Leo Burnett Quotes

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.

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 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.'

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

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.

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

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

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'.

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

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.

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

A good ad which is not run never produces sales.

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

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

Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Plan the sale when you plan the ad

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.

I have learned that you can’t have good advertising without a good client, that you can’t keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy better advertising than he understands or has an appetite for.

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

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

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

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

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

The most dangerous thing that can happen to us, I think, is to permit a feeling to develop that any client is a problem. I have always taken the attitude that no account is a 'problem account' but that all accounts have important problems attached to them - that you can waste more time and burn up more nervous energy by fighting a problem than by taking a positive attitude and solving it. It sure gives you a nice, warm glow when you do.

Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide.