Quotes and Sayings about Advertising
"The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people."
- James Randolph Adams
(Related: People, Advertising, Trouble)
"Millions of dollars' worth of advertising shows such little respect for the reader's intelligence that it amounts almost to outright insult."
- James Randolph Adams
(Related: Intelligence, Advertising, Insult, Respect, Worth)
"If advertising had a little more respect for the public, the public would have a lot more respect for advertising."
- James Randolph Adams
(Related: Advertising, Public, Respect)
"Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome by the beauty of the picture - and forget that merchandise must be sold."
- James Randolph Adams
(Related: Beauty, Men, Advertising, Forget)
"Advertising men and politicians are dangerous if they are separated. Together they are diabolical."
- Phillip Adams
(Related: Men, Advertising, Politicians)
"The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference."
- Fred Allen
(Related: Advertising, Vice)
"The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed."
- Fred Allen
(Related: Men, Advertising, Space, World)
"An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission."
- Fred Allen
(Related: Advertising, Confusion)
"And it's interesting, when you look at the predictions made during the peak of the boom in the 1990s, about e-commerce, or internet traffic, or broadband adoption, or internet advertising, they were all right - they were just wrong in time."
- Chris Anderson
(Related: Time, Adoption, Advertising, Internet, Right, Wrong)
"There are always protests, whether you do something good or bad. Even if you do something beneficial, people say you do it because it's advertising."
- Giorgio Armani
(Related: People, Advertising)
"It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics."
- Isaac Asimov
(Related: Business, Advertising)
"In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie."
- Richard Attenborough
(Related: Movies, Advertising, Promotion, Words)
"Obama was 200 percent advertising. I promote myself to sell my brands. Because now I am a kind of celeb. I am in a different world than the fashion industry. I am with Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Madonna. I build me as a celebrity."
- Christian Audigier
(Related: Advertising, Celebrity, Fashion, Now, World)
"Just advertising departments with legs and high heels."
- Richard Avedon
(Related: Advertising)
"Extension work is not exhortation. Nor is it exploitation of the people, or advertising of an institution, or publicity work for securing students. It is a plain, earnest, and continuous effort to meet the needs of the people on their own farms and in the localities."
- Liberty Hyde Bailey
(Related: Work, People, Advertising, Effort, Exploitation, Needs, Publicity, Students)
"The vast majority of Americans agree with us. We're doing everything that we can. We're advertising, right now we're on television with an advertisement running in the Washington area. We've got newspaper ads."
- Michael D. Barnes
(Related: Advertising, Americans, Majority, Now, Right, Running, Television, Washington)
"Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved - commitment to a scenario."
- Jean Baudrillard
(Related: Advertising, Commitment, Credibility, Effect, Giving, Today)
"The most powerful element in advertising is the truth."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Truth, Advertising)
"Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Advertising, Style, Today, Tomorrow)
"In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Advertising)
"If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Advertising)
"I warn you against believing that advertising is a science."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Science, Advertising)
"Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Advertising, Forget, Saying, Will, Words)
"Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Art, Science, Advertising, Persuasion)
"Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it."
- William Bernbach
(Related: Advertising)
"In my opinion, fun is what makes advertising successful."
- Leo Bogart
(Related: Successful, Advertising, Fun, Opinion)
"The Great Idea in advertising is far more than the sum of the recognition scores, the ratings and all the other superficial indicators of its success; it is in the realm of myth, to which measurements cannot apply."
- Leo Bogart
(Related: Success, Idea, Advertising, Myth)
"It is the growth of advertising in this country which, more than any single element, has brought the American magazine to its present enviable position in points of literary, illustrative and mechanical excellence."
- Edward Bok
(Related: Growth, Advertising, American, Country, Excellence, Literary, Present)
"The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century."
- Daniel J. Boorstin
(Related: Power, Advertising, Force, Literature, Word)
"It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house."
- Warren E. Burger
(Related: Legal, Advertising, Advice, First, Visit, Will)
"The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its 'product' cannot be turned out on an assembly line."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Dreams, Work, Advertising, Deals, Needs)
"Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Dishonesty)
"The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Nothing, Opinion)
"The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Creation, Originality, Relationships, Words)
"There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Success, Advertising)
"The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Creation, Relationships, Words)
"Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate and pretty low estimate of people - and he won't do very well in advertising."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: People, Advertising, Pretty)
"The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Business, Purpose, Advertising, Service)
"A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin'."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Idea, Selling, Advertising, Today)
"Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'"
- Leo Burnett
(Related: People, Advertising, Will)
"I have learned that you can't have good advertising without a good client, that you can't keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy better advertising than he understands or has an appetite for."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Appetite, Will)
"I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Death, People, Advertising, Misleading)
"Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Business, Heart, Ability, Advertising, Sense)
"Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Belief, Advertising, Information, Mind, Public)
"I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Speech)
"I have learned that trying to guess what the boss or the client wants is the most debilitating of all influences in the creation of good advertising."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Boss, Advertising, Creation, Trying)
"I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Advertising, Pretty, Years)
"I'm always prepared for the worst. I was prepared to have the book come out, sell seven copies, and have to keep working in advertising, so it was just great that it was received so well and by such a huge audience."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Advertising)
"But in terms of the code by which we go to market - it's not telling kids to supersize, we're not selling them, generally, products, in the advertising we do to them."
- Jim Cantalupo
(Related: Selling, Advertising, Kids)
"Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency."
- Raymond Chandler
(Related: Intelligence, Advertising, Chess, Waste)
"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency."
- Raymond Chandler
(Related: Intelligence, Advertising, Chess, Waste)
"It is 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
(Related: Advertising, Country, Mind, Obvious, Pretty)
"Sanely applied advertising could remake the world."
- Stuart Chase
(Related: Advertising, World)
"The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague."
- Stuart Chase
(Related: Advertising, First, Law, Promise)
"Advertising is the very essence of democracy."
- Anton Chekhov
(Related: Advertising, Democracy)
"Outside of advertising, the person who's influenced me most is quite possibly Frank Gehry."
- Jay Chiat
(Related: Advertising)
"I can't say the advertising model is obsolete yet but it doesn't make a lot of sense in the long range."
- Jay Chiat
(Related: Advertising, Sense)
"But I think technology advertising will have to stop addressing how products are made and concentrate more on what a product will do for the consumer."
- Jay Chiat
(Related: Technology, Advertising, Will)
"Advertising ought to work by telling you what it is you want to tell, you should understand what you want us to do, what you want us to think, where you want us to shop."
- Jay Chiat
(Related: Work, Advertising, Want)
"I'm not in the advertising business, but I think it would be very nice if people went to see the film Hamlet, because it was made with love and integrity."
- Julie Christie
(Related: Love, Business, People, Advertising, Film, Integrity)
"The only prejudice I've found anywhere in TV is in some advertising agencies, and there isn't so much prejudice as just fear."
- Nat King Cole
(Related: Fear, Advertising, Prejudice)
"A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising."
- James Collins
(Related: People, Advertising)
"There is no such thing as a Mass Mind. The Mass Audience is made up of individuals, and good advertising is written always from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions it rarely moves anyone."
- Fairfax Cone
(Related: Advertising, Mind)
"Advertising is what you do when you can't go see somebody. That's all it is."
- Fairfax Cone
(Related: Advertising)
"Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Advertising)
"Advertising is the life of trade."
- Calvin Coolidge
(Related: Life, Advertising, Trade)
"Mass demand has been created almost entirely through the development of advertising."
- Calvin Coolidge
(Related: Development, Advertising)
"The first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise... and cultivate the delightfully vague."
- John C. Crosby
(Related: Advertising, First, Law, Promise)
"When I first started writing, I was in advertising at the time, I was doing most of my writing on weekends. I had studied most of the other series heroes and I figured it would be fun for mine to be different and put him in and around water. So I dreamed up Dirk Pitt."
- Clive Cussler
(Related: Time, Advertising, First, Fun, Heroes, Water, Writing)
"I promised to have no partisan affiliation and no subsidy except advertising."
