85 Quotes by George Lois

Doyle Dane Bernbach was a great, great agency when I got there. There was an arrogance that everyone had, but it was a closed club. I was a guy who worked a little differently. Edgier. More punch-in-the-mouth.

These days, no celebrity on a magazine cover, including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, or Leonardo DiCaprio, could possibly match the visual punch of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, grinning boy, goofily peeking out at us on the newsstand.

Sometimes all the 'marketing' insight in the world can't move a client, but the creation of a truly great brand name can become a billion-dollar idea!

Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor.

Everybody is so busy talking about 'Twittering' and talking about the new technologies and talking about this and that, but they don't talk about creativity.

If somebody says to you, 'MTV,' you think of Mick Jagger on a phone screaming at that phone: 'I want my MTV.' That, to me, was always the epitome of great advertising.

I had a fistfight with every kid on my block. I got about fifteen broken noses to prove it. Part of it was also because I was always drawing, and I always had an artist portfolio with me. But I was a tough kid. I won their respect.

Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.

You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after.