There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there's one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.

Never do anything yourself that you can hire someone else to do, especially if they can do it better.

It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.

It's not just what you say that stirs people. It's the way that you say it.

Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.

You have to live with your product, you have to know it through and through, you have to look at it, understand it, love it then, and only then, you can crystallize in one clear thought, one single theme, what must be conveyed about the product to the consumer.