Angeline’s
Advertising Crash Course
"Advertising is of the very essence of
democracy. An election goes on every
minute of across the counters of hundreds
of thousands of stores, where customers
state their preferences and determine
which manufacturer and which product
shall be the leader today, and which shall
lead tomorrow." -- Bruce Barton
"Advertising is salesmanship mass
produced. No one would bother to use
advertising if he could talk to all his
prospects face-to-face. But he can't." - Morris Hite
"Great designers seldom make
great advertising men, because
they get overcome by the beauty
of the picture - and forget that
merchandise must be sold." -James Randolph Adams
"If you don't get noticed, you
don't have anything. You just
have to be noticed, but the art
is in getting noticed naturally,
without screaming or without
tricks." -- Leo Burnett
“You have only 30 seconds. If you
grab attention in the first frame
with a visual surprise, you stand a
better chance of holding the
viewer. When you advertise fireextinguishers, open with the
fire." -- David Ogilvy
"The greatest thing to be
achieved in advertising, in my
opinion, is believability, and
nothing is more believable
than the product itself." -- Leo
Burnett
"The first thing one must do to
succeed in advertising is to have the
attention of the reader. That means to
be interesting. The next thing is to
stick to the truth, and that means
rectifying whatever's wrong in the
merchant's business. If the truth isn't
tellable, fix it so it is. That is about all
there is to it." -- John E. Powers
"A good basic selling idea,
involvement and relevancy are
as important as ever, but in the
advertising of today, unless you
make yourself noticed and
believed, you ain't got nothin'."
-- Leo Burnett
"What helps people, helps
business." -- Leo Burnett
"Advertising doesn't create a
product advantage. It can only
convey it." -- William
Bernbach
"The truth isn't the truth until people
believe you, and they can't believe you if
they don't know what you're saying, and
they can't know what you're saying if
they don't listen to you, and they won't
listen to you if you're not interesting, and
you won't be interesting unless you say
things imaginatively, originally, freshly." - William Bernbach
"The headline is the most
important element of an ad. It
must offer a promise to the
reader of a believable benefit.
And it must be phrased in a
way to give it memory value."
-- Morris Hite
It takes more than capital to
swing business. You've got to
have the A. I. D. degree to get
by -- Advertising, Initiative,
and Dynamics. -- Ren Mulford
Jr.
When the product is right, you
don't have to be a great
marketer. -- Lee Iacocca
"It is insight into human nature that
is the key to the communicator's skill.
For whereas the writer is concerned
with what he puts into his writings,
the communicator is concerned with
what the reader gets out of it. He
therefore becomes a student of how
people read or listen." -- William
Bernbach
"Make it simple. Make it
memorable. Make it inviting
to look at. Make it fun to
read." -- Leo Burnett
'Here's what we've got. Here's
what it will do for you. Here's
how to get it.'" -- Leo Burnett
"If you can't turn yourself into
your customer, you probably
shouldn't be in the ad writing
business at all." -- Leo Burnett
"Forget words like 'hard sell' and
'soft sell.' That will only confuse you.
Just be sure your advertising is
saying something with substance,
something that will inform and serve
the consumer, and be sure you're
saying it like it's never been said
before." -- William Bernbach
"To establish a favorable and welldefined brand personality with the
consumer the advertiser must be
consistent. You can't use a comic
approach today and a scientist in a
white jacket tomorrow without
diffusing and damaging your brand
personality." -- Morris Hite.
"What really decides consumers
to buy or not to buy is the
content of your advertising, not
its form." -- David Ogilvy
"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." -- David Ogilvy
"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." -- David Ogilvy
"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." -- David Ogilvy
"If you are writing about
baloney, don't try to make it
Cornish hen, because that is
the worst kind of baloney there
is. Just make it darned good
baloney." -- Leo Burnett
"I have always believed that
writing advertisements is the
second most profitable form
of writing. The first, of course,
is ransom notes . . . ." -- Philip
Dusenberry
"I think central to good writing of
advertising, or anything else, is a person
who has developed an understanding of
people, an insight into them, a sympathy
toward them. I think that that develops
more sharply when the writer has not had
an easy adjustment to living. So that they
have themselves felt the need for
understanding, the need for sympathy, and
can therefore see that need in other
people." -- George Gribbin
"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." -David Ogilvy
"You must make the product
interesting, not just make the
ad different. And that's what
too many of the copywriters in
the U.S. today don't yet
understand." -- Rosser Reeves
"The mystery of writing
advertisements consists mainly
in saying in a few plain words
exactly what it is desired to say,
precisely as it would be written
in a letter or told to an
acquaintance." -- George P.
Rowell
"Properly practiced creativity
can make one ad do the work
of ten." -- William Bernbach
"Properly practiced creativity
MUST result in greater sales
more economically achieved.
