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.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read. Therefore, study the graphics used by editors...

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. (1958 Rolls-Royce print ad – sometimes referred to as the most famous headline in advertising history.)

Managing an advertising agency isn’t all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative...

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...

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 life happily with your prospective client before you...

I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover...

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.

Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it’s Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it’s Jack Daniel’s. Ask them which they prefer. They’ll think the...

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...

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

Many people – and I think I am one of them – are more productive when they’ve had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I’m far better able...

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

Leaders grasp nettles.

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see his advertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell a product.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your wife.

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

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.

Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

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...

Make sure you have a Vice President in charge of Revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.

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.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

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...

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become...

The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the...

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member’s talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

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.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall...

I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support,...