Sometimes you have to scare people to save their lives. But I’m very much against it if you’re trying to sell a product. – Jerry Della Femina
No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out. – Jerry Della Femina
It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough. – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
Probably the best advertising jobs of all are done by governments to convince people to go to war. – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
In our quest to tweet, like, and trend, we have forgotten that brands can be built through advertising. Ads can generate big ideas that can never be trumped by tactics. That is the magic of an ad, and that is what is missing from many ads today. – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
The object of advertising is to get people to feel better about the product you’re selling. – Jerry Della Femina
Most of the people in advertising now – mention Bill Bernbach to them, they don’t know. – Jerry Della Femina
I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
There’s still a place for someone to come up with a strong headline, some copy in a commercial that’s well written. I’m not saying it was better in the old days; it’s just a totally different way of communicating. – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
That’s great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you’d want to spend more than three hours in. – Jerry Della Femina
Advertising is what I do. It’s got me everything I have, and I’m not going to leave it. – Jerry Della Femina
People who are visiting Long Island find it’s very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products. – Jerry Della Femina
The Google model of targeted advertising is appealing because it claims to cut down on waste. We need to ask how that efficiency can be brought to creative process. – Jerry Della Femina
I’m waiting for the candidate who says, ‘I’m keeping things exactly the way they are. I like it this way.’ – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising. – Jerry Della Femina
Pictures bring you inside, whether you see yourself driving a new car or as a hapless prisoner who is being abused. – Jerry Della Femina
I have very talented art directors in my agency who start out telling me, ‘Well, this is what the picture is… ‘ I ask, ‘Well, what’s the headline?’ and they say, ‘We haven’t done that yet, but it looks this way.’ But I’m still writing copy, almost every day. – Jerry Della Femina
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. – Jerry Della Femina
I came from a poor family in Coney Island. I learned to write by reading the ‘Post.’ This was my education. – Jerry Della Femina
No kid ever graduated school and said, ‘I want to go into advertising.’ Advertising is almost everyone’s second or third choice. – Jerry Della Femina
