Success Quote by William Bernbach

In Bernbach's world, logic is the baseline, not the lever. The line lands like a quiet rebuke to an entire strain of corporate self-flattery: the belief that if you can justify something on a spreadsheet, the public will politely comply. Advertising, he implies, is where rationality goes to get humbled by human beings.

The specific intent is practical, almost managerial: stop mistaking internal coherence for external persuasion. A pitch can be airtight and still dead on arrival because people aren't arguing in seminar rooms; they're shopping distracted, defensive, status-aware, half-bored. "Makes logical sense" is also a jab at the committee mindset that confuses safety with effectiveness. If no one can object, it must be good. Bernbach knew "no one can object" often translates to "no one will care."

The subtext is a theory of motivation. Consumers don't buy conclusions; they buy stories about themselves. Logic tells you why a product should be chosen. Emotion tells you what choosing it says about you. Bernbach's genius at Doyle Dane Bernbach was to make ads that felt like culture rather than instruction manuals: smart, self-aware, human. Think of campaigns like Volkswagen's "Think Small", where the argument is rational but the persuasion is tonal - humility, wit, anti-bullshit candor.

Context matters: mid-century America was drowning in product parity and postwar conformity, when "reason-why" copy and market research promised certainty. Bernbach's warning is that certainty is often the enemy of resonance. The mind can be convinced; the gut has to be moved.