Advertising Quotes

DEPARTMENT OF ADVERTISING, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

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ADVERTISING IS . . .

"Advertising is the principal reason why the business man has come to inherit theearth."

- James Randolph Adams, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C.Jones, The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. FergusonPublishing Co., p. 12.

"Advertising is of the very essence of democracy. An election goes on every minute ofthe business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shopswhere the customers state their preferences and determine which manufacturer andwhich product shall be the leader today, and which shall lead tomorrow."

- Bruce Barton (1955), chairman of BBDO, quoted in James B. Simpson,Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p. 82.

"Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret . . . to put the very heart throbs of abusiness into type, paper and ink."

- Leo Burnett, quoted by Joan Kufrin, Leo Burnett: Star Reacher(1995), Chicago,IL: Leo Burnett Company, Inc., p. 54.

"Advertising is what you do when you can't go see somebody. That's all it is."

- Fairfax Cone (1963), ad agency partner, quoted in James B. Simpson,Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p. 84.

"Advertising is the life of trade."

- Calvin Coolidge, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C. Jones,The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. FergusonPublishing Co., p. 13.

"Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats."

- Northrop Frye, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book ofQuotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 18.

"The art of publicity is a black art."

- Learned Hand, American jurist, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry &Whiteside Book of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p.19.

"[A]dvertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation."

- S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (1964), New York: Harcourt, p.268.

"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, quoted in Adman: Morris Hite's Methods for Winning the Ad Game,1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 203.

Advertising is "the lubricant for the free-enterprise system."

- Leo-Arthur Kelmenson (1976), quoted in Michael McKenna, The Stein & DayDictionary of Definitive Quotations, 1983, New York: Stein & Day Publishing Co.,p. 11.

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence longenough to get money from it."

- Stephen Butler Leacock, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of PoliticalQuotations, 1982, New York: Crown Publishing Inc., p. 1.

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."

- Marshall McLuhan (1976), Canadian social scientist (quoted in Robert Andrews,The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations 1987, p. 5, London: Routledge & KeganPaul).

"Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century."

- Marshall McLuhan, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & WhitesideBook of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 19.

"Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance."

- Marshall McLuhan, introduction to Wilson Bryan Key, Subliminal Seduction: AdMedia's Manipulation of a Not So Innocent America, 1974, New York: Signet(New American Library), p. vii.

"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."

- George Orwell, quoted in Angela Partington, The Oxford Dictionary ofQuotations, 1992, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 501.

Advertising is "[a] ten billion dollar a year misunderstanding with the public."

- Chester L. Posey, Senior V.P. & Creative Director, McCann Erickson

"Advertising is, actually, a simple phenomenon in terms of economics. It is merely asubstitute for a personal sales force - an extension, if you will, of the merchant whocries aloud his wares."

- Rosser Reeves, Reality in Advertising (1986), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., p.145.

"Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread."

- Jef I. Richards (1995), advertising professor, The University of Texas at Austin.

"Advertising is the art and sole of capitalism. It captures a moment of time through thelense of commerce, reflecting and affecting our lives, making us laugh and cry, whilesimultaneously giving traction to the engine that propels this free market economyforward into the future."

- Jef I. Richards (2001), Chairman of The University of Texas AdvertisingDepartment.

"Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worseappear the better."

- George Santayana

"Advertising is the foot on the accelerator, the hand on the throttle, the spur on theflank that keeps our economy surging forward."

- Robert W. Sarnoff, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C. Jones,The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. FergusonPublishing Co., p. 15.

"The simplest definition of advertising, and one that will probably meet the test ofcritical examination, is that advertising is selling in print."

- Daniel Starch, Principles of Advertising, 1923, Chicago, IL: A.W. Shaw Company,p. 5.

"Advertising is selling Twinkies to adults"

- Donald R. Vance

"Advertising is legalized lying."

- H.G. Wells, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of Political Quotations,1982, New York: Crown Publishing Inc., p. 2.

"Advertising is the genie which is transforming America into a place of comfort, luxuryand ease for millions."

- William Allen White, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C.Jones, The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. FergusonPublishing Co., p. 15.

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

"To many advertising account executives, chronic nervous dyspepsia, psychosomatictension, and hyperacidity are more than just medical words used in televisioncommercials. These are the very real terms that describe what is probably the mostcommon occupational disease off the advertising game."

- Harry R. Gasker, quoted in Samm Sinclair Baker, The Permissible Lie: TheInside Truth About Advertising, 1968, Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company,p. 8.

"The agency's account executive should be able to step into the sales manager's shoes ifthe sales manager drops dead today."


"[N]o agency is better than its account executives."


"The ultimate test of a finished account executive is his ability to write a soundmarketing plan."


"If I had to sum it all up, I'd say there are three breeds of account executives: the play-it-safe-and-by-the-rule-book transmitting agent; the neutralist, who's never quite surefrom one day to the next of his role in the agency-client relationship; and the truly

creative account man, who may never write a line of copy in his life, but who, in his ownwy, is every bit as creative as the finest copywriter in the business."

- Emil Mogul (1960), ad executive, quoted in James B. Simpson, ContemporaryQuotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p. 84.

AGENCY CLIENTS

"The most dangerous thing that can happen to us, I think, is to permit a feeling todevelop that any client is a problem. I have always taken the attitude that no account isa 'problem account' but that all accounts have important problems attached to them -that you can waste more time and burn up more nervous energy by fighting a problemthan by taking a positive attitude and solving it. It sure gives you a nice, warm glowwhen you do."

- Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, p. 75.

"I have learned that you can't have good advertising without a good client, that youcan't keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy betteradvertising than he understands or has an appetite for."


"I have learned that trying to guess what the boss or the client wants is the mostdebilitating of all influences in the creation of good advertising."


"Most agencies run scared, most of the time. . . . Frightened people are powerless toproduce good advertising. . . . If I were a client, I would do everything in my power toemancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-termcontracts."

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: BallantineBooks, p. 64.

"It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them.Many clients are surrounded by buckpassers who make a fine art of blaming the agencyfor their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame."


To advertisers: "Do not compete with your agency in the creative area. Why keep a dogand bark yourself?"


