Success Quote by William Bernbach

Bernbach’s line lands like a quiet rebuke to an industry addicted to volume. It’s not just anti-metrics; it’s anti-copium for anyone who thinks sheer frequency can substitute for persuasion. “Nobody counts” is deliberately blunt, almost taunting: the audience is not your spreadsheet. People don’t experience advertising as a ledger of exposures. They experience it as a mood, a story, a small social signal about what kind of world your brand claims to belong to.

The key word is “impression,” which does double duty. It’s what’s left in the mind after the ad is gone, and it’s also the social performance a brand makes: taste, wit, confidence, credibility. Bernbach is smuggling an argument about respect. Treat people like targets and you get the psychological equivalent of banner blindness; treat them like intelligent participants and you earn attention that lingers. The subtext is a warning about creative cowardice: if you’re counting ads, you’re probably compensating for work that isn’t distinctive enough to travel on its own.

Context matters. Bernbach helped define the mid-century “creative revolution” (Volkswagen’s Think Small, Avis’s We Try Harder), pushing against the era’s loud, formulaic hard-sell. His point anticipates today’s performance-marketing treadmill, where brands can mistake “more” for “working.” He’s arguing that advertising is closer to culture than to logistics: what survives isn’t the media plan; it’s the feeling, the voice, the single sharp idea people can’t quite shake.