quotations about 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 is immodesty turned to profit.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
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
Good advertising is advertising that gets the money.
JULIUS SCHNEIDER
attributed, The Advertising Age
As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world.
BRUCE BARTON
The Man Nobody Knows
Advertising is of the very essence of democracy. An election goes on every minute of the business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shops where the customers state their preferences and determine which manufacturer and which product shall be the leader today, and which shall lead tomorrow.
BRUCE BARTON
attributed, Advertising in America
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
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
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
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
JOHN LAHR
The Guardian, Aug. 1989
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
When advertising is great advertising, it fastens on the myths, signs, and symbols of our common experience and becomes, quite literally, a benefit of the product.... As a result of great advertising, food tastes better, clothes feel snugger, cars ride smoother. The stuff of semiotics becomes the magic of advertising.
CURT SUPLEE
attributed, Persuasion: Reception and Responsibility
Advertisers like to tell parents that they can always turn off the TV to protect their kids from any of the negative impact of advertising. This is like telling us that we can protect our children from air pollution by making sure they never breathe. Advertising is our environment. We swim in it as fish swim in water. We cannot escape it. Unless, of course, we keep our children home from school and blindfold them whenever they are outside of the house. And never let them play with other children. Even then, advertising's messages are inside our intimate relationships, our homes, our hearts, our heads.
JEAN KILBOURNE
Can't Buy My Love
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
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 may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
The Perfect Salesman
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
The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy.
TOM ROBBINS
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Advertising is salesmanship-in-print.
CLAUDE C. HOPKINS
My Life in Advertising