- Benjamin Henry Day
(Related: Advertising)
"Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that's balls - evil. But obviously that's your livelihood."
- Robin Day
(Related: Idea, Advertising, Evil)
"Television is more of a business. You can't take as many risks, because there's so many channels now, and the advertising's dropping."
- Dana Delany
(Related: Business, Advertising, Now, Television)
"If you had the opportunity and some talent, there was no way you couldn't progress, because it was an open market. There was the advertising world, and there was the documentary world."
- Richard Donner
(Related: Talent, Opportunity, Progress, Advertising, Open, World)
"A lot of kids do not know my club exists yet. I did not do any big advertising, and that's what I might do in the next two or three weeks, put something in the paper."
- Thomas Dooley
(Related: Advertising, Kids)
"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertising."
- Norman Douglas
(Related: Advertising, Ideals, Nation)
"'Be comfortable with who you are', reads the headline on the Hush Puppies poster. Are they mad? If people were comfortable with who they were, they'd never buy any products except the ones they needed, and then where would the advertising industry be?"
- Charles Edwards
(Related: People, Advertising)
"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be."
- William Feather
(Related: Men, Advertising, Man, Observation, Old, Philosophy)
"Censorship is advertising paid by the government."
- Federico Fellini
(Related: Government, Advertising, Censorship)
"I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on."
- Jerry Della Femina
(Related: Advertising, Clothes, Fun)
"There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster."
- Jerry Della Femina
(Related: Business, Advertising, Will)
"That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in."
- Jerry Della Femina
(Related: Advertising, Chicago, Want)
"Studies indicate that these children are more susceptible to advertising and even less likely to understand the purpose of this advertising."
- Bob Filner
(Related: Purpose, Advertising, Children)
"Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Related: Movies, Business, Advertising, Humanity)
"We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion."
- Zelda Fitzgerald
(Related: Dreams, Advertising, American, Founding, Infinite, Mail, Play, Promise, Will)
"Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats."
- Northrop Frye
(Related: Advertising, Flattery)
"In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that."
- Terry Gilliam
(Related: Time, Advertising, Office)
"They say that Madison Avenue will only pay high dollars in advertising if they get the 18-35 age range."
- Sharon Gless
(Related: Age, Advertising, Will)
"I long for the day when advertising will become a business for a grown man."
- Howard Luck Gossage
(Related: Business, Advertising, Day, Man, Will)
"You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We're the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X."
- Dick Gregory
(Related: Advertising)
"Taxpayers will not stand for - nor should they - the funding of poster sites, leaflets or advertising. What people will support is funding for political education, for training, for party organization."
- Peter Hain
(Related: Education, People, Advertising, Party, Support, Training, Will)
"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."
- Alexander Hamilton
(Related: Advertising, Country, Labor, Reward, Support)
"I went out to some advertising agencies and asked if I could do anything."
- Renny Harlin
(Related: Advertising)
"There is no such thing as national advertising. All advertising is local and personal. It's one man or woman reading one newspaper in the kitchen or watching TV in the den."
- Morris Hite
(Related: Advertising, Kitchen, Man, Reading, Woman)
"It takes good clients to make a good advertising agency. Regardless of how much talent an ad agency may have, it is ineffective without good products and services to advertise."
- Morris Hite
(Related: Talent, Advertising, Clients, May)
"Is advertising moral? It is part and parcel of the American free enterprise system... I challenge anybody to show any economic system that has done as much for so many in so short a time."
- Morris Hite
(Related: Time, Advertising, American, Challenge)
"Advertising moves people toward goods; merchandising moves goods toward people."
- Morris Hite
(Related: People, Advertising)
"Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can't."
- Morris Hite
(Related: Advertising, Talk)
"It is not the purpose of the ad or commercial to make the reader or listener say, 'My what a clever ad.' It is the purpose of advertising to make the reader say, 'I believe I'll buy one when I'm shopping tomorrow'."
- Morris Hite
(Related: Purpose, Advertising, Tomorrow)
"The time has come when advertising in some hands has reached the status of a science."
- Claude C. Hopkins
(Related: Science, Time, Advertising)
"Marriage is a good deal like a circus: there is not as much in it as is represented in the advertising."
- Edgar Watson Howe
(Related: Marriage, Advertising)
"It used to be that a fellow went on the police force when everything else failed, but today he goes in the advertising game."
- Kin Hubbard
(Related: Advertising, Force, Police, Today)
"Advertising was fairly simple work, and I really just wanted a job where I could sit and write every day and not get fired for it like I had at other jobs, but it was fun."
- John Hughes
(Related: Work, Advertising, Day, Fun, Job, Jobs)
"The susceptibility of the average modern to pictorial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment."
- Johan Huizinga
(Related: Power, Advertising, Judgment)
"Nobody's profitable at this moment, because recession is on; advertising dollars are down, and expenses are way up. So that kind of belies the situation that you would expect, because the ratings are way up everywhere."
- Brit Hume
(Related: Advertising)
"The network and local TV angle of broadcast television has received a black eye for not properly debating within the news issues that should be debated, instead of shuffling them of to television advertising."
- Mark E. Hyman
(Related: Advertising, Eye, Network, News, Television)
"This hype word bothers me though It always sounds like an accusation, what does it mean, advertising, column inches in the press? Bands themselves are never really responsible for all of that. That is something that happens to you when you sell millions of records."
- Holly Johnson
(Related: Advertising, Press, Word)
"A viewer who skips the advertising is the moral equivalent of a shoplifter."
- Nicholas Johnson
(Related: Advertising)
"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
- Pauline Kael
(Related: Advertising, Information, Rest)
"In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
- Pauline Kael
(Related: Advertising, Information, Rest)
"An enormous amount of direct advertising from pharmaceutical companies are offering a kind of instantaneous solution to problems."
- Leon Kass
(Related: Advertising, Problems, Solution)
"I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique."
- Elia Kazan
(Related: Advertising)
"Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception."
- Kenneth Koch
(Related: Advertising, Deception, Irony, Politicians, World)
"When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated."
- Rem Koolhaas
(Related: Advertising, Spontaneity)
"I believe in advertisement and media completely. My art and my personal life are based in it. I think that the art world would probably be a tremendous reservoir for everybody involved in advertising."
- Jeff Koons
(Related: Art, Life, Advertising, Media, World)
"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."
- Louis Kronenberger
(Related: Life, Poetry, Advertising, America, Prose, Trouble)
"Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising."
- John Lahr
(Related: Society, People, Advertising, Lust)
"It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Advertising, Logic, Media, Reality)
"News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Advertising, Liberal, News, Propaganda)
"Neoclassical economics insists that advertising cannot force consumers to buy anything they don't already want to buy."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Advertising, Economics, Force, Want)
"Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Intelligence, Money, Science)
"Telling lies does not work in advertising."
- Stanislaw Lec
(Related: Work, Advertising, Lies)
"You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough."
- Joseph E. Levine
(Related: Time, People, Advertising, Fool, Right)
"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."
- Sinclair Lewis
(Related: Selling, Advertising)
"Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor."
- Clare Boothe Luce
(Related: Advertising, Cause)
"Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising."
- Thomas B. Macaulay
(Related: Money, Advertising, Nothing)
"You have always had individual directors who begin in the advertising or commercial world, but they are probably exceptions rather than the traditional pattern."
- Ann Macbeth
(Related: Advertising, World)
"I walked out with 14 advertising projects."
- Peter Max
(Related: Advertising, Projects)
"As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society."
- Robert McChesney
(Related: Society, Advertising, Force, Media, Support)
"I don't think there is enough educational programming, but unfortunately, television is built around advertising and those shows don't get the big ratings."
- Will McDonough
(Related: Advertising, Programming, Television)
"Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Environmental, Abundance, Advertising, World)
"Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Art, Advertising)
"Ideally, advertising aims at the goal of a programmed harmony among all human impulses and aspirations and endeavors. Using handicraft methods, it stretches out toward the ultimate electronic goal of a collective consciousness."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Goal, Advertising, Aspirations, Consciousness, Harmony, Impulses)
"Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments."
