Businessman

I always had more women working for me than men.

There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.

I have a small vocabulary, which I move around fast.

By 1961, when I got my first copywriting job, 'my kind' were suddenly in demand. The creative revolution had begun. Advertising had turned into a business dominated by young, funny, Jewish copywriters and tough, sometimes violent, Greek and Italian art directors.

It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough.

In our quest to tweet, like, and trend, we have forgotten that brands can be built through advertising. Ads can generate big ideas that can never be trumped by tactics. That is the magic of an ad, and that is what is missing from many ads today.

My day is spent hiding from people.

I don't like to work for politicians because I hate to work on anything that you can't give back if it doesn't work. I sell products. I do a commercial for, say, Meow Mix, and you don't like it, you get your money back. You can return it. Politicians, you can't return. You're with them for four more years. And that's scary.

No kid ever graduated school and said, 'I want to go into advertising.' Advertising is almost everyone's second or third choice.

Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.

Probably the best advertising jobs of all are done by governments to convince people to go to war.

In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.

In my world - advertising - the Super Bowl is judgment day. If politicians have Election Day and Hollywood has the Oscars, advertising has the Super Bowl.

My grandmother would start making her meat sauce at 7 in the morning on Sunday, and within five or six hours, that smell would be all through the house.

No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.

People who are visiting Long Island find it's very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products.

I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising.

There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.

I have very talented art directors in my agency who start out telling me, 'Well, this is what the picture is... ' I ask, 'Well, what's the headline?' and they say, 'We haven't done that yet, but it looks this way.' But I'm still writing copy, almost every day.

Almost everything looks better from a distance, Long Island included.