Top 30 Leo Burnett Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”

— Leo Burnett

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2. “What helps people, helps business.”

— Leo Burnett

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3. “Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.”

— Leo Burnett

4. “Keep it simple. Let’s do the obvious thing -the common thing- but let’s do it uncommonly well.”

— Leo Burnett

5. “There’s no such thing as ‘hard sell’ and ‘soft sell.’ There’s only ‘smart sell’ and ‘stupid sell.’”

— Leo Burnett

6. “Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.”

— Leo Burnett

7. “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.”

— Leo Burnett

8. “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.”

— Leo Burnett

9. “Before you can have a share of market, you must have a share of mind.”

— Leo Burnett

10. “Advertising says to people, ‘Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s how to get it.’”

— Leo Burnett

11. “Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations.”

— Leo Burnett

12. “Good advertising is a happy wedding of words and pictures, not a contest between them.”

— Leo Burnett

13. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.”

— Leo Burnett

14. “I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency.”

— Leo Burnett

15. “Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.”

— Leo Burnett

16. “Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.”

— Leo Burnett

17. “We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.’”

— Leo Burnett

18. “If you can’t turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn’t be in the ad writing bsuiness at all.”

— Leo Burnett

19. “Let’s gear our advertising to sell goods, but let’s recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.”

— Leo Burnett

20. “Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.”

— Leo Burnett

21. “Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.”

— Leo Burnett

22. “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.”

— Leo Burnett

23. “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.”

— Leo Burnett

24. “A company in which anyone is afraid to speak up, to differ, to be daring and original, is closing the coffin door on itself.”

— Leo Burnett

25. “There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success.”

— Leo Burnett

26. “Too many ads that try not to go over the reader’s head end up beneath his notice.”

— Leo Burnett

27. “I am often asked how I got into the business. I didn’t. The business got into me.”

— Leo Burnett

28. “Fun without sell gets nowhere but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious.”

— Leo Burnett

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29. “A good ad which is not run never produces sales.”

— Leo Burnett

30. “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.”

— Leo Burnett

31. “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.”

— Leo Burnett

32. “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.”

— Leo Burnett

33. “Plan the sale when you plan the ad.”

— Leo Burnett

34. “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.”

— Leo Burnett