- Thomas Merton
(Related: Advertising, Seriousness)
"Religious advertising is undergoing a dramatic conversion."
- Lisa Miller
(Related: Advertising, Religious)
"There was a period of time in America where the advertising world actually went to the housewives of America and had them write jingles that would appeal to them. It was actually brilliant marketing."
- Julianne Moore
(Related: Time, Advertising, America, Marketing, World)
"History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that."
- Malcolm Muggeridge
(Related: History, Time, People, Advertising, Evil, Want, Will)
"We are pushing hard to find quality advertising clients."
- Ben Nicholson
(Related: Quality, Advertising, Clients)
"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising."
- Lord Northcliffe
(Related: Advertising, News, Rest)
"If you want quality service, you have to pay for it. You don't buy into waste. I have great misgivings about the amount of advertising that we see in the health care field, some by hospitals, a lot by drug companies."
- David Obey
(Related: Health, Quality, Advertising, Care, Hospitals, Service, Want, Waste)
"The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Life, Advertising)
"There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Men, Genius, Advertising)
"What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Content)
"The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Vocabulary, Will, Word)
"What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising)
"Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising)
"The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Will)
"Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Society, Advertising, Economy, Enemies, Freedom)
"Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Testing, Will)
"Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising)
"Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Television, Today)
"Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, March, Question)
"Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Babies, Living, World)
"Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising)
"The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising)
"It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Wife, Advertising)
"Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Experience, Advertising, Results, Tests)
"Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Society, Advertising, Influence)
"Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: People, Advertising, Enemy, Research)
"Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Business, Men, Women, Advertising, Opera, Words)
"It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Idea, Advertising, Attention, Doubt, Night, Will)
"Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Evil)
"If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Fortune, Will, Worry)
"Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Editors, Majority, May)
"I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Art, Advertising, Entertainment, Information)
"I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes."
- David Ogilvy
(Related: Advertising, Clients, Marketing)
"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."
- George Orwell
(Related: Advertising)
"There is no way for the American economic system to function without advertising. There is no other way to communicate enough information about enough products to enough people with enough speed."
- John O'Toole
(Related: People, Advertising, American, Information)
"When executing advertising, it's best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly."
- John O'Toole
(Related: Power, Advertising, Guest, Living)
"Yes, I sell people things they don't need. I can't, however, sell them something they don't want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to."
- John O'Toole
(Related: People, Advertising, Mind, Want)
"I believe that a contract, or at least an understanding, exists between the American public and the American advertiser concerning what advertising is, what its limitations are and what price people will pay for it."
- John O'Toole
(Related: People, Advertising, American, Limitations, Public, Understanding, Will)
"Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed."
- Sara Paretsky
(Related: Money, People, Advertising, Awareness, Books, Newspapers)
"Display advertising and the movies, though they may dull the wits, certainly stimulate the eyes."
- John Dos Passos
(Related: Movies, Advertising, Eyes, May)
"Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire."
- Pope John Paul II
(Related: Work, People, Advertising, Desire, Evil, Hard work, Satisfaction)
"If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma."
- Harold Ramis
(Related: Actor, Advertising, Charisma, Popular)
"Advertising is, actually, a simple phenomenon in terms of economics. It is merely a substitute for a personal sales force - an extension, if you will, of the merchant who cries aloud his wares."
- Rosser Reeves
(Related: Advertising, Economics, Force, Sales, Will)
"These films however, have ambiguity built into them, because it's too easy in film to make a strident work of propaganda or advertising, which are really the same thing anyway, meaning the message is unmistakable."
- Godfrey Reggio
(Related: Work, Advertising, Ambiguity, Film, Meaning, Propaganda)
"If its not done ethically, advertising won't be trusted. If consumers don't trust it, advertising is pointless."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Trust, Advertising)
"In advertising, sex sells. But only if you're selling sex."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Sex, Selling, Advertising)
"There's so much truly putrid advertising out there it's embarrassing. But not all advertising is bad. Some of it is really quite mediocre."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising)
"There is a huge difference between journalism and advertising. Journalism aspires to truth. Advertising is regulated for truth. I'll put the accuracy of the average ad in this country up against the average news story any time."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Time, Truth, Accuracy, Advertising, Country, Difference, Journalism, News)
"The Death of Advertising? I think that's in the book of Revelation. It's the day when people everywhere become satisfied with their weight, their hair, their skin, their wardrobe, and their aroma."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Death, People, Advertising, Day, Hair, Skin, Weight)
"In the world of commercial speech, tobacco advertising bears the earmarks of an endangered species."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising, Speech, World)
"While it may be true that the best advertising is word-of-mouth, never lose sight of the fact it also can be the worst advertising."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising, Fact, May, Sight, Word)
"Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising, Wonder)
"I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone who believes advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising, Will)
"Advertising is speech. It's regulated because it's often effective speech."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising, Speech)
"Advertising is totally unnecessary. Unless you hope to make money."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Money, Hope, Advertising)
"Creative without strategy is called 'art.' Creative with strategy is called 'advertising.'"
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Strategy)
"Creativity is an advertising agency's most valuable asset, because it is the rarest."
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Creativity, Advertising)
"Is advertising a profession, like law or medicine? How many new parents clutch their baby to their breast and declare, 'I want this child to grow up to be a media planner'?"
- Jef I. Richards
(Related: Advertising, Baby, Law, Media, Medicine, Parents, Profession, Want)
"Why, I ask, isn't it possible that advertising as a whole is a fantastic fraud, presenting an image of America taken seriously by no one, least of all by the advertising men who create it?"
- David Riesman
(Related: Men, Advertising, America, Fraud)
"The truth is that our way of celebrating the Christmas season does spring from myriad cultures and sources, from St. Nicholas to Coca-Cola advertising campaigns."
- Richard Roeper
(Related: Truth, Advertising, Christmas, Spring)
"If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them."
- Will Rogers
(Related: Money, Advertising)
"Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it."
- Will Rogers
(Related: Money, Advertising)
"Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need."
- Will Rogers
(Related: Art, Money, People, Advertising)
"I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter."
- Carl Sandburg
(Related: Idea, Advertising, Eye, Man, Thinking)
"Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better."
- George Santayana
(Related: Advertising, Argument)
"I didn't think that a career in theater was very realistic so I thought the only thing I could make money doing and still be somewhat artistic was, god help me, advertising."
- Liev Schreiber
(Related: Money, God, Thought, Advertising, Career, Help, Theater)
"Advertising generally works to reinforce consumer trends rather than to initiate them."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Advertising)
"American advertisers rely on 'essentially illogical' approaches to determine their advertising budgets."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Advertising, American, Budgets)
"If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Art, Advertising, State)
"If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: People, Gods, Advertising, Americans, Culture, Popular, Silly)
"It is very likely that many firms spend more on advertising than, for their own best interests, they should."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Advertising)
"Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens inside these agencies."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Advertising, Criticism, Ignorance)
"Sales may lead to advertising as much as advertising leads to sales."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Advertising, May, Sales)
"The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment."
- Michael Schudson
(Related: Successful, Advertising, Environment, Information, Will)
"The Internet and Yahoo are firmly established as 'must buys' for brand advertising."
- Terry Semel
(Related: Advertising, Internet)
"Yahoo! is the only company with both scale and leadership in branded and search advertising."
- Terry Semel
(Related: Leadership, Advertising, Company)
"Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truths."
- Edgar A. Shoaff
(Related: Art, Advertising, Lies)
"Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising."
- Robert Smithson
(Related: Advertising, Language)
"Advertising degrades the people it appeals to; it deprives them of their will to choose."
- Carrie P. Snow
(Related: People, Advertising, Will)
"Advertising as the printed form of selling would seem... ultimately to be justified in so far as it serves as a means of increasing legitimate human wants, as an agency of fair and economic competition in the distribution of goods, and as a stimulant to social progress."
- Daniel Starch
(Related: Progress, Selling, Advertising, Competition)
"The simplest definition of advertising, and one that will probably meet the test of critical examination, is that advertising is selling in print."