Properly practiced creativity
can lift your claims out of the
swamp of sameness and make
them accepted, believed,
persuasive, urgent." -- William
Bernbach
"In advertising not to be
different is virtually suicidal."
-- William Bernbach
"The secret of all effective
originality in advertising is not
the creation of new and tricky
words and pictures, but one
of putting familiar words and
pictures into new
relationships." -- Leo Burnett
"There is a great deal of advertising
that is much better than the product.
When that happens, all that the good
advertising will do is put you out of
business faster." -- Jerry Della
Famina
"Contrary to what self-appointed
protectors of the consumer so loudly
proclaim, advertising does not cause
people to buy bad products. Nothing
will put a bad product out of
business faster than a good
advertising campaign. Advertising
causes people to try a product once,
but poor quality eliminates any
possibility of a repeat purpose." -Morris Hite
"Many a small thing has been
made large by the right kind
of advertising." -- Mark Twain
"General advertising is Cyrano. He
comes under your window and sings;
people get used to it and ignore it.
But if Roxane responds, there's a
relationship. We move the brand
relationship up a notch. Advertising
becomes a dialogue that becomes an
invitation to a relationship." -- Lester
Wunderman
"You can say the right thing
about a product and nobody
will listen. You've got to say it
in such a way that people will
feel it in their gut. Because if
they don't feel it, nothing will
happen." -- William Bernbach
"The spectator-buyer is meant to envy
herself as she will become if she buys the
product. She is meant to imagine herself
transformed by the product into an
object of envy for others, an envy which
will then justify her loving herself. One
could put this another way: the publicity
image steals her love of herself as she is,
and offers it back to her for the price of
the product." -- John Berger
"We grew up founding our
dreams on the infinite
promise of American
advertising. I still believe that
one can learn to play the
piano by mail and that mud
will give you a perfect
complexion." -- Zelda
Fitzgerald
"Fun without sell gets
nowhere but sell without fun
tends to become obnoxious." - Leo Burnett
"There is no such thing as a
permanent advertising
success." -- Leo Burnett
"No matter how skillful you
are, you can't invent a
product advantage that
doesn't exist. And if you do,
and it's just a gimmick, it's
going to fall apart anyway." -William Bernbach
"Regardless of the moral issue,
dishonesty in advertising has
proved very unprofitable." -Leo Burnett
"Never write an advertisement which you
wouldn't want your own family to read.
You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife.
Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would
be done by. If you tell lies about a
product, you will be found out - either by
the Government, which will prosecute
you, or by the consumer, who will punish
you by not buying your product a second
time. Good products can be sold by
honest advertising. If you don't think the
product is good, you have no business to
be advertising it." -- David Ogilvy
"[L]ying and cheating in advertising, in
the long run, are commercial suicide.
Dishonesty in advertising destroys not
only confidence in advertising, but also in
the medium which carries the dishonest
advertisement. . . . No one can be ill in a
community without endangering others;
no advertiser can be dishonest without
casting suspicion upon others." -- Daniel
Starch
"You now have to decide what
'image' you want for your
brand. Image means
personality. Products, like
people, have personalities,
and they can make or break
them in the market place." -David Ogilvy
"Every advertisement should
be thought of as a
contribution to the complex
symbol which is the brand
image." -- David Ogilvy
"If you ever have the good
fortune to create a great
advertising campaign, you will
soon see another agency steal
it. This is irritating, but don't
let it worry you; nobody has
ever built a brand by imitating
somebody else's advertising." - David Ogilvy
"Buy me and you will
overcome the anxieties I have
just reminded you of." -Michael Schudson
"Next to Christianity,
advertising is the greatest force
in the world. And I say that
without sacrilege or disrespect.
Advertising makes people
discontented. It makes them
want things they don't have.
Without discontent, there is no
progress, no achievement." -Ray Locke
"When executing advertising,
it's best to think of yourself as
an uninvited guest in the living
room of a prospect who has the
magical power to make you
disappear instantly." -- John
O'Toole
"Anyone who thinks that
people can be fooled or
pushed around has an
inaccurate and pretty low
estimate of people - and he
won't do very well in
advertising." -- Leo Burnett
"Can advertising foist an inferior product on
the consumer? Bitter experience has taught
me that it cannot. On those rare occasions
when I have advertised products which
consumer tests have found inferior to other
products in the same field, the results have
been disastrous." -- David Ogilvy
"Advertising is criticized on the ground that
it can manipulate consumers to follow the
will of the advertiser. The weight of
evidence denies this ability. Instead,
evidence supports the position that
advertising, to be successful, must
understand or anticipate basic human
needs and wants and interpret available
goods and services in terms of their wantsatisfying abilities. This is the very opposite
of manipulation." -- Charles H. Sandage
"The more informative your
advertising, the more
persuasive it will be." -- David
Ogilvy
"In American business today, with so
many good companies offering
bewilderingly similar products,
advertising has become perhaps the
critical factor in the consumer's
decision of which one of those
products to buy. The environment is
not so much one of innovation as it is
one of marketing - which means the
adman, more than ever, has become
its superstar." -- Skip Hollandsworth
"Advertising practitioners are
interpreters. But unlike foreign
language interpreters, ad people
must constantly learn new languages.
