quotations about advertising
The weakest link in any advertising program is its credibility. An advertising message has little believability with the average person. Advertising is taken for what it is--a biased message paid for by a company with a selfish interest in what the consumer consumes.
AL RIES & LAURA RIES
The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR
Judicious advertising is the corner stone of success.
BYRON W. ORR
The Clothier and Furnisher, Jan. 1890
Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.
TED TURNER
Call Me Ted
Google never did any advertising. They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.
PAUL GRAHAM
"How to Start a Startup"
Good advertising is advertising that gets the money.
JULIUS SCHNEIDER
attributed, The Advertising Age
Advertising is not a rifle; it is a shotgun, and any campaign featuring outdoor boards of a cartoon animal inevitably will catch children in its spray.
BOB GARFIELD
attributed, Deadly Persuasion
Advertising is the best insurance that you can take out on your business. You can buy fire insurance on your stock of goods, but no company will issue a policy covering your business, the good will as they sometimes call it. You must insure yourself, and the best way to do it is by advertising. Good advertising kept up for a number of years gives you something that no fire can take away.
FRANK FARRINGTON
The Spatula, May, 1909
The fact is that much of advertising's power comes from this belief that advertising does not affect us. The most effective kind of propaganda is that which is not recognized as propaganda. Because we think advertising is silly and trivial, we are less on guard, less critical, than we might otherwise be. It's all in fun, it's ridiculous. While we're laughing, sometimes sneering, the commercial does its work.
JEAN KILBOURNE
Can't Buy My Love
I gave someone a perverse argument not so long ago about why advertising is better than movies. You want to hear it? Movies operate from a really disingenuous premise, that people are heroes. I know a lot of people and have had an opportunity over the years to observe them. Are they heroes...? Let's put it this way. Advertising tries something simpler and more believable: Products as heroes. I guess the idea is: When all else fails, put your faith in conditioner.
ERROL MORRIS
Boards Magazine, Aug. 1, 2000
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
The Perfect Salesman
Advertising is no longer preoccupied with the staging of the commodity. Instead advertising is the prefiguration of the commodity's empty form.
PAMELA ODIH
Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times
Much brass has been sounded and many cymbals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
The Man Nobody Knows
Advertising is salesmanship-in-print.
CLAUDE C. HOPKINS
My Life in Advertising
Many nations of consumers talk and live like ads. Advertising is not just a mirror but also a perceptioncreator. It makes and moulds generations of attitudes.
HARISH BIJOOR
"In Indian advertising, diversity is reduced to cultural stereotypes", Economic Times, February 17, 2016
There are huge advertising budgets only when there's no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.
CARL SAGAN
Contact
Ads push the principle of noise all the way to the plateau of persuasion. They are quite in accord with the procedures of brainwashing.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
Understanding Media
Advertising is the genie which is transforming America into a place of comfort, luxury and ease for millions. Advertising is the Archimedean lever that is moving the world. If things were done in another and elder age that advertising is doing now, a whole mythology would gather about it, and we should witness the birth of a young God--powerful, restless, indomitable and wise, dominating. He would flash in the sylvan glades of the want advertisements and disport himself in the sunny whiteness of the department stores' wide spaces. But what a god he would be! How beneficent, how omnipresent, how powerful!
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
attributed, New York Magazine, Jun. 10, 1968
The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.
DAVID OGILVY
Confessions of an Advertising Man
I had never thought of advertising as a life work, though I had on the side, written some very successful copy.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
attributed, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators
As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world.
BRUCE BARTON
The Man Nobody Knows