- Daniel Starch
(Related: Selling, Advertising, Examination, Will)
"Two common conceptions with regard to advertising which are held by a considerable number of people are that enormously large sums of money are expended for it, and that much of this expenditure is an economic waste."
- Daniel Starch
(Related: Money, People, Advertising, Waste)
"What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public."
- Vilhjalmur Stefansson
(Related: Truth, Advertising, Difference, Public)
"I've devoted a lot of my time and effort during the past few years to developing my advertising copywriting business to the point of where I can support my family and don't have to depend on writing fiction for my income."
- George Stephen
(Related: Business, Family, Time, Advertising, Effort, Fiction, Income, Past, Support, Writing, Years)
"We should remember the campaign advertising will be only a smaller portion of the President's total exposure."
- Robert Teeter
(Related: Advertising, President, Will)
"I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil."
- Arnold J. Toynbee
(Related: Advertising, Circumstances, Evil)
"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Advertising, Right)
"Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Advertising, American, World)
"Any seeming deception in a statement is costly, not only in the expense of the advertising but in the detrimental effect produced upon the customer, who believes she has been misled."
- John Wanamaker
(Related: Advertising, Customer, Deception, Effect)
"I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half."
- John Wanamaker
(Related: Money, Advertising)
"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half."
- John Wanamaker
(Related: Money, Advertising, Trouble)
"I became an art major, took every art class my school had to offer. In college, I majored in Advertising Art and Design."
- Len Wein
(Related: Art, Design, Advertising, Class, College, School)
"Advertising is legalized lying."
- H. G. Wells
(Related: Advertising, Lying)
"Advertising is the genie which is transforming America into a place of comfort, luxury and ease for millions."
- William Allen White
(Related: Advertising, America, Comfort, Luxury)
"We have always said that advertising is just the icing on the cake. It is not the cake."
- Meg Whitman
(Related: Advertising)
"In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Advertising, Suicide)
"As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise."
- George Will
(Related: Advertising, Language, Nation)
"The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising."
- Kit Williams
(Related: Religion, Society, Advertising)
"If we listen human instinct actually tells us what we need, but advertising makes us want things we don't need and things we can't have."
- Kit Williams
(Related: Advertising, Instinct, Want)
"Contrary to popular belief, Americans don't hate advertising."
- Roy H. Williams
(Related: Belief, Advertising, Americans, Hate, Popular)
"Have you heard of this new thing called the internet? It's giving people new expectations. It's allowing them to become their own expert. Knowledge lies anxious at their fingertips. Gloss over the truth in your advertising and you'll quickly be dismissed as a poser."
- Roy H. Williams
(Related: Truth, People, Knowledge, Advertising, Expectations, Giving, Internet, Lies)
"Month after month, Wizard Academy equips people who want to make a difference. This is why journalists and scientists and artists and educators and business owners and advertising professionals and ministers are attracted to our little school."
- Roy H. Williams
(Related: Business, People, Advertising, Artists, Difference, professionals, School, Scientists, Want)
"The Internet offers an interesting combination of advertising and community by participating in the community you can become an advertisement for yourself."
- Walter Jon Williams
(Related: Advertising, Community, Internet)
"Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it."
- Ellen Willis
(Related: Art, Advertising, Corporate)
"Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information."
- Dick Wolf
(Related: Art, Advertising, Information)
"When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?"
- Dick Wolf
(Related: History, People, Advertising, Focus, Sales, Saying)
"Publishing is a very mysterious business. It is hard to predict what kind of sale or reception a book will have, and advertising seems to do very little good."
- Thomas Wolfe
(Related: Business, Advertising, Publishing, Will)
"I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second."
- Steven Wright
(Related: Advertising)
"In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope."
- Peter Nivio Zarlenga
(Related: Hope, Advertising)
"NC-17 means that you get it in like 3 theaters. They won't run the spots on MTV, won't run the advertising. It's the kiss of death so there was really no other choice."
- Rob Zombie
(Related: Death, Kiss, Advertising, Choice)
"More traffic means more advertising dollars."
- Jeff Zucker
(Related: Advertising)