I've never met a client who wants to be the worst.
— Jerry Della Femina
The whole idea of a spokesman is a joke and a fraud if you drop someone like a hot potato if there's controversy.
Everybody makes a lot of money when the French come to town.
The bad guys always fight dirty, and the good guys always fight clean.
Humor works, and it's the best way to get attention without spending a lot of money.
My day is spent hiding from people.
The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.
There's something that goes on in a new-business meeting that's wonderful to watch. It's like showtime. There are people who are nervous, and there are people who are jittery, and there's so much drama and so much at stake.
If you look at 'Mad Men,' it's set in the wrong decade. The style of Mad Men is really the 1950s, not the 1960s.
Every automobile ad looks alike.
If people ever talked the way advertising sounded, they would be put away.
I ran for political office in the Hamptons once in a war I was having with the village. I came in, there were four people running, and I came in around third. It was over my food market - they arrested me. I just wanted to go for office because I thought it would be an interesting to do.
I don't like to work for politicians because I hate to work on anything that you can't give back if it doesn't work. I sell products. I do a commercial for, say, Meow Mix, and you don't like it, you get your money back. You can return it. Politicians, you can't return. You're with them for four more years. And that's scary.
In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.
I was the first advertising person who people could identify with.
A lot of its readers are of an age where they forget to cancel.
I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.
I think people are getting bored of parties, and hosts are terrified nobody's going to show up. So they have to start entertaining them before the party even starts.
I'm waiting for the candidate who says, 'I'm keeping things exactly the way they are. I like it this way.'
Pictures bring you inside, whether you see yourself driving a new car or as a hapless prisoner who is being abused.
I am a temporary amusement.
Kids don't know what life was like without cell phones.
Sad to say, negative advertising really works.
I gotta be involved. I still write ads; I still run around and rally the creative people.
The object of advertising is to get people to feel better about the product you're selling.
As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then automobile advertising will continue to be wretched.
Probably the best advertising jobs of all are done by governments to convince people to go to war.
I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'm a great believer that you can't have too conservative a President nor too liberal a Supreme Court. So I'm a walking contradiction. I believe that you should try to really protect people's rights in every way, and also, people should be allowed to do what they do.
I don't want people ever to think I'm not in advertising. It's such a business of enthusiasm that if you're not totally excited about it, you should leave it.
Life was easy was back in the days before human resource departments controlled business and someone decided we all should be politically correct.
I came from a poor family in Coney Island. I learned to write by reading the 'Post.' This was my education.
It goes back to all of us wanting to be in Hollywood. We're all dying to win an Oscar.
There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.
I've seen very few Hispanics and blacks who have been able to work their way into the advertising end of business.
The French are simply incapable of telling the truth.
No kid ever graduated school and said, 'I want to go into advertising.' Advertising is almost everyone's second or third choice.
Nobody can write a good 30-second commercial.
Most of the people in advertising now - mention Bill Bernbach to them, they don't know.
Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.
Husbands and wives fight, and when the wife is packing up, the husband says, 'Don't leave! I'm gonna change!' Marriages stay together because people promise to change.
Let's face it: in advertising, you are paid more, but you die younger. It's not very forgiving. Like sports stars, you're in it during your better years, and then you're out looking for work.
Once you're not No. 1, it doesn't matter where you are.
Once people feel comfortable with something, they say, 'Let's try it.'
Advertising should always be in good taste without a question.
Advertising is what I do. It's got me everything I have, and I'm not going to leave it.
Did I grow up thinking I'd ever be paged at the Beverly Hills Hotel? Did I ever think I'd make so much money writing ads? No.
I came into advertising in 1961. I had been turned down for jobs on the Ford account in the late Fifties as 'not their type.' If it hadn't been for Bill Bernbach, I would now be sitting in some luncheonette, continuing my life as a messenger.
That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in.
Thank you for making me nouveau riche.