"I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary goodmanners."


"I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have aprevious engagement with another client; successful polygamy depends uponpretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach."


AGENCY HIRING

"The inventory goes down the elevator every night."

- Fairfax Cone, of Foote Cone & Belding, quoted in John O'Toole, The Trouble withAdvertising . . ., 1981, New York: Chelsea House, p. 59.

"People don't buy from clowns."

- Claude Hopkins, quoted in David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985, New York:Vintage Books, p. 103.

"If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company ofdwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become acompany of giants."

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985, New York: Vintage Books, p. 47.

"I'd like to ask each and every one of you how many remarkable people, or people ofany kind, you personally have discovered or brought in in the last year. That's a job thatI think is too vital for you to delegate... what kind of people should you discover andhire? Well, policemen and tobacco farmers, not MBAs! Clients have got MBAs! Hire thekind of people clients don't have and wouldn't dream of hiring. Don't go to the clientswith a lot of guys who are like theirs, only not so good -- you have to remember thatclients can afford to pay far more than we can for MBAs."

- David Ogilvy, from a speech to O&M Worldwide Meeting, 1989.

"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 theyneed cash for other purposes."


"The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost asintimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you canlife happily with your prospective client before you accept his account."


ART & ARTISTS

"Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome bythe beauty of the picture - and forget that merchandise must be sold."

- James Randolph Adams, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C.Jones, The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. FergusonPublishing Co., p. 12.

"Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How manypeople do you know who are impeccably groomed . . . but dull?"

- William Bernbach, quoted in Bill Bernbach said . . . (1989), DDB NeedhamWorldwide.

"I regard a great ad as the most beautiful thing in the world."


"Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I wouldonly do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising."

- David Ogilvy, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C. Jones, TheInternational Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. Ferguson PublishingCo., p. 15.

"If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art."

- Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact onAmerican Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. 222.

ATTENTION

"If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic."


"If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but theart is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks."

- Leo Burnett, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC BusinessBooks, p. 26.

"Too many ads that try not to go over the reader's head end up beneath his notice."


"People are very sophisticated about advertising now. You have to entertain them. Youhave to present a product honestly and with a tremendous amount of pizzazz and flair,the way it's done in a James Bond movie. But you can't run the same ad over and overagain. You have to change your approach constantly to keep on getting theirattention . . . ."

- Mary Wells Lawrence, quoted in Newsweek, October 1966.

"You have only 30 seconds [in a TV commercial]. If you grab attention in the first framewith a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screenout a lot of commercials because they open with something dull ... When you advertisefire-extinguishers, open with the fire."


"The first thing one must do to succeed in advertising is to have the attention of thereader. That means to be interesting. The next thing is to stick to the truth, and thatmeans rectifying whatever's wrong in the merchant's business. If the truth isn't tellable,fix it so it is. That is about all there is to it."

- John E. Powers, 19th Century copywriter, quoted in Stephen Fox, The MirrorMakers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (1984), New York:William Morrow and Company, p. 28.

"Advertisements ordinarily work their wonders, to the extent that they work at all, onan inattentive public."


AWARDS

"In the past, we have had a strategy, but our agencies didn't stick to it. But they didmake good commercials and they did win awards. This may surprise you, though. Idon't care about awards; I want to sell product."

- James W. Harralson, CEO of Royal Crown Cola Company, quoted in PhilipDougherty, "Advertising," The New York Times, April 5, 1988, p. D23.

"Hollywood has its Oscars. Television has its Emmys. Broadway has its Tonys. Andadvertising has its Clios. And its Andys, Addys, Effies and Obies. And 117 otherassorted awards. And those are just the big ones."

- Joanne Lipman (1987), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library:Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: StonesongPress, p. 70.

BELIEF

"The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, andnothing is more believable than the product itself."


"A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important asever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed,you ain't got nothin'."


"I believe 'credibility' is one of the biggest issues yet to be addressed by Internetadvertisers. Everyone has their eye on 'privacy' as a critical concern, but credibility willbe far more enabling or disabling to website profitability. A company can have a webpresence and, unless the brand name is familiar, consumers have no way of knowingwhether it's a big company, a small company, an honest company, or a single scoundrel.I may be worried about my personal data being disclosed in violation of my privacy, butI'm far more concerned about whether or not the person or company with whom I'mdealing is reputable. Can I believe their claims? Will I have a recourse if something iswrong with the merchandise? Credibility no longer is strictly a brick-and-morter issue. Ican't judge someone by their place of business, when I conduct that business on theInternet. I can't grasp a hand and look into their eyes to judge their veracity. Credibilityis a huge issue."


"If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equallyindications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture thatadvertisements are silly."


BILLBOARDS

"I think that I shall never seeA billboard lovely as a tree.Indeed, unless the billboards fallI'll never see a tree at all."

- Ogden Nash (1959), quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, The InternationalThesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, p.18.

"As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen oneimproved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when heerects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secretsociety of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles,chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us whenwe are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?"


BORING

"I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that ofmisleading people, but that of boring them to death."


BUDGETING

"American advertisers rely on 'essentially illogical' approaches to determine theiradvertising budgets."


BUSINESS

"What helps people, helps business."


"I long for the day when advertising will become a business for a grown man."

- Howard Luck Gossage, "Gossage on Advertising," in The Book of Gossage(1995), Chicago, IL: The Copy Workshop.

COMMISSION

"Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay theiragency a flat fee. . . . It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when itsvested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionableadvertising."


"Make sure that your agency makes a profit. Your account competes with all the otheraccounts in your agency. If it is unprofitable, it is unlikely that the management of theagency will assign their best men to work on it. And sooner or later they will cast aboutfor a profitable account to replace yours."


COMMITTEES

"When you try to formalize or socialize creative activity, the only sure result iscommercial constipation . . . . The good ideas are all hammered out in agony byindividuals, not spewed out by groups."

- Charles Browder (1957), president of BBDO, quoted in James B. Simpson,Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p. 82.

"Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product ofcommittees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowedto create them."

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, New York: Ballantine Books, p.70.

COMMUNICATION

"Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it."


"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if theydon't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don'tlisten to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't beinteresting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly."


"It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereasthe writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator isconcerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of howpeople read or listen."


"Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you.Here's how to get it.'"


"Words give you a medium, if you will, and make your message part of the humanthought process. Words are as portable as the human being who hears them."

- James J. Jordan, Jr., quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: AnAdvertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 107.

"I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium ofinformation."


"As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed

noise."

- George Will (1976), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library:Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: StonesongPress, p. 71.

CONSUMERISM

"Consumerism is an antipollution drive in relation to the toxic areas of advertising."

- Tony Schwartz, The Responsive Chord, 1974, New York: Anchor Books, p. 78.

CONSUMERS

"The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousnessof our 'deceivers' than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire toseduce than from the desire to be seduced."

- Daniel J. Boorstin, U.S. historian, quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, TheInternational Thesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY: Thomas Y. CrowellCompany, p. 18.

"If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the adwriting business at all."


"Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened bythe modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity,impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wideprevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility."

- Joseph Conrad

"A man who is hungry need never be told of his need for food. If he is inspired by hisappetite, he is immune to the influence of Messrs. Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn.The latter are effective only with those who are so far removed from physical want thatthey do not already know what they want."

- John Kenneth Galbraith (1958), economics professor, quoted in James B.Simpson, Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p.84.

"Advertising is found in societies which have passed the point of satisfying the basicanimal needs."

- Marion Harper, Jr. (1960), president of McCann-Erickson, quoted in James B.Simpson, Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p.84.

"The modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objectionto being eaten by the wolf."

- Marshall McLuhan, Canadian communications theorist, quoted in RhodasThomas Tripp, The International Thesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY:Thomas Y. Crowell Company, p. 18.

"The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife."

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: Ballantine, p.

84.

"The novice at advertising frequently gives the public credit for too much intelligence."

- Printers' Ink, September 2 (1903), quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers:Inside the World of Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 163.

"[D]ifferent groups are differentially vulnerable to advertising; and their vulnerabilityvaries not so much with the character or quantity of advertisements as with theinformational resources they can claim by age, education, station in life, andgovernment guarantees of consumer protection."

- Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact onAmerican Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. xvi.

CONTENT

"Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sureyour advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform andserve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before."


"There is no such thing as 'soft sell' and 'hard sell.' There is only 'smart sell' and 'stupidsell.'"

- Charles Browder (1958), president of BBDO, quoted in James B. Simpson,Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p. 83.

"Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read."


"The more facts you tell, the more you sell. An advertisement's chance for successinvariably increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in theadvertisement increases."

- Dr. Charles Edwards, quoted in Leonard Safir and William Safire, Good Advice,1982, New York: Times Books, p. 6.

"That is the kind of ad I like. Facts, facts, facts."

- Samuel Goldwyn, U.S. film producer, quoted in Robert Andrews, The ColumbiaDictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 18.

"The headline is the most important element of an ad. It must offer a promise to thereader of a believable benefit. And it must be phrased in a way to give it memoryvalue."


"To establish a favorable and well-defined brand personality with the consumer theadvertiser must be consistent. You can't use a comic approach today and a scientist in awhite jacket tomorrow without diffusing and damaging your brand personality."


"The right name is an advertisement in itself."

- Claude C. Hopkins, quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: AnAdvertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 12.

"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

- Samuel Johnson (1759), English author, quoted in Robert Andrews, TheColumbia Dictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia UniversityPress, p. 18.

"Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless."

- Adolph S. Ochs (1958), quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, The InternationalThesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, p.18.

"What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it."

- David Ogilvy, quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: AnAdvertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 63.

"What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising,not its form."


"The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospectsfor the kind of product you are advertising."


"On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar."


"I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent ofhousewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the wordINEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself."


"I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the goodones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehowthis has come over as true and valid and persuasive."

- David Ogilvy, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC BusinessBooks, p. 85.

"Braggin' IS advertisin'"


COPYWRITING

"I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is towrite a good ad."


"If you are writing about baloney, don't try to make it Cornish hen, because that is theworst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darned good baloney."


"I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keephis hands off a good one."


"I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable formof writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes . . . ."

- Philip Dusenberry, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World ofAdvertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 56.

"I think central to good writing of advertising, or anything else, is a person who hasdeveloped an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them. Ithink that that develops more sharply when the writer has not had an easy adjustmentto living. So that they have themselves felt the need for understanding, the need forsympathy, and can therefore see that need in other people."

- George Gribbin, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC BusinessBooks, p. 51.

"A writer should be joyous, an optimist . . . Anything that implies rejection of life iswrong for a writer."

- George Gribbin, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC BusinessBooks, p. 48.

"I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the mostdifficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean theadvertisement . . . . It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enoughto take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take ina few thousand of the uncritical buying public."

- Aldous Huxley (1923), British author, quoted in Robert Andrews, The ColumbiaDictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 18.

"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but thatit has turned to advertising copy."

- Louis Kronenberger (1954), quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, The InternationalThesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, p.18.

"Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambicpentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozartwrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, andrecapitulation. Were they dull?"


"I don't know the rules of grammar. . . . If you're trying to persuade people to dosomething, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, thelanguage they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in thevernacular."


"Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've had alittle to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better able to write."


"You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that's whattoo many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don't yet understand."

- Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC BusinessBooks, p. 125.

"No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter . . . can write with the kids. That he's ascreative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His ad may not be quite asfresh and glowing as the Madison Ave. fraternity would like to see it be, and yet hemight write an ad that will produce five times the sales. And that's the name of thegame, isn't it?"

- Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC BusinessBooks, p. 111.

"I suspect that there is no other single profession that does more to contribute to ourannoying linguistic convolutions than advertising, unless it's politics."

- Jef Richards (1997), advertising professor, The University of Texas at Austin.

"The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain wordsexactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to anacquaintance."

- George P. Rowell, quoted in Advertiser's Gazette, (July 1870), vol. 4, p. 175.

COST

"To Mrs. Mufoosky, the commercials may seem as long as a whore's dream. But to thenew advertiser who has spent 100 Gs for his first network commercial - he gets a newunderstanding of a split second. It's the fastest half minute of his lifetime."


"It is very likely that many firms spend more on advertising than, for their own bestinterests, they should."


CREATIVITY

"Properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of ten."

- William Bernbach, quoted in Bill Bernbach said . . . (1989), DDB Needham

Worldwide.

"Properly practiced creativity MUST result in greater sales more economicallyachieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp ofsameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent."


"In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal."

- William Bernbach, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & WhitesideBook of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 18.

"The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and trickywords and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into newrelationships."


"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creativepeople."


"Creativity is an advertising agency's most valuable asset, because it is the rarest."


CRITICS

"Advertising is not the noblest creation of man's mind, as so many of its advocateswould like the public to think. It does not, single-handedly, sustain the whole structureof capitalism and democracy in the Free World. It is just as nonsensical to suggest thatwe are superhuman as to accept the indictment that we are subhuman. We are merelyhuman, trying to do a necessary human job with dignity, with decency and withcompetence."

- Leo Burnett, quoted in David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985, New York:Vintage Books, p. 206.

"In essence, the motivation of the attacks on advertising is hostility toward capitalismand egoism."

- Jerry Kirkpatrick, "A Philosophic Defense of Advertising," Journal of Advertising,1986, vol. 15(2).

"The list of sins committed by advertising is limited only by the creativity of its critics."

- Jerry Kirkpatrick, "A Philosophic Defense of Advertising," Journal of Advertising,1986, vol. 15(2).

"People I meet at parties, once they discover how I make my living, feel compelled totell me about the low regard in which they hold advertising. But in return for mylistening to their complaints, they have to answer some questions too. I ask them whatthey think of Hallmark's advertising, or Kraft's, or the Raid advertising with those cutebugs. Oh, well, that's different."

- John O'Toole, The Trouble with Advertising . . ., 1981, New York: Chelsea House,p. 27.

"I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone whobelieves advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything."


"Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, andadvertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practicingprecision microsurgery on the public consciousness."

- Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact onAmerican Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. xiii.

"Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens insidethese agencies."


"Critics of advertising usually forget that if it were eliminated or abolished, othermethods would necessarily be substituted for it. If you abolished the advertising of hats,either by law or by common agreement, the same manufacturers would resort to othermethods of competition in personal salesmanship to a corresponding extent. This mightbe and probably would be a still more costly means to attain the same ends that areaccomplished through printed publicity."


ECONOMICS

"Advertising did not invent the products or services which called forth jobs, nor inspirethe pioneering courage that built factories and machinery to produce them. Whatadvertising did was to stimulate ambition and desire - the craving to process, which isthe strongest incentive to produce. To satisfy this craving the factory was impelled toturn itself into a growing factory; and then, by the pressure of mass demand, into manyfactories. Mass production made possible mass economies, reflected in decliningprices, until the product that began as the luxury of the rich became the possession ofevery family that was willing to work."

- Bruce Barton (1955), chairman of BBDO, quoted in James B. Simpson,Contemporary Quotations, 1964, Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, p. 82.

"To think that the effects of advertising, such a potent environment in any industrializedcountry, could be limited to economics, is as absurd as assuming that the effects of ahot climate upon a culture could be limited to tropical diseases."

- William Kuhns, Waysteps to Eden: Ads and Commercials (1970), New York:Herder and Herder.

"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of sellinggoods, particularly if the goods are worthless."

- Sinclair Lewis (1943), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library:Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: StonesongPress, p. 70.

"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 toenough people with enough speed."


"Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from preconising [proclaiming] its waresand their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. Theenemies of advertising are enemies of freedom."

- J. Enoch Powell, British Conservative politician, quoted in Robert Andrews, TheColumbia Dictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia UniversityPress, p. 19.

EDUCATION

"Claude Hopkins . . . maintained that nobody with a college education could write anadvertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock."


EFFECTS

"As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The first fourwords ever uttered, "Let there be light," constitute its charter. All nature is vibrant withits impulse."

- Bruce Barton, chairman of BBDO, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels &Thomas C. Jones, The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J.G. Ferguson Publishing Co., p. 13.

"Advertising mourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up before a man the goalof a better home, better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spursindividual exertion and greater production."

- Sir Winston Churchill, quoted in David Ogilvy, Confessions of an AdvertisingMan, 1971, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 133.

"There is something of a parasitic quality about advertising. It feeds on the organismsof noncommercial culture - the culture's past and present, ideology and myths, politicsand customs, art and architecture, literature and music, and even its religions . . . . Forexample, women are commodified to sell everything from cars to colognes . . . .Advertising thus pimps its products."

- Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover, "Commerce & Communication," 71Texas Law Review 697 (1993), p. 709-10.

"Mass demand has been created almost entirely through the development ofadvertising."

- Calvin Coolidge (1926), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York PublicLibrary: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York:Stonesong Press, p. 70.

"There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When thathappens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster."

- Jerry Della Famina, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor(1971), New York: Pocket Books, p. 141.

"Contrary to what self-appointed protectors of the consumer so loudly proclaim,advertising does not cause people to buy bad products. Nothing will put a bad productout of business faster than a good advertising campaign. Advertising causes people to

try a product once, but poor quality eliminates any possibility of a repeat purpose."


"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisementwithout being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular diseasetherein dealt with in its most virulent form."

- Jerome K. Jerome (1889), quoted in Tony Augarde, Oxford Dictionary of ModernQuotations, 1991, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 113.

"[T]he business of the advertiser is to see that we go about our business with somemagic spell or tune or slogan throbbing quietly in the background of our minds."

- Marshall McLuhan, "The Age of Advertising," Commonweal, (1953), 58, p. 557.

"I know of a brewer who sells more of his beer to the people who never see hisadvertising than to the people who see it every week. Bad advertising can unsell aproduct."

- David Ogilvy, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C. Jones, TheInternational Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. Ferguson PublishingCo., p. 14.

"[A]dvertising generally works to reinforce consumer trends rather than to initiatethem."


"Expensive, well-executed, and familiar ads convince the investors, as nothing in theblack and white tables of assets and debits can, that the company is important andprosperous."

- Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact onAmerican Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. xiv.

"We find that advertising works the way the grass grows. You can never see it, butevery week you have to mow the lawn."

- Andy Tarshis, A.C. Nielsen Company, quoted in Martin Mayer, WhateverHappened to Madison Avenue? Advertising in the '90s (1991), Boston, MA: Little,Brown and Company, p. 179-80.

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."

- Mark Twain, quoted in Edward F. Murphy, The Crown Treasury of RelevantQuotations, 1978, New York: Crown Publishers, p. 15.

"General advertising is Cyrano. He comes under your window and sings; people getused to it and ignore it. But if Roxane responds, there's a relationship. We move thebrand relationship up a notch. Advertising becomes a dialogue that becomes aninvitation to a relationship."

- Lester Wunderman, Young & Rubicam, quoted in Martin Mayer, WhateverHappened to Madison Avenue? Advertising in the '90s (1991), Boston, MA: Little,Brown and Company, p. 143.

EFFECTIVENESS

"The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product

information available to consumers . . . . advertising will be more successful the moreimpoverished the consumer's information environment."

- Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact onAmerican Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. 90-91.

EMOTION

"You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You've got to say itin such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don't feel it, nothingwill happen."


ENVY

"The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys theproduct. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object ofenvy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put thisanother way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it backto her for the price of the product."

- John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1980, London: British Broadcasting Corporationand Penguin Books, p. 134.

EVIL

Advertising is "an evil service."

- Aneurin Bevan, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World ofAdvertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 371.

"Advertising is an instrument in the hands of the people who use it. If evil men useadvertising for base purposes, then evil can result. If honest men use advertising to sellan honest product with honest enthusiasm, then positive good for our kind ofcapitalistic society can result."

- John W. Crawford, communications professor, quoted in Samm Sinclair Baker,The Permissible Lie: The Inside Truth About Advertising, 1968, Cleveland, OH:World Publishing Company, p. 180.

History will see advertising "as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulatingpeople constantly to want things, want this, want that."

- Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the Worldof Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 371.

"Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things."

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (1985), New York: Vintage Books, p. 207.

"I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attractindustry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for400 years."


Young people are "threatened . . . by the evil use of advertising techniques thatstimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediatesatisfaction of every desire."

- Pope John Paul II, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World ofAdvertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 371.

I can not "think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil."

- Arnold Toynbee, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World ofAdvertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 371.

FANTASY & DREAMS

"Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could notsurvive - and at the same time publicity is its dream."

- John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1980, London: British Broadcasting Corporationand Penguin Books, p. 154.

"We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. Istill believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you aperfect complexion."

- Zelda Fitzgerald (1932), U.S. writer, quoted in Robert Andrews, The ColumbiaDictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 18.

"Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life isspread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch."

- J. B. Priestley, quoted in Edward F. Murphy, The Crown Treasury of RelevantQuotations, 1978, New York: Crown Publishers, p. 14.

FREE SPEECH / CENSORSHIP

"Legislation should outlaw an advertiser's attempts to use its economic relationshipswith a media enterprise to influence the enterprise not to print or broadcast contentthat it would otherwise choose to present . . . . There is little reason to allow this use ofeconomic power to censor others' speech and to block the public's access toinformation or viewpoints."

- C. Edwin Baker, Advertising and a Democratic Press, 1994, Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, p. 100.

"Advertisers, not governments, are the primary censors of media content in the UnitedStates today."

- C. Edwin Baker, Advertising and a Democratic Press, 1994, Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, p. 99.

"It is not easy to describe the present position of legal opinion on advertising and freespeech. Only a poet can capture the essence of chaos."

- R. H. Coase, "Advertising and Free Speech," 6 Journal of Legal Studies 1 (1977),p. 32.

"Advertising, the dissemination of messages about the goods and services which peopleconsume, is clearly part of the market for ideas. Intellectuals have not, in general,welcomed this other occupant of their domain. And the feeling of antipathy has been

shared by economists, who, until comparatively recently, have tended to deplore ratherthan to analyze the effects of advertising."

- R. H. Coase, "Advertising and Free Speech," 6 Journal of Legal Studies 1 (1977),p. 8.

"Historically, it was thought that the sole or primary enemy of free expression was theState. Today, the consequences of commercial communication reveal that the privatecaptains of the advertising empire may prove to be an enemy of equal stature."

- Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover, "Commerce & Communication," 71Texas Law Review 697 (1993), p. 726-27.

"Liberals don't much like commercial speech because it's commercial; conservativesmistrust it because it's speech."

- Alex Kozinski and Stuart Banner, "Who's Afraid of Commercial Speech?" 76Virginia Law Review 627 (1990), p. 652.

"Commercial speech is like obscenity ... we can't seem to define it, but we know it whenwe see it."

- Jef Richards (1996), Associate Professor of Advertising, The University of Texasat Austin.

"Commercials are not the only junk food in the speech market - indeed, when comparedto shallow news reporting, vacuous television shows, or political doublespeak,commercials are not even the most harmful to mental health."

- Rodney A. Smolla, "Information, Imagery, and the First Amendment: A Case forExpansive Protection of Commercial Speech," 71 Texas Law Review 777 (1993),p. 797.

"The question about those aromatic advertisements that perfume companies are havingstitched into magazines these days is this: under the freedoms guaranteed by the FirstAmendment, is smelling up the place a constitutionally protected form of expression?"

- Calvin Trillin (1986), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library:Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: StonesongPress, p. 71.

FREQUENCY

"In communications, familiarity breeds apathy."


"The value of an ad is in inverse ratio to the number of times it has been used."

- Raymond Rubicam

FUN

"In my opinion, fun is what makes advertising successful."

- Leo Bogart, quoted in Martin Mayer, Whatever Happened to Madison Avenue?Advertising in the '90s (1991), Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, p. 28.

"Fun without sell gets nowhere but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious."


"Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is inbusiness for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business."


"I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on."

- Jerry Della Famina, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor(1971), New York: Pocket Books, p. 256.

