Top 60 Jerry Della Femina Quotes

People don’t generally like advertising that takes a stand.

I think it’s good to have switched to a much more visual world and that people are not all that interested in words.

‘Business Week’ is guilty of very shoddy reporting.

The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco – products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn’t have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.

By 1961, when I got my first copywriting job, ‘my kind’ were suddenly in demand. The creative revolution had begun. Advertising had turned into a business dominated by young, funny, Jewish copywriters and tough, sometimes violent, Greek and Italian art directors.

I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

It goes back to all of us wanting to be in Hollywood. We’re all dying to win an Oscar.

Most account guys live with fear in their hearts.

I’m a driver, and I love it.

In the ’50s and ’60s, a family’s first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.

There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.

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.

I was the first advertising person who people could identify with.

Advertising should always be in good taste without a question.

Thank you for making me nouveau riche.

I have a small vocabulary, which I move around fast.

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.

I invented myself.

What I love about the Don Draper character is that he’s so real and filled with all these contradictions.

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.

I couldn’t get along with the French.

It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough.

The Internet is king. Newspapers are dead or dying. Magazines are shrinking every day. Ad budgets are being cut. The bottom line is now the only line in advertising.

A computer is a wonderful thing, but it’s cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.

Kids don’t know what life was like without cell phones.

Almost everything looks better from a distance, Long Island included.

No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.

Humor works, and it’s the best way to get attention without spending a lot of money.

Advertising is what I do. It’s got me everything I have, and I’m not going to leave it.

I always had more women working for me than men.

Did I grow up thinking I’d ever be paged at the Beverly Hills Hotel? Did I ever think I’d make so much money writing ads? No.

Whether you’re a mafia guy or in advertising, you always end up going back to your family.

‘Mad Men’ is celebrating a time that no longer exists.

I’m happy to pay my fair share – which is whatever the tax is right now.

Everybody makes a lot of money when the French come to town.

Once people feel comfortable with something, they say, ‘Let’s try it.’

On the weekends, some people garden; I slice salmon.

A lot of its readers are of an age where they forget to cancel.

My grandmother would start making her meat sauce at 7 in the morning on Sunday, and within five or six hours, that smell would be all through the house.

As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then automobile advertising will continue to be wretched.

Sad to say, negative advertising really works.

There’s nothing worse than winning but being told by people that you’re losing.

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.

Life was easy was back in the days before human resource departments controlled business and someone decided we all should be politically correct.

If people ever talked the way advertising sounded, they would be put away.

There’s an eternal war between a creative person and the business person.

Every automobile ad looks alike.

In my world – advertising – the Super Bowl is judgment day. If politicians have Election Day and Hollywood has the Oscars, advertising has the Super Bowl.

I’m waiting for the candidate who says, ‘I’m keeping things exactly the way they are. I like it this way.’

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.

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.

If the FBI is now in charge of bad taste, we’re all doomed.

I don’t want people ever to think I’m not in advertising. It’s such a business of enthusiasm that if you’re not totally excited about it, you should leave it.

I came into advertising in 1961. I had been turned down for jobs on the Ford account in the late Fifties as ‘not their type.’ If it hadn’t been for Bill Bernbach, I would now be sitting in some luncheonette, continuing my life as a messenger.

The object of advertising is to get people to feel better about the product you’re selling.

My first marriage ended after 24 years.

That’s great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you’d want to spend more than three hours in.

I ran for political office in the Hamptons once in a war I was having with the village. I came in, there were four people running, and I came in around third. It was over my food market – they arrested me. I just wanted to go for office because I thought it would be an interesting to do.

Imagine there wasn’t photography. Where would we be? How would I remember what I looked like as a kid? It links us all. It keeps us all together; it’s what our history is.

Once you’re not No. 1, it doesn’t matter where you are.