Leo Burnett Quotes

When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.

Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.

What helps people, helps business.

If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.

Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.

Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.

Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.

I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.

I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.

Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'

The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.

A company in which anyone is afraid to speak up, to differ, to be daring and original, is closing the coffin door on itself.

Fun without sell gets nowhere, but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious.

We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'

A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin'.

The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders.

Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.

Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.

The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.

I have learned that trying to guess what the boss or the client wants is the most debilitating of all influences in the creation of good advertising.

A good ad which is not run never produces sales.

There's no such thing as 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' There's only 'smart sell' and 'stupid sell.'

I am often asked how I got into the business. I didn't. The business got into me.

The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its 'product' cannot be turned out on an assembly line.

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.

Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations.

Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate and pretty low estimate of people - and he won't do very well in advertising.

Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable

I regard a great ad as the most beautiful thing in the world.

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing bsuiness at all.

There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.

Plan the sale when you plan the ad

If you are writing about baloney, don't try and make it Cornish hen, because that's the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darn good baloney.

I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency

Too many ads that try not to go over the reader's head end up beneath his notice.

Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.

Keep it simple. Let's do the obvious thing -the common thing- but let's do it uncommonly well.

Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.

Don't tell people how good you make the goods; tell the how good your goods make them.

Good advertising is a happy wedding of words and pictures, not a contest between them.

I think a smart woman can sell the average man anything.

Before you can have a share of market, you must have a share of mind.

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all.

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.