Leo Burnett was an advertising legend and the founder of Leo Burnett Company, Inc. His name found a place in Time Magazines’ list of 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Despite not being around for over 47 years, Leo Burnett still lives through his ideologies, his work and through his very own company.
Here are 25 quotes by Leo Burnett which will give you an insight into how great an advertiser he was.
- “Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.” — 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 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
- “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
- “Let’s gear our advertising to sell goods, but let’s recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.” — 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
- “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.” — 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
- “To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is to swear off having ideas.” — Leo Burnett
- “I regard a great ad as the most beautiful thing in the world.” — 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
- “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
- “If you can’t turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn’t be in the ad writing business at all.” — 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
- “Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.” — 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
- “The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.” — Leo Burnett
- “Plan the sale when you plan the ad.” — 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
- “Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret… to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.” — Leo Burnett
- “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” — 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
- “There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.” — 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
- “There’s no such thing as ‘hard sell’ and ‘soft sell.’ There’s only ‘smart sell’ and ‘stupid sell.'” — Leo Burnett
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