Did AI just snuff out the ghost of Bill Bernbach?
By Adam Kleinberg
I never got to meet Bill Bernbach, but the man had one hell of an impact on me. My first job in advertising was when I was recruited from an agency that mostly built websites to start the San Francisco office of Tribal DDB. They handed us a book of Bill Bernbach quotes on our first day.
I did get to meet then CEO Keith Reinhardt, a creative leader affectionately known as the two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun guy. He was carrying Bill's creative torch. Keith came to visit the San Francisco offices of DDB and lit a fire under us young creative bucks to strive to be great and heed the advice of the godfather of what was then modern advertising.
Today, Omnicom announced it is shutting down DDB. AI has killed an icon. Does that mean the art of persuasion that Mr. Bernbach championed is dead too? In a world where AI agents are already starting to shop for people by talking to other AI agents, will brand influence make a difference?
Yes. It will matter more than ever. Because the only way that your product will be selected for more than an algorithmic stew of price, features, reviews and properly structured schema vocabulary in you RDFa, Microdata and JSON-LD... the ONLY way, is if your customer tells an agent they prefer your brand.
So, how do we persuade people? Well, Mr. Bernbach told us.
“You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You've got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don't feel it, nothing will happen.”
Bill Bernbach
Bill knew that emotions changed behavior, not product features. You need people to feel what.you're saying. Every one of us sees hundreds of ads every day that go in one eyeball and out the other. Brand media is expensive. Reach and frequency cost a boatload. Investing in creativity is an insurance policy, not a luxury.
“In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.”
Bill Bernbach
When the rest of the world zigs, you've got to zag. Especially if you're a challenger brand that doesn't have the money to compete dollar-for-dollar with bigger competitors. If you say the same thing your competitors are all saying, you're essentially saying nothing.
“There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past.”
Bill Bernbach
You cannot rely on old news. You cannot look at a focus group you did three years ago and assume what you learned from it still matters today. You need to talk to customers all of the time. You need to look at the world we're living in all the time. Brands are living things. Let them breathe.
“Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.”
Bill Bernbach
It's so easy to fall into the trap of navel gazing. I have to admit, I've made this mistake quite a few times. Said another way, the brilliant Sir John Hegarty recently said "... clients don’t care about your past. They care about their future. A good pitch sells a dream, not credentials. A great one ignites imagination." As an agency leader, it's a message I try to remind myself and my team every day.
“The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.”
Bill Bernbach
Advertising gets a bad rap. Sometimes it's deserved. Some people think our job as advertisers is to spin a web of misdirection using a thread dishonesty. But the best advertising does not do that. It simply tells the truth — in a way it hasn't been told before.
“A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.”
Bill Bernbach
Mr. Bernbach understood how much power lies in the truth other people speak. Word of mouth will kick advertising's ass seven days a week. Brands live in the minds of your customers, but they are shaped by far more than ads. Having a great product is the most important pillar of your brand. In the age of AI, when the algorithm will consider reviews as part of The Robot Journey when it makes decisions, having a great product is the ultimate truth.
Bill Bernbach died in 1982. His company died in 2025. His wisdom, however, will live on as long as we keep it close.
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