The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. - David Ogilvy

I have found that it is easier to double the selling power of a commercial than to double the audience of a program. This may come as news to Hollywood hidalgos who produce programs and look down their noses at us obscure copywriters who write the commercials.

Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him.

Says John Updike, ‘Serifs exist for a purpose. They help the eye pick up the shape of the letter. Piquant in little amounts, sanserif in page-size sheets repels readership as wax paper repels water; it has a sleazy, cloudy look.