, quick-witted package of ambitious determination and unrelentless energy found himself employed by the Schenley Distillers Company as an office boy in the mailroom. Of course, this severely constricted his creativity, so in addition to delivering mail and reading the poetry of Kahlil Gibran, he decided to write an ad for Schenley’s American Cream Whiskey and made sure that it somehow appeared at Schenley’s advertising department. However, by the time the ad was published in the New York Times, the advertising department had apparently forgotten its source. Bernbach had this related to a Schenley official and was subsequently given a substantial raise as well as a position in the advertising department.

He married Evelyn Carbone in 1938, and they had two sons, John and Paul. He worked for the New York World’s Fair as a writer and researcher during 1939-40, but his first, true advertising experience came when he joined William H. Weintraub, Inc. There, Bernbach became a close friend of Paul Rand, the agency’s art director, whose aggressiveness and bold simplicity on the printed page were a powerful stylistic influence on Bernbach. After serving two years in the U.S. Army during World War II, Bernbach became director of postwar planning for Coty.

Bernbach’s first major advertising job was as a copywriter with Grey Advertising, where he later became vice president in charge of copy and art. Bill’s sudden rise to the top of the creative department of Grey can be partly attributed to his exceptional verbal, visual, and people skills. It was here that he met Ned Doyle, a vice president and account executive at Grey. Both recognized the importance of client opinion in the conceptualization of sales messages, but at the same time, both men were tired of pandering to clients, often to the impairment of an ad’s message. Here, Bernbach wrote a letter to the owners of Grey Advertising, and we see the fully evolved William Bernbach. Obviously, the management at Grey Advertising was not timely enough in their response to Bernbach.

Thus, on June 1, 1949, Doyle and Bernbach joined Maxwell Dane, owner of a small advertising agency, and launched their own agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) with an investment of $1,200. "Nothing will ever get between us,"; Bill said. "Not even punctuation." They seemed to complement each other perfectly. Dane took on the role of organizer and managed the firm. Doyle covered finances and promotional work, and Bernbach’s major responsibility was "producing the show". The three practitioners were described as the most unassuming men one would ever come across. Legend has it that a coin decided the order on their names in the firm, and Bernbach was named president to compensate for his name being last.

From the start, DDB picked up clients at a phenomenal rate. Bernbach kept his cherished account from Grey Advertising, Ohrbach’s, a New York and Los Angles low-priced department store pitted against stores with colossal ad budgets. Under Bernbach’s 25-year leadership, DDB was credited with advocating creativity that revolutionized and altered the landscape of American advertising with ads that attracted the attention and sales dollars of readers, listeners, and viewers.

In 1976, due to DDB’s mandatory retirement age of 65, Bernbach stepped aside as C.E.O. of what was then America’s 11th largest ad agency. In the early years at DDB, he wrote most of the ads himself, but as the agency blossomed, he edited ads and taught others - old and young - inestimable lessons in creativity.

The American Advertising Federation inducted William Bernbach into the Advertising Hall of Fame on February 9, 1976. Other honors received during his career included being voted "The One Person Who Did Most for the Progress of the Advertising Industry" in 1963, 1965, and 1966 (award made by the Gallagher Report via reader poll); Copywriters Hall of Fame, April 28, 1964; 1966 Man of the Year Award from Pulse, Inc.; 1968 Madden Memorial Award; "Top Advertising Agency Executive" in 1969 (by Ad Daily via industry-wide balloting); and the "1976 Recipient of American Academy of Achievement Award."

When he started DDB, its billings were $1,000,000; when he died it was near $1,000,000,000. Bernbach died of leukemia on October 2, 1982 at the age of 71.