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
The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy.
TOM ROBBINS
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
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
Recent reports suggest that Clear Channel is partnering with certain mobile services to track Americans' travel patterns and consumer behavior through their phones. By compiling location and demographic data from these sources, Clear Channel intends to provide advertisers and retailers with more information about who is seeing their billboards and whether they visit a particular store after viewing the advertisement. Access to this information in turn allows advertisers and retailers to better target their audience. When done appropriately, targeted advertising may provide consumer benefits, but we must ensure that Americans' very sensitive information, including their location data, is protected.
AL FRANKEN
letter to Clear Channel CEO Scott Wells, February 29, 2016
As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world.
BRUCE BARTON
The Man Nobody Knows
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
Making advertising film is also like making a film. After all, advertising is also making small stories in a film. So I never moved out of making films, because I am a filmmaker who is making films in a different medium.
SHIVENDRA SINGH DUNGARPUR
interview, International Business Times, March 5, 2016
Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.
TED TURNER
Call Me Ted
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument, its function is to make the worse appear the better article. A confused competition of all propagandas -- those insults to human nature -- is carried on by the most expert psychological methods -- for instance, by always repeating a lie.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Atoms of Thought: An Anthology of Thoughts
Advertising is prima facie evidence that the man who pays believes that advertising is good. It has brought great results to others, it must be good for him. So he takes it like some secret tonic which others have endorsed. If the business thrives, the tonic gets the credit. Otherwise, the failure is due to fate.
CLAUDE C. HOPKINS
Scientific Advertising
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 has been about disrupting the experience of the media and inserting a message distinct from the programming. Media professionals tried their best to insert a message that would align with an audience, but the understanding of the audience was an educated guess, as best. There was inherent waste, and the message was lost on a portion of the audience. The future of advertising is one of a complementary insertion that's less disruptive, more in alignment with the needs and wants of the audience. This targeting and insertion can be accomplished through data, but the heaviest weight of the interaction relies on the creative. That's what we have to fix ASAP.
CORY TREFFILETTI
"A Less-Disruptive Advertising Future", Online SPIN, February 17, 2016
A mistake most civilians make about advertising is that they think it is a writing profession. Wrong! Even for copywriters, it is an idea profession. This is why Ivy honors grads fail and fail again at ad careers. They end up writing overthought and overwrought 27-word headline ads that make sense only to them. Stick to blogging jobs, lit majors.
MARK DUFFY
"Copyranter: The one secret to all great advertising, revealed", Digiday, February 26, 2016
The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.
DAVID OGILVY
Confessions of an Advertising Man
The art of advertisement ... has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
"Promise as an Institution", The Doom of Youth
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
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"
What were habitually his final meditations? Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
We read advertisements to discover and enlarge our desires.
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
attributed, X-Rated: The Power of Mythic Symbolism in Popular Culture
The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.
BILL COSBY
attributed, How to be an Entrepreneur and Keep Your Sanity