quotations about advertising
What we used to call advertising is evolving into something far more personal and ubiquitous. You may not like it, but you'd better be ready for it.
CHUCK PORTER
attributed, Beyond Advertising: Creating Value Through All Customer Touchpoints
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
What history shows though is that if advertising is relevant and respectful consumers will accept it. They recognize that content is not free and a fair value exchange is in everyone's interests. The million (billion?) dollar question is whether this will happen before the constantly empty food bowl of irrelevant ads has conditioned the audience to tune them out entirely.
DEREK HARDING
"Ad Blocking Is A Symptom, Not The Disease", Media Daily News, March 2, 2016
It's pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
Raymond Chandler Speaking
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
JOHN LAHR
The Guardian, Aug. 1989
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"
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.
GEORGE ORWELL
Why I Write
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
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
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
The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy.
TOM ROBBINS
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
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
Although contemporary advertising is relatively young, it already has a considerable tradition. Each new ad is encountered against a background of thousands of earlier ads.
GUY W. D. COOK
The Discourse of Advertising
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
Good, careful advertising of the steady, never-let-up sort will positively win. It isn't the fisherman who goes thrashing along and fishes the whole length of a stream in an afternoon that gets the fish. It's the quiet chap who finds a likely looking hole and camps out right by it until he gets his fish and then tries another in the same careful way. More than that, this careful fisherman does not get discouraged because Mr. Fish fails to snap up the hook at the first cast. He tries the bait and he tries the flies, and he changes his lure and his point of view until he hits it right. If the business doesn't respond to the advertising, change the advertising. Don't lay it up to the public that your bait doesn't tempt them.
FRANK FARRINGTON
The Spatula, May, 1909
Advertising is utterly unprofitable, and I could prove it to you in one week. End an ad with an offer to pay five dollars to anyone who writes you that he read the ad through. The scarcity of replies will amaze you.
CLAUDE C. HOPKINS
Scientific Advertising
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
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
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