Leo Burnett

“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 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.”

“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.”

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

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

“What helps people, helps business.”

“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 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.”

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

“Plan the sale when you plan the ad.”

“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.”

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

“Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.”

“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.”

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