‘Most good copywriters’, says William Maynard of the Bates agency, ‘fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end.’ If you are both killer and poet, you get rich.

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? You can do homework from now until doomsday, but you will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

When you put your headline in quotes, you increase recall by an average of 28 per cent.

there are no dull products, only dull writers.

When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.

At the start of your career in advertising, what you learn is more important than what you earn.

They are tasting images.