FUTURE

"Advertising is the king's messenger in this day of economic democracy. All unknowinga new force has been let loose in the world. Those who understand it will have one ofthe keys to the future."

- Editorial, "Messenger to the King," Collier's, 1930 (May 3), p. 78.

"[T]here will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with theadvertisements of things."

- William Dean Howells, quoted in Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A CulturalHistory of Advertising in America, 1994, New York: BasicBooks, p. 286.

"Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are therichest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range ofactivities."

- Marshall McLuhan

"When the historian of the Twentieth Century shall have finished his narrative, andcomes searching for the subtitle which shall best express the spirit of the period, wethink it not at all unlikely that he may select 'The Age of Advertising' for the purpose."

- Printers' Ink, (May 27, 1915), vol. 91, p. 102.

"The Death of Advertising? I think that's in the book of Revelation. It's the day whenpeople everywhere become satisfied with their weight, their hair, their skin, theirwardrobe, and their aroma."


"Advertising is on its deathbed and it will not survive long, having contracted a fatalcase of new technology."

- Roland T. Rust and Richard W. Oliver, "The Death of Advertising," Journal ofAdvertising, 1994, 23(4): 71-77, p. 76.

GENERALLY

"There is no such thing as a permanent advertising success."


"Advertising moves people toward goods; merchandising moves goods toward people."

- Morris Hite, quoted in Adman: Morris Hite's Methods for Winning the Ad Game,

1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 36.

"I believe that a contract, or at least an understanding, exists between the Americanpublic and the American advertiser concerning what advertising is, what its limitationsare and what price people will pay for it."


HONESTY

"No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist.And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway."


"Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable."


"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flowof fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer acountry."

- Raymond Chandler, U.S. author, quoted in Robert Andrews, The ColumbiaDictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 18.

"The first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise . . . and cultivate thedelightfully vague."

- John Crosby (1947), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library:Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: StonesongPress, p. 70.

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."

- Thomas Jefferson, quoted in H.L. Menchen, A New Dictionary of Quotations,1946, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 17.

"Folks with their wits about them knew that advertisements were just a pack of lies -you had only to look at the claims of patent medicines!"

- Frances Parkinson Keyes, quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York PublicLibrary: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York:Stonesong Press, p. 70.

"In the ad biz, sincerety is a commodity bought and paid for like everything else."

- Newsweek (1967), quoted in Wesley Douglas Comp, Comps UnfamiliarQuotations, 1990, New Jersey: Prentice Hall., p. 4.

"It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a productwhich he would not allow his own wife to buy."


"Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. Youwouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, whichwill prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product

a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think theproduct is good, you have no business to be advertising it."


"If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out - either by the Government, whichwill prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your producta second time."


"There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantlydishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections."

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (1985), New York: Vintage Books, p. 209.

"There is a huge difference between journalism and advertising. Journalism aspires totruth. Advertising is regulated for truth. I'll put the accuracy of the average ad in thiscountry up against the average news story any time."


"If its not done ethically, advertising won't be trusted. If consumers don't trust it,advertising is pointless."


"Why, I ask, isn't it possible that advertising as a whole is a fantastic fraud, presentingan image of America taken seriously by no one, least of all by the advertising men whocreate it?"

- David Riesman, quoted in Edward F. Murphy, The Crown Treasury of RelevantQuotations, 1978, New York: Crown Publishers, p. 15.

"Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product isscrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, theimplication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks withthe viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent."


"[L]ying and cheating in advertising, in the long run, are commercial suicide.Dishonesty in advertising destroys not only confidence in advertising, but also in themedium which carries the dishonest advertisement. . . . No one can be ill in acommunity without endangering others; no advertiser can be dishonest without castingsuspicion upon others."


"The big print giveth and the small print taketh away."

- Tom Waitts, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of Political Quotations,1982, New York: Crown Publishing Inc., p. 1.

HYPNOSIS

"The copy [of an ad] is merely a punning gag to distract the critical faculties while the

image of the [product] goes to work on the hypnotized viewer. Those who have spenttheir lives protesting about 'false and misleading ad copy' are godsends to advertisers,as teetotalers are to brewers, and moral censors are to books and films. The protestersare the best acclaimers and accelerators. Since the advent of pictures, the job of the adcopy is as incidental and latent as the 'meaning' of a poem is to a poem, or the words ofa song are to a song."

- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The extensions of man, 1964, NewYork: New American Library, Inc., p. 205.

IDEA / CONCEPT

"To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off havingideas."


"I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come fromclients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what somewriters think."


"Make the layouts rough and the ideas fancy."

- Stavros Cosmopulos, of Cosmopulos, Crowley & Daly, Inc.

"Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill. Don't forget that, all ofyou who don't have them."

- John Elliott, Jr., quoted in Leonard Safir and William Safire, Good Advice, 1982,New York: Times Books, p. 7.

"If an ad campaign is built around a weak idea - or as is so often the case, no idea at all- I don't give a damn how good the execution is, it's going to fail."


"If you have a good selling idea, your secretary can write your ad for you."


"It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy yourproduct. 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."


IMAGE

"An image . . . is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily rememberedpicture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution,corporation, product or service."

- Daniel Boorstin, quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: AnAdvertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 12.

"You now have to decide what 'image' you want for your brand. Image means

personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break themin the market place."


"Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbolwhich is the brand image."


"Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them anothertaste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'llthink the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images."


"In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope."

- Charles Revson, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of PoliticalQuotations, 1982, New York: Crown Publishing Inc., p. 2.

"Interactive advertising will enable the further 'anthropomorphizing' of brands. In thecoming years we will be giving businesses a very human persona. What consumers seewill, in a very real sense, seem like a living and breathing human being. Manycompanies will create virtual bodies -- male, female, young or old -- as well as virtualpersonalities. One business may, by all appearances, be a laid-back, calm, fatherlyfigure, while another will have the personality of an energetic, young, party-animal. Toachieve this we will start to look seriously at what makes some people uniquely popularand likable, in the hope of capturing that essence for our brand."

- Jef I. Richards (2000), Chairman of the Advertising Department at TheUniversity of Texas-Austin.

