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Advertising Quotes
"Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy."
214
"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising."
188
"Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving."
150
"Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things."
91
"In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal."
59
"Advertising generally works to reinforce consumer trends rather than to initiate them."
56
"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."
55
"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."
53
"What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it."
53
"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."
52
"If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic."
52
"The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be."
52
"Advertising is speech. It's regulated because it's often effective speech."
52
"A good ad which is not run never produces sales."
51
"A viewer who skips the advertising is the moral equivalent of a shoplifter."
51
"In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
49
"Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest."
49
"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."
48
"I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil."
48
"Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it."
48
"What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form."
47
"I went out to some advertising agencies and asked if I could do anything."
46
"Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread."
46
"The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference."
46
"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."
45
"We should remember the campaign advertising will be only a smaller portion of the President's total exposure."
44
"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."
44
"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."
44
"Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible."
43
"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."
43
"Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn."
43
"Advertising is the very essence of democracy."
43
"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."
43
"Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens inside these agencies."
42
"It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media."
42
"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."
42
"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."
42
"We have always said that advertising is just the icing on the cake. It is not the cake."
41
"In the world of commercial speech, tobacco advertising bears the earmarks of an endangered species."
40
"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."
40
"Sanely applied advertising could remake the world."
40
"I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone who believes advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything."
39
"Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor."
39
"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."
39
"I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad."
39
"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."
39
"It used to be that a fellow went on the police force when everything else failed, but today he goes in the advertising game."
38
"Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message."
38
"I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it."
38
"The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself."
38
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