The Marketing Bureau

Copywriting. The ninth in a series of collections of useable quotations to make you look really smart in your next presentation or report. 

 

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

Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, p. 27.

 

"If you are writing about baloney, don't try to make it Cornish hen, because that is the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darned good baloney."

Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, p. 23.

 

"I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one."

Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, p. 53.

 

"I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes . . . ."

Philip Dusenberry, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 56.

 

"I think central to good writing of advertising, or anything else, is a person who has developed an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them. I think that that develops more sharply when the writer has not had an easy adjustment to living. So that they have themselves felt the need for understanding, the need for sympathy, and can therefore see that need in other people."

George Gribbin, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 51.

 

"A writer should be joyous, an optimist . . . Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer."

George Gribbin, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 48.

 

"I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement . . . . It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public."

Aldous Huxley (1923), British author, quoted in Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 18.

 

"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."

Louis Kronenberger (1954), quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, The International Thesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, p. 18.

 

"Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?"

David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 78.

 

"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."

David Ogilvy, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 93.

 

"Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better able to write."

David Ogilvy, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 70.

 

"You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that's what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don't yet understand."

Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 125.

 

"No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter . . . can write with the kids. That he's as creative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His ad may not be quite as fresh and glowing as the Madison Ave. fraternity would like to see it be, and yet he might write an ad that will produce five times the sales. And that's the name of the game, isn't it?"

Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 111.

 

"I suspect that there is no other single profession that does more to contribute to our annoying linguistic convolutions than advertising, unless it's politics."

Jef Richards (1997), advertising professor, The University of Texas at Austin.

 

"The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain words exactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to an acquaintance."

George P. Rowell, quoted in Advertiser's Gazette, (July 1870), vol. 4, p. 175.

 

Copywriting. The 42nd in a series of collections of useable quotations to make you look really smart in your next presentation or report.  

“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” David Ogilvy   “It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money…” David Ogilvy   “He hasn’t a chance. Because if the headline is poor, the copy will not be read. And copy that is not read does not sell goods.” John Caples   “On the other hand, if the headline is a good one, it is a relatively simple matter to write the copy.” John Caples   “For, obviously, it is the headline that gets people into the copy; the copy doesn’t get them into the headline. In other words, the copywriter’s aim in life should be to try to make it harder for people to pass up his advertisement than to read it. And right in his headline he takes the first, and truly giant, step on the road to that goal.” Vic Schwab    “Advertising says to people, ‘Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s how to get it.” Leo Burnett    “Forget words like ‘hard sell’ and ‘soft sell.’ That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you’re saying it like it’s never been said before.” William Bernbach    “A copywriter should have ‘an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them.” George Gribbin   “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.” David Ogilvy    “The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.” Leo Burnett    “Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline – exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?” David Ogilvy    “A writer should be joyous, an optimist . . . Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer.” George Gribbin “No, I don’t think a 68-year-old copywriter . . . can write with the kids.. But he may be a better surgeon.” Rosser Reeves   "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Blaise Pascal    "A writer should be joyous, an optimist . . . Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer." George Gribbin    "A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." David Ogilvy   "If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative." David Ogilvy   "The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.'  Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising." David Ogilvy   "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." David Ogilvy   "Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving." David Ogilvy