IMITATION

"If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soonsee another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has everbuilt a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising."


INSECURITY / UNHAPPINESS

"Advertising promotes that divine discontent which makes people strive to improvetheir economic status."

- Ralph Starr Butler, quoted in John P. Bradley, Leo F. Daniels & Thomas C. Jones,The International Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969, Chicago, IL: J. G. FergusonPublishing Co., p. 13.

"Next to Christianity, advertising is the greatest force in the world. And I say thatwithout sacrilege or disrespect. Advertising makes people discontented. It makes themwant things they don't have. Without discontent, there is no progress, no achievement."

- Ray Locke, former owner of Tracy-Locke Co., quoted in Adman: Morris Hite'sMethods for Winning the Ad Game, 1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 78.

"It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have."

- B. Earl Puckett, quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Bookof Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: Stonesong Press, p.71.

"Buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of."

- Michael Schudson, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & WhitesideBook of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 18.

"Advertising may make people believe they are inadequate without Product X and thatProduct X will satisfactorily manage their inadequacies. More likely, it may remindthem of inadequacies they have already felt and may lead them, once at least, to try anew product that just might help, even though they are well aware that it probably willnot."


INTERNATIONAL

"Any communication or marketing professional needs cross-cultural research andcommunication skills to be able to succeed in the future."

- Marye Tharp (1996), Associate Professor of Advertising, The University of Texasat Austin.

INTRUSIVE

"Never before the advent of radio did advertising have such a golden opportunity tomake an ass out of itself. Never before could advertising be so insistent and sounmannerly and so affront its audience."

- William J. Cameron (1938), director of public relations for Ford Motor Company,quoted in Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertisingin America, 1994, New York: BasicBooks, p. 238-39.

"A good advertising man is a first-class pragmatist. If he has any basic theorem at all, itis that most advertising is an intrusion upon the time and attention of people; ajustifiable one but an intrusion nonetheless. The reader has bought the magazine forsomething other than the ads . . . Therefore the copywriters undertake to stop him inspite of himself."

- Albert Lynd, quoted in Edward F. Murphy, The Crown Treasury of RelevantQuotations, 1978, New York: Crown Publishers, p. 15.

"When executing advertising, it's best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in theliving room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly."


"Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turnshuman beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.Commercial society finds unintelligible the idea that anything - an emotion, activity, orproduct - is too 'intimately personal' for uninhibited commercial treatment."

- George Will (1975), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library:Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: Stonesong

Press, p. 71.

JINGLES

"The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sellanything."


LAW & REGULATION

"There are quite a few votes to be won by saying we will tax advertising or stop it."

- Barry Day, Vice Chairman of McCann-Erickson, quoted in Eric Clark, The WantMakers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 125.

"Commercials on television are similar to sex and taxes; the more talk there is aboutthem, the less likely they are to be curbed."

- Jack Gould (1963), quoted in Bruce Bohle, The Home Book of AmericanQuotations, 1967, New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Company, p. 5.

"The law requires a paper towel ad to be scrupulously honest, but allows politicalcandidates to lie without reproach. What's wrong with this picture?"


"Advertising is speech. It's regulated because it's often effective speech."


"The law requires a paper towel ad to be scrupulously honest, but allows politicalcandidates to lie without reproach. What's wrong with this picture?"


LIMITATIONS

"I've never found a client's business problem that could be solved solely throughadvertising."

- Lee Clow, president and chief creative officer of Chiat/Day, quoted in KarenStabiner, Inventing Desire (1993), New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 129.

LOGIC

"Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work."


"A vast sector of modern advertising . . . does not appeal to reason but to emotion; likeany other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally andthen make them submit intellectually."

- Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be? (1976), New York: Harper, p. 110.

"The illogical man is what advertising is after. This is why advertising is so anti-rational; this is why it aims at uprooting not only the rationality of man but his commonsense."

- Henryk Skolimowski, "The Semantic Environment in the Age of Advertising," inThomas H. Ohlbren and L. M. Berk, The New Languages: A Rhetorical Approachto the Mass Media and Popular Culture (1977), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, p. 95.

MANIPULATION

"A fundamental truth about advertising is that advertising agency people are not theultimate decision-makers. As the advertising agency system functions today, they arethe puppets, the manipulated. Nor is the advertiser as he sits astride the bleeding,panting agencyman the one who wields the whip in full command. The final control, thedecisive power, is in your hands and under your command - if you will use it."

- Samm Sinclair Baker, The Permissible Lie: The Inside Truth About Advertising,1968, Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, p. 6.

"Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate andpretty low estimate of people - and he won't do very well in advertising."


"Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. Ademand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation."

- Marshall McLuhan, quoted in John Robert Colombo, The Dictionary of CanadianQuotations, 1991, Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., p. 6.

"Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience hastaught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised productswhich consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, theresults have been disastrous."


"Advertising is criticized on the ground that it can manipulate consumers to follow thewill of the advertiser. The weight of evidence denies this ability. Instead, evidencesupports the position that advertising, to be successful, must understand or anticipatebasic human needs and wants and interpret available goods and services in terms oftheir want-satisfying abilities. This is the very opposite of manipulation."

- Charles H. Sandage, "Some Institutional Aspects of Advertising," Journal ofAdvertising, 1972, vol. 1(1).

"Sixty percent of the newspaper space may be filled with advertising, but thatadvertising does not command sixty percent of the average reader's attention. We areinured to most of these advertisements and commercials; they wash over us withouteven dampening the skin. We often do not stop to even read or watch the ads at all, andwhen we do, they rarely penetrate or connect with our consciousness, let alonetransform our identity. True, we are all persuaded and seduced from time to time bythese ads, encouraged to make irrational impulsive consumer choices. But that kind ofpersuasion and seduction is endemic to social life; we run across it constantly anddevelop mechanisms to filter it out and fend it off."

- Rodney A. Smolla, "Information, Imagery, and the First Amendment: A Case for

Expansive Protection of Commercial Speech," 71 Texas Law Review 777 (1993),p. 797.

Advertising "degrades the people it appeals to; it deprives them of their will to choose."

- C. P. Snow, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World ofAdvertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 371.

