Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett (October 21, 1891 – June 7, 1971) was an advertising executive famous for creating such icons as the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, Toucan Sam, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the 7up "Spot", and Tony the Tiger.

Sourced

• 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'.
  • As quoted in Street-Smart Advertising : How to Win the Battle of the Buzz (2006) by Margo Berman, p. 95

Communications of an Advertising Man (1961)

Communications of an Advertising Man : Selections from the Speeches, Articles, Memoranda, and Miscellaneous Writings of Leo Burnett (1961)

• Fun without sell gets nowhere, but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious.

• 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.
  • p. 81

Leo Burnett Worldwide

Quotes from LeoBurnett.com

• You have come to a place which doesn't tolerate anything but the best. You have come to a place where you can be heard. You have come to a place where you can grow.

• 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.
  • Quote 38

• Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.
  • Quote 65

• Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative confragrations.
  • Quote 93

• I am often asked how I got into the business. I didn't. The business got into me.
  • Quote 100

Unsourced

• A good ad which is not run never produces sales.
• You have to have the share of mind, before you have the share of business.
• Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.
• Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'
• 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.
• Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
• Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
• 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.
• I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• I regard a great ad as the most beautiful thing in the world.
• If you are writing about baloney, don't try to make it Cornish hen, because that is the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darned good baloney.
• If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all.
• 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.
• Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.
• Plan the sale when you plan the ad.
• Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.
• Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.
• The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.
• 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.
• The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders.
• 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.
• To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.
• Too many ads that try not to go over the reader's head end up beneath his notice.
• We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'
• What helps people, helps business.
• When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.
• 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.