Bill Bernbach knew a thing or two about real advertising.
Creative adverting that appealed to people’s hearts as well as their heads. Clever, thoughtful, provocative advertising that moved people and advanced brands.
Bernbach railed against the numbers guys, the data guys, the suits. (Yes, they were all guys back then.)
There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game.
They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long.
They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising.
But there's one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.