Lessons about advertising & marketing

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

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

We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in & be what people are interested in.

Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.

Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.

The only people who care about advertising are the people who work in advertising.

By definition, remarkable things get remarked upon.

Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.

In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.

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.

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

If dogs don’t like your dog food, the packaging doesn’t matter.

Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers.

Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

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

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it well enough yourself.

If you want to understand how a lion hunts, don’t go to the zoo. Go to the jungle.

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

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

Creativity may well be the last legal unfair competitive advantage we can take to run over the competition.

Creativity without strategy is called art, creative with strategy is called advertising.

An idea can turn to magic or dust, depending on the talent that rubs against it.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.

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 language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

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

People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.

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.

People spend money when and where they feel good.

Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.