PRODUCT
"We think we will never know as much about a product as a client. After all, he sleeps and breathes his product. He's built it. He's lived with it most of his life. We couldn't possible know as much about it as he does. By the same token, we firmly believe that he can't know as much about advertising. Because we live and breathe that all day long."
William Bernbach, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 15.
"A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad."
William Bernbach, quoted in Bill Bernbach said . . . (1989), DDB Needham Worldwide.
"We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'"
Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, p. 14.
"During the 36 years I have been in the agency business I have always been naively guided by the principle that if we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, or at least to give them a real try, we are not completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others . . . ."
Leo Burnett, quoted by Joan Kufrin, Leo Burnett: Star Reacher(1995), Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, Inc., p. 126.
"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, quoted in Adman: Morris Hite's Methods for Winning the Ad Game, 1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 172.
"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 services to advertise."
Morris Hite, quoted in Adman: Morris Hite's Methods for Winning the Ad Game, 1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 202.
"It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive."
Nicholas Johnson, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of Political Quotations, 1982, New York: Crown Publishing Inc., p. 2.
"The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably with advertising."
Albert Lasker, head of Lord & Thomas advertising agency (later known as Foote, Cone & Belding).
"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself."
Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 19.
"Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments."
Thomas Merton (1968), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: Stonesong Press, p. 70.
"The best ad is a good product."
Alan H. Meyer, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 18.
"Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product."
David Ogilvy, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 86.
"In writing advertising it must always be kept in mind that the customer often knows more about the goods than the advertising writers because they have had experience in buying them, and any seeming deception in a statement is costly, not only in the expense of the advertising but in the detrimental effect produced upon the customer, who believes she has been misled."
John Wanamaker