Advertising Quotes

498 Sourced quotes

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.

The reason I've been calling what we do media arts for the last five years is because I would like the definition to change and the respectability to come back to big advertising networks. We have to claw our way back to respectability.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

Daniel J. Boorstin

During the 36 years I have been in the agency business I have always been naively guided by the principle that if we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, or at least to give them a real try, we are not completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others....

Eliminate all forms of monopolistic market power, to include the breakup of large oligopolistic corporations and application of anti-trust laws to labor unions. A Federal incorporation law could be used to limit corporation size and where technology required giant firms for reasons of low cost production the Federal government should own and operate them... Promote economic stability by reform of the monetary system and establishment of stable rules for monetary policy... Reform the tax system and promote equity through income tax... Abolish all tariffs... Limit waste by restricting advertising and other wasteful merchandising practices.

Henry Calvert Simons

Advertising is legalized lying.

When a client comes to us with a product, he is, in effect, giving us a problem to be solved.... Some of the biggest advertising mistakes are people who imagine they know what the problem is, or they're not even thinking about; they're just coming up with that brilliant idea and trying to force the problem to fit it.

Mary Wells Lawrence

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.

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

Different groups are differentially vulnerable to advertising; and their vulnerability varies not so much with the character or quantity of advertisements as with the informational resources they can claim by age, education, station in life, and government guarantees of consumer protection.

Michael Schudson

No one can deny that much of our modern advertising is essentially dishonest; and it can be maintained that to lie freely and all the time for private profit is not to abuse the right of free speech, whether it is a violation of the law or not. But again the practical question is, how much lying for private profit is to be permitted by law?

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.

I was in California and I was talking to, I think, fifth graders, and one little girl raised her hand and said, 'Mrs. Reagan, what do you do if somebody offers you drugs?' And I said, 'Well, you just say no.' And there it was born. I think people thought that we had an advertising agency over who dreamed that up — not true.

Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester—but without hangovers.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

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

Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.

Boredom forces you to ring people you haven't seen for eighteen years and halfway through the conversation you remember why you left it so long. Boredom means you start to read not only mail-order catalogues but also the advertising inserts that fall on the floor. Boredom gives you half a mind to get a gun and go berserk in the local shopping centre, and you know where this is going. Eventually, boredom means you will take up golf.

Jeremy Clarkson

Capitalism brainwashes us through advertising and the skewing of priorities.... We need economies that promote human values, seek to limit suffering, and are committed to democratic principles, rather than ones dependent on global trade and a blind commitment to neo-liberal economic policies.

Sulak Sivaraksa

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

The first thing one must do to succeed in advertising is to have the attention of the reader. That means to be interesting. The next thing is to stick to the truth, and that means 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 Emory Powers

No company that markets products or services to the consumer can remain a leader in its field without a deep-seated commitment to advertising.

It used to be fashionable for authors to have their pictures taken with dogs, but the dogs always looked like models hired from an advertising agency, and probably were.

Robertson Davies

Most agencies run scared, most of the time....Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising.... If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.