Leo Burnett Quotes & Sayings

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. — Leo Burnett

Plan the sale when you plan the ad. — Leo Burnett

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

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

Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable. — Leo Burnett

A good ad which is not run never produces sales. — Leo Burnett

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. — Leo Burnett

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. — Leo Burnett

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

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'. — Leo Burnett

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

Don't tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it. — Leo Burnett

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

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

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

What helps people, helps business. — Leo Burnett

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

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. — Leo Burnett

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

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. — Leo Burnett

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

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. — Leo Burnett

Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash. — Leo Burnett

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

We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.' — Leo Burnett

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

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

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

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. — Leo Burnett

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief. — Leo Burnett

Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations. — Leo Burnett

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

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

Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility. — Leo Burnett

There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success. — Leo Burnett

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

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

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. — Leo Burnett

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

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. — Leo Burnett

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

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

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

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. — Leo Burnett

Fun without sell gets nowhere but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious. — Leo Burnett

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

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read. — Leo Burnett