We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.
—Thomas Merton (1915–68) American Trappist Monk
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 (1896–1940) American Novelist
As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The first four words ever uttered, “Let there be light,” constitute its charter. All nature is vibrant with its impulse.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American Author, Advertising Executive, Politician
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 (b.1936) American Advertising Executive
There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.
—David Ogilvy (1911–99) British-American Advertising Executive
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 (1891–1971) American Advertising Executive
Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams—Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
Advertising is legalized lying.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.
—David Ogilvy (1911–99) British-American Advertising Executive
The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.
—Laurence J. Peter (1919–90) Canadian-born American Educator, Author
The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.
—Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American Advertising Executive
Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
Good things sell themselves; those that are bad have to be advertised.
—African Proverb
However far your travels take you, you will never find the girl who smiles out at you from the travel brochure.
—Unknown
If you are writing about baloney, don’t try and make it Cornish hen, because that’s the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darn good baloney.
—Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American Advertising Executive
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
—David Ogilvy (1911–99) British-American Advertising Executive
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 (1899–1948) American Writer, Artist
An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
Sanely applied advertising could remake the world.
—Stuart Chase (1888–1985) American Economist, Engineer, Author
Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.
—William Bernbach (1911–82) American Advertising Executive
Advertising is one of the few callings in which it is advisable to pay attention to someone else’s business.
—Howard W. Newton
Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer
Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret … to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.
—Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American Advertising Executive
The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, 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.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader’s eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
—David Ogilvy (1911–99) British-American Advertising Executive
Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.
—Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American Advertising Executive
Advertising is the life of trade.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer