Leo Burnett Quotations

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.

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.

When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.

Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.

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.

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.

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

Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'

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.

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

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.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.

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'.

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing bsuiness at all.

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

Too many ads that try not to go over the reader's head end up beneath his notice.

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.

The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.

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.

A good ad which is not run never produces sales.

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.

Plan the sale when you plan the ad

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.

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.

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won't.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is to swear off having ideas.

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.

I planned from about the time I was in my late 20s that I wanted to be retired from working for someone else by the time I was 50,

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations.

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

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

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.

I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency

A company in which anyone is afraid to speak up, to differ, to be daring and original, is closing the coffin door on itself.

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.

Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.

Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.

What helps people, helps business.