The Greatest Business Secret
“There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier and more inviting reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”
“All this is not to say that technique in unimportant. Superior technical skill will make a good man better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability.”
“Let others worship ‘the ritual’, we believe in the God of inspiration.”
“We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us. Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, good writing, can be good selling.”
—Bill Bernbach
One thing is for certain. Business is fearful of the creative ad.
Businesses spend countless hours and dollars creating a point of difference for their products and then use run of the mill advertising to convey that difference to their market.
More people will see your ads than will ever see your product. If your ad looks like all the others, your product will too.
The greatest business secret is that, through carefully crafted marketing a business can be so much more than a business. Through insightful, creative marketing it can become a piece of pop culture, a lifelong resource, a trusted friend.
That is the power of advertising. That is what we do.
