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.

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.

Claude Hopkins… maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That’s absolute poppycock.

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...

Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, “”Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of...

Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose… the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

To advertisers: “Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in...

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.

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

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.

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.

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

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...

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.)

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

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.

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

Leaders grasp nettles.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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

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...