Top 100 Advertising's Quotes
#1. I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone who believes advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything.
Jef I. Richards
#2. Television is more of a business. You can't take as many risks, because there's so many channels now, and the advertising's dropping.
Dana Delany
#3. Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation:
youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness.
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
#4. An old advertising maxim says you've got to spell out the benefit of the benefit. In other words, people don't buy quarter-inch drill bits. They buy quarter-inch holes so they can hang their children's pictures.
Chip Heath
#5. People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker!
Mary Gordon
#6. It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business
David Ogilvy
#7. We are not advertising ourselves as a secure platform. It's a communication platform. It's not our job to police the world or Snapchat of jerks.
Evan Spiegel
#8. I'd never assume an audience was anything but totally receptive and perfect. Seriously, it seems to me that's the only circumstance you can work under. Otherwise, speaking for myself, you may as well be in the advertising business.
Tom Verlaine
#9. Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on all around you
Bob Dylan
#10. Broadcast television is designed to reach as many people as possible, right? There's an obligation that we as creators have to advertisers, and it is an advertising medium.
Jerrod Carmichael
#11. Production goes up and up because high pressure advertising and salesmanship constantly create new needs that must be satisfied: this is Admass- a consumer's race with donkeys chasing an electric carrot.
J.B. Priestley
#12. Woman's bodies continue to be dismembered in advertising. Over and over again just one part of the body is used to sell products, which is one of the most dehumanizing thing you can do to someone. Not only is she a thing, but just one part of that thing is focused on.
Jean Kilbourne
#13. I've had it-the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy-it's an advertising medium.
Robert Altman
#15. We inside Diesel are the first consumers of our advertising. We make ad campaigns for our own amusement - that's why they succeed.
Renzo Rosso
#16. What advertising dum-dum signed up Ilie Nastase to sell a resort?! Who'd want to go where he's at?
Malcolm Forbes
#17. 'Brand-Dropping' is the term that the Kluger Agency coined to describe discreetly advertising by product mentioning in song, and we feel we can make this the way of the future without jeopardizing any artist's creative outlet or typical style.
Adam Kluger
#18. Every time you're exposed to advertising in America you're reminded that this country's most profitable business is still the manufacture, packaging, distribution, and marketing of bullshit. High-quality, grade-A, prime-cut, pure American bullshit.
George Carlin
#19. Citigroup has the opportunity to be the largest financial institution and to serve us well. What we decide to do is not what everybody else does. Other companies sponsor women's events and put a woman's face in advertising. This is financial services wrapped in pink.
Lisa Caputo
#20. The error that we tend to make is that we think that women's magazines are what editors want and what their readers want - and thus are social indicators - when, in fact, they are what advertisers want. They're just advertising indicators.
Gloria Steinem
#21. Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.
David Ogilvy
#22. The Internet creates as well as destroys. Social networks, search advertising, and cloud computing are multibillion dollar industries that didn't exist 10 years ago. They are products of the same force that has rendered the Postal Service's core business obsolete.
John Sununu
#23. Nobody's profitable at this moment, because recession is on; advertising dollars are down, and expenses are way up. So that kind of belies the situation that you would expect, because the ratings are way up everywhere.
Brit Hume
#24. Increasingly, corporations will look to advertising agencies for direction. Without an understanding of brand creation, messaging, and strategy, today's designers are destined to become the haidressers of tomorrow's creative environments-great for styling but light on strategy.
Hartmut Esslinger
#25. The smartest advertising is the advertising that communicates the best and respects the consumer's intelligence.
Lee Clow
#26. TOMS didn't have to focus on advertising, but on giving in a way that's sustainable.
Blake Mycoskie
#28. Today they have to be three-dimensional. Technology's changed, the communication, the marketing and advertising community supports beautiful girls that can be articulate and smart. And also Anna Wintour doesn't want to sit next to some girl who can't say two words.
Michael Flutie
#29. Spam is a waste of the receivers' time, and, a waste of the sender's optimism.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#31. Think of it: television producers joining with newspapers to tell stories. It's journalism of the future. Advertising will follow the crowd - the 'crowd' being viewers and readers, of course, which could bring revenue back into journalism.
Bill Kurtis
#32. I'm an optimist. I hope if a movie's good that it will be a success, but as we know, that's not always true, just because of popular taste, advertising, distribution patterns - there's lots of reasons.
Willem Dafoe
#33. An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who's the better writer?
Jason Lutes
#34. A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it's the most ridiculous concept.
Mark Zuckerberg
#35. Most learning is social, or what I call the cultural DNA. Everyone knows that word of mouth advertising is the best advertising. That's social learning.
Stephen Covey
#36. At the start of the twenty-first century, the advertising industry is guiding one of history's most massive stealth efforts in social profiling.
Joseph Turow
#37. It's not funny at all that we do all that advertising for children. Why is advertising for children allowed? What possible reason can there be for having those effing adverts on TV for all this crap that's made by poor people in poor countries that we sell our children who have too much?
Emma Thompson
#