Jerry Della Femina Quotes

Thank you for making me nouveau riche.

I'm hard-nosed about luck...If you're persistent in trying and doing and working, you almost always make your own fortune.

Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.

Sometimes, the advertising is better than the product. Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. Everyone tries the thing and never buys it again.

There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.

I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

The Creative Revolution is over. Everybody is justholding onto their jobs and no one is ever going to say toa client... ‘Buy this or I’ll resign your account.’ You don’tdo it anymore. It’s now, the majority of the time... ‘How do you like it? When can I change it for you?’

That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in.

Everybody sat around thinking about Panasonic, the Japanese electronics account. Finally I decided, what the hell, I'll throw a line to loosen them up. 'The headline is, the headline is: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.'

Because I'm in advertising, not electricity!

Marketers are making retirement respectable. Instead of being the beginning of the end, it sounds like Nirvana-do what you want without any responsibilities. The boomers think that they're 16. Marketers try to keep the charade going. Retirement will look so good, others are going to be jealous.

It goes back to all of us wanting to be in Hollywood. We're all dying to win an Oscar.

I'm hard-nosed about luck. I think it sucks. Yeah, if you spend seven years looking for a job as a copywriter, and then one day somebody gives you a job, you can say, Gee, I was lucky I happened to go up there today. But, dammit, I was going to go up there sooner or later in the next seventy years. If you're persistent in trying and doing and working, you almost make your own fortune.

I learned much from my father just by watching his example. If I saw him hold a door open for someone, I learned to do the same. Kids always observe their parents and I always watched my daddy.