I found an old file in my computer that had a collection of quotes credited to Bill Bernbach, one of the three who formed ‘Doyle Dane Bernbach Needham’. He is probably very old now or even very dead. Or maybe both!
Honestly I don’t know much about him. I don’t know if he, in his time or ours, was God’s gift to advertising. Nor do I know if he was an over-rated, over-blown ad guy. But I do know that some of his quotes make sense. Maybe not all, some!
I thought I could present here the ones that made some sense. If not for anything, at least to help you put them on your computer as a screensaver! A favourite way for some to show that they are advertising professionals!
Over to Bill….
“If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.”
“It’s not just what you say that stops people. It’s the way that you say it.”
“Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.”
“You can have everybody coming in on time, everybody leaving on time, all work finished on the due date, and still have a lousy ad, and fail.”
“I can put down on a page a picture of a man crying, and it’s just a picture of a man crying. Or I can put him down in such a way as to make you want to cry. The difference is artistry – the intangible thing that business distrusts.”
“It is one thing to have a selling proposition and quite another to sell it.”
“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?”
“We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget that we can create them.”
“Be provocative. But be sure your provocativeness stems from your product. You are NOT right if in your ad you stand a man on his head JUST to get attention. You ARE right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets.”
“I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.”
“A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.”
“Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.”
“Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.”
“The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry.”
“Can you really judge an idea from a storyboard? How do you storyboard a smile?”
“There is practically nothing that is not capable of boring us.”
“Dullness won’t sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance.”
“Getting a product known isn’t the answer. Getting it wanted is the answer. Some of the best known product names have failed.”
“It’s not how short you make it; it’s how you make it short.”
“Logic and over analysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It’s like love - the more you analyze it the faster is disappears.”
“A unique selling proposition is no longer enough. Without a unique selling talent it may die.”
“Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.”
“We don’t ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.”
“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of the society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.”
No comments:
Post a Comment