Success Quote by William Bernbach

Bernbach is taking a quiet shot at the comforting fantasy that persuasion is just information delivered cleanly. “Say the right thing” sounds like the rationalist dream of marketing: list the features, prove the value, let logic do its work. He dismisses it in one clause. In a crowded media environment, correctness is table stakes; attention isn’t granted to accuracy, it’s won by impact.

The key move is the shift from “listen” to “feel.” Bernbach isn’t arguing for dishonesty so much as for translation: turning product truth into human truth. “In their gut” is a deliberately unglamorous body metaphor that drags advertising out of the boardroom and into the nervous system, where decisions actually get made. It’s also a warning. If you’re relying on people to behave like judges evaluating evidence, you’re already losing to competitors who understand emotion as the real distribution channel.

Context matters: Bernbach helped pioneer the creative revolution in mid-century advertising, when the old hard-sell, repetitive claims started to look tone-deaf in a more sophisticated, media-literate culture. His line anticipates today’s feed-based attention economy, where “right” is cheap and “felt” is scarce. The subtext is blunt: action is the only metric that counts. If your message doesn’t create a visceral jolt - desire, relief, recognition, even a laugh - it’s not communication, it’s paperwork.