We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support, not for illumination.

Most agencies run scared, most of the time. . . .Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising. . . . If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.

Headlines can be strengthend by the inclusion of emotional words like darling, love, fear, proud, friend and baby.

The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response; they have never tasted blood

As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?

The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising

...consumers do not buy one brand of soap, or coffee, or detergent. They have a repertory of four or five brands, and move from one to another. They almost never buy a brand which has not been admitted to their repertory during its first year on the market.