They must understand the language
of each new product, and speak the
language of each new target
audience." -- Jeff I. Richards
"Advertisers are the interpreters of
our dreams - Joseph interpreting for
Pharoah. Like the movies, they
infect the routine futility of our days
with purposeful adventure. Their
weapons are our weaknesses: fear,
ambition, illness, pride, selfishness,
desire, ignorance. And these
weapons must be kept as bright as a
sword." -- E.G. White
"A great ad campaign will
make a bad product fail faster.
It will get more people to
know it's bad." -- William
Bernbach
"There's no secret formula for advertising
success, other than to learn everything
you can about the product. Most products
have some unique characteristic, and the
really great advertising comes right out of
the product and says something about the
product that no one else can say. Or at
least no one else is saying." -- Morris Hite
"The best ad is a good
product." -- Alan H. Meyer
"The sole purpose of business
is service. The sole purpose of
advertising is explaining the
service which business
renders." -- Leo Burnett
"The most important word in
the vocabulary of advertising
is TEST. If you pretest your
product with consumers, and
pretest your advertising, you
will do well in the
marketplace." -- David Ogilvy
"Ninety-nine percent of
advertising doesn't sell much
of anything." -- David Ogilvy
don't need. I can't, however,
sell them something they
don't want. Even with
advertising. Even if I were of a
mind to." -- John O'Toole
"Techniques of art, layout, typography, radio and
television productions and fine writing are important.
Nevertheless, they are secondary to the basic selling
proposition around which the ad or commercial is built.
It is not the purpose of the ad or commercial to make
the reader or listener say 'My, what a clever ad.' It is
the purpose of advertising to make the reader or
listener say, 'I believe I'll buy one when I'm shopping
tomorrow,' or 'I wonder if Joe could get one for me
wholesale? The place to start in advertising is the basic
selling appeal. An appeal that fulfills some existing
need in the prospect's mind, an appeal that can be
readily understood and believed." -- Morris Hite
"A good ad should be like a good
sermon: It must not only comfort the
afflicted, it also must afflict the
comfortable." -- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
"There is no need for
advertisements to look like
advertisements. If you make
them look like editorial pages,
you will attract about 50 per
cent more readers." -- David
Ogilvy
"There is no such thing as a
Mass Mind. The Mass Audience
is made up of individuals, and
good advertising is written
always from one person to
another. When it is aimed at
millions it rarely moves
anyone." -- Fairfax Cone
"There is no such thing as
national advertising. All
advertising is local and personal.
It's one man or woman reading
one newspaper in the kitchen
or watching TV in the den." -Morris Hite
"For marketers . . . the mass media are
no longer the sole choice. Traditional
media retain an important advantage: the
'rub-off' credibility that accrues from
being part of a broadcast or publication
invited into the home. But for many
marketers, media advertising is a shotgun.
The new technologies provide rifles,
which can target prime prospects." -Stanley E. Cohen
"Doing business without
advertising is like winking at a
girl in the dark. You know
what you are doing, but
nobody else does." -- Steuart
Henderson Britt
"Good advertising does not
just circulate information. It
penetrates the public mind
with desires and belief." -Leo Burnett
"The philosophy behind much
advertising is based on the old
observation that every man is
really two men - the man he is
and the man he wants to be."
-- William Feather
"The business of the advertiser or the seller
is not to create fundamentally new desires.
That is not necessary and really cannot be
done. Man already has certain desires
present from birth, which are a part of his
fundamental make-up. All that a seller can
do is to direct these desires in certain
directions, or stimulate them to action, or
show by what new ways an old desire may
be satisfied." -- Daniel Starch
"I know half the money I spend
on advertising is wasted, but I
can never find out which half" - John Wanamaker
"The faults of advertising are only those
common to all human institutions. If
advertising speaks to a thousand in order to
influence one, so does the church. And if it
encourages people to live beyond their
means, so does matrimony. Good times,
bad times, there will always be advertising.
In good times, people want to advertise; in
bad times they have to." -- Bruce Barton
"Unless a product becomes
outmoded, a great campaign
will not wear itself out." -Rosser Reeves