I just finished watching all seven seasons of the hit TV show, “Mad Men,” which takes place in the 1960s at the start of the Golden Age of Advertising. It was a time of legends: David Ogilvy. William Bernbach. Leo Burnett. And many more.
Here are some of my favorite advertising quotes from these brilliant men.
On creativity
“When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.” —David Ogilvy
“We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.’” —Leo Burnett
“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” —David Ogilvy
“Creativity without strategy is called ‘art.’ Creativity with strategy is called ‘advertising.’” —Jef Richards
“People don’t buy from clowns.” —Claude C. Hopkins
David Ogilvy
(June 23, 1911–July 21, 1999) Known as the “Father of Advertising” and mentioned frequently on “Mad Men,” David Ogilvy founded the Ogilvy & Mather agency in 1952. He believed every advertisement should have a “Big Idea” and said, “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” Some of his most memorable works were for Rolls-Royce (“At 60 miles an hour, the loudest sound in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”) and “The man in the Hathaway shirt,” a print ad featuring a man wearing an eye patch. Ogilvy is said to have disliked advertising with loud, patronizing voices (God bless him!), and thought customers should be treated as intelligent.
“The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people.” —James Randolph Adams
“I fear all the sins we may commit in the name of ‘creativity.’ I fear that we may be entering an age of phonies.” —William Bernbach
“Let’s say you have $1 million tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn’t working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” —Rosser Reeves
On creating good ads
“I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.” —Leo Burnett
“One hundred years from now, the idea is still going to be more important than all the technology in the world.” —William Bernbach
“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
“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” —Leo Burnett
Leo Burnett
(October 21, 1891–June 7, 1971) Leo Burnett was an advertising executive and founder of Leo Burnett Company, Inc. He was responsible for creating some of advertising’s most well-known characters and campaigns of the 20th century, including Tony the Tiger, the Marlboro Man, the Maytag Repairman, United’s “Fly the Friendly Skies,” and Allstate’s “Good Hands.” In 1999, Burnett was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
“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
“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” —Howard Luck Gossage
“The only people who care about advertising are the people who work in advertising.”
—George Parker
“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
“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” —Craig Davis
“Every product has a unique personality and it is your job to find it.” —Joe Sugarman
“Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed . . . but dull?” —William Bernbach
“An ad is finished only when you no longer can find a single element to remove.” —Robert Fleege
“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.” —David Ogilvy
“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
William “Bill” Bernbach
(August 13, 1911–October 2, 1982) William Bernbach was an advertising creative director and one of three founders in 1949 of the international advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB). His agency created many breakthrough ad campaigns (“Think Small” for Volkswagen in 1959 and “We try harder” for Avis in 1962) and greatly influenced the creative team structures now common in today’s ad agencies.
“Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.” —Leo Burnett
“On average, helpful information is read by 75% more people than copy which deals only with the product.” —David Ogilvy
“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
On clients
“The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can live happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.” —David Ogilvy
“It takes good clients to make a good advertising agency. Regardless of how much talent an ad agency may have, it is ineffective without good products and good services to advertise.” —Morris Hite
“If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.” —David Ogilvy
On advertising theory
“Nobody should be allowed to create general advertising until he has served his apprenticeship in direct response.” —David Ogilvy
“I don’t believe in tricky advertising. I don’t believe in cute advertising. I don’t believe in comic advertising. The people who perpetrate that kind of advertising never had to sell anything in their lives.” —David Ogilvy
“It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.” —David Ogilvy
“There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.” —David Ogilvy
“Advertising is what you do when you can’t go see somebody. That’s all it is.” —Fairfax Cone
Rosser Reeves
(September 10, 1910–January 24, 1984) Rosser Reeves was an advertising executive and pioneer of television advertising who, like David Ogilvy, insisted that the point of advertising was to sell rather than be clever or funny. He coined the idea of the unique selling proposition (USP) of a product—the single most important differentiator that sets a product apart from its competition. One of his most famous slogans was M&M’s “Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand.”
“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
“In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.” —Peter Nivio Zarlenga
“Customers buy for their reasons, not yours.” —Orvel Ray Wilson
“The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably with advertising.”
—Albert Lasker
“What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.” —David Ogilvy
“The object of your advertising should not be to communicate with your consumers or your prospects at all, but to terrorize your competition’s copywriters.” —Howard Luck Gossage
Howard Luck Gossage
(August 13, 1917–July 9, 1969) Frequently referred to as “The Socrates of San Francisco,” Howard Luck Gossage was an advertising innovator during the Mad-Men era. At age 36, he co-founded the advertising agency Wiener & Gossage. He believed advertising was best used as a means for solving social problems and used his talents to help launch the environmental movement in the 1960s. Advertising Age lists Howard Gossage at number 23 of its 100 advertising people of the 20th century.
“I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.” —Philip Dusenberry
On the people who create advertising
“A copywriter should have an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them.” —George Gribbin
“Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.” —David Ogilvy
“Leave America and you’ll find that the consumers in many other countries enjoy watching advertising. Not because the products are better, but because the ads are produced to be entertaining. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are dramatic. Sometimes they are just beautiful.” —Simon Sinek
“An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.” —William Bernbach
To find out more about these advertising legends, see Ad Age Top 100 Advertising People, 1–25.
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“The essence of being creative is to escape routine — in a disciplined way.”
—Derry Daly
Direct Response Group
J. Walter Thompson
I like that one, Mike. “Discipline” is the operative word. Wish it was in the vocabularies of more ad creatives today.
Inspires me to do the full Mad Men tour….I have only viewed a few random episodes. Thanks, Cranky.
Hey, Tony! Yes, Mad Men is great. Love the 60s aesthetic and the frequent references to actual historical events and ad work of the day. Truly the Golden Age!
If you do watch all seven seasons, drop me a line. I’d like to hear your thoughts and your take on the ending.