"Although advertising is communication unusually candid about its motivation,Americans love to loathe it. As society becomes more complex and opaque, as socialprocesses seem more impersonal and autonomous, and as elites of 'experts' becomemore annoying, more people are tepted to think that some 'they' is manipulating 'us,'using, among other dark arts, advertising."

- George F. Will, syndicated columnist, "The Forbes Phenomenon: Should politicalcommunication be rationed?" Austin American-Statesman, January 26, 1996, p.A9.

MEASUREMENT

"The Great Idea in advertising is far more than the sum of the recognition scores, theratings and all the other superficial indicators of its success; it is in the realm of myth,to which measurements cannot apply."

- Leo Bogart, quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: AnAdvertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 113.

"As I see it, this is where we stand. We measure the sales effectiveness of ads orcommercials on their ability to attract attention and communicate, or on their ability toaffect attitudes, or on some combination of these and we hope, and have some evidenceto indicate, that we are really measuring the sales effects of the advertising"

- John S. Coulson, vice president of research for Leo Burnett Company, "Ads CanChange Attitudes, Hike Sales; Effects Measurable," Marketing News, February16, 1976, p. 5.

MEDIA

"Word of mouth is the best medium of all."


"The buying of time or space is not the taking out of a hunting license on someoneelse's private preserve but is the renting of a stage on which we may perform."

- Howard Gossage, quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: AnAdvertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 188.

"As long as media is mass - when the consumer had no choice, when it was networks -you could fuck the consumer all day long with ring around the collar, because she hadto get up and turn off the set to avoid it. With cable and interactive sets, with thatremote control, you can't do that. It's got to be the polite invitation, instead of theharangue."

- Don Pepper, head of worldwide new business for Chiat/Day, quoted in KarenStabiner, Inventing Desire (1993), New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 92.

MEDIA SUPPORT

"The fact must never be forgotten that no magazine publisher in the United Statescould give what it is giving to the reader each month if it were not for the revenuewhich the advertiser brings the magazine. It is the growth of advertising in this countrywhich, more than any single element, has brought the American magazine to its presentenviable position in points of literary, illustrative and mechanical excellence. TheAmerican advertiser has made the superior American magazine of today possible"

- Edward Bok (1898), editor of Ladies' Home Journal, quoted in John W. Wright,The Commercial Connection: Advertising & the American Mass Media, 1979, NewYork: Dell Publishing Co., p. overleaf.

"In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business ofcommunications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People arethe merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait."

- Les Brown, Television: The Business Behind the Box, 1971, New York: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, p. 15-16.

"A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising."

- James Collins (1907), ad executive, quoted in Jackson Lears, Fables ofAbundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, 1994, New York:BasicBooks, p. 201.

"There have been many disputes by advertisers and their agencies about articlespublished in magazines to which they took exception, and scheduled advertising hasbeen cancelled. But I can see no difference between this and the action of an irateindividual who cancels his subscription because of an article or story that he doesn'tlike."

- Fairfax Cone, of Foote Cone & Belding, quoted in Jackson Lears, Fables ofAbundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, 1994, New York:BasicBooks, p. 255.

"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 advertisingsupport, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."

- Alexander Hamilton (1803), founder of the New York Evening Post, quoted inJohn W. Wright, The Commercial Connection: Advertising & the American MassMedia, 1979, New York: Dell Publishing Co., p. overleaf.

"The role of the publisher . . . has changed from seller of a product to consumers, togatherer of consumer for advertisers . . . The role of the reader changes from sovereignconsumer to advertiser bait."

- Vincent P. Norris, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World ofAdvertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 377.

"Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose.. . . the vast majority of editors are incorruptible."


"It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements andthen attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye."


"One Ad is worth more to a paper than forty Editorials."

- Will Rogers (1924), comedian, quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, The InternationalThesaurus of Quotations, 1970, New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, p.18.

"With no ads, who would pay for the media? The good fairy?"

- Samuel Thurm, senior vice president of the Association of National Advertisers,quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988,New York: Penguin Books, p. 317.

MORALITY & ETHICS

"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 manyin so short a time."


"Ethics in advertising? Advertising is about as ethical as the American public. About asethical as you and your neighbors. About as selfish as you and your acquaintances. Ithas about the same moral standards as the upper socioeconomic strata of societybecause it is created, approved and paid for by the upper echelons of modern U.S.society. I'll modify that to say that it is a little more ethical, a little more moral, than theupper economic strata of society. Why? Because advertising lives in a fish bowl. It is themost visible of all commercial practices. It has 200 million critics. And no business, nocommunications medium, no art form (or whatever you want to call advertising), noother enterprise has so many watchdogs."

- Morris Hite, quoted in Adman: Morris Hite's Methods for Winning the Ad Game,1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 200-201.

"The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose anyimprovement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the publicgood, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear,whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions."

- Dr. Samuel Johnson (1759), English author, quoted in Robert Andrews, TheColumbia Dictionary of Quotations, 1993, New York, NY: Columbia UniversityPress, p. 18.

"[A]dvertising is a non-moral force, like electricity, which not only illuminates butelectrocutes. Its worth to civilization depends upon how it is used."

- J. Walter Thompson agency business pitch (1925), quoted in Jackson Lears,Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, 1994, NewYork: BasicBooks, p. 224.

PERVASIVE

"The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be."


"Advertising, whether or not it sells cars or chocolate, surrounds us and enters into us,so that when we speak we may speak in or with reference to the language ofadvertising and when we see we may see through schemata that advertising has madesalient for us . . . . [S]trictly as symbol, the power of advertising may be considerable."


POLITICAL

"Of course you sell candidates for political office the same way you sell soap or sealingwax or whatever; because, when you get right down to it, that's the only way anythingis sold."

- Sid Bernstein, advertising commentator, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers:Inside the World of Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 291.

"Political commercials encourage the deceptive, the destructive and the degrading."

- John O'Toole, Chairman of Foote Cone & Belding, quoted in Eric Clark, The WantMakers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 305.

"Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind ofadvertising that's left. It's totally dishonest."

- David Ogilvy, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the W

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