 bill bernbach was the founding creative director of legendary manhattan ad agency doyle dane bernbach ddb he came out with quotes like advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science but an art and word of mouth is the best medium of all and rules are what the artist breaks the memorable never emerged from a formula thats really provocative stuff that makes you nod your head at the truth and simple power of his thinking and imagine how inspiring but uncompromising a boss he would have been what an exhilarating time to be writing bernbach not only had a way with a turn of phrase but he also really set up the structure of creative teams for marketing and advertising and was of course part of the inspiration for mad men but mostly he was a writer and what a writer he was his firm revolutionised advertising copy and laid out the early foundations for brand storytelling through engaging narrative and brand persona development we can and have all learned from these guys in the 1960s ddb took on volkswagen as a client and began creating a series of print ads that referred to the vw as a lemon and encouraged consumers to think small the copy by the incomparable julian koenig starts out saying this volkswagen missed the boat the chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished and must be replaced not exactly sales speak it was funny it was clever and it was ground breaking for the rest of the decade vw kept their unconventional campaign rolling ddbs strategy of turning seeming faults into benefits was a huge hit one ad didnt even include a picture of the little lemon no point in showing you the 1962 volkswagen it still looks the same much has been written about the ads and you can take a look at a bunch of them here if you like it was ranked the best advertising campaign of the twentieth century by ad age and it deserves the title this sort of brand bravery is rare and may be a little of its time too the truth is that the power is all right there in the copy which exists to inspire us last words to mr bernbach himself you can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen youve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut because if they dont feel it nothing will happen what is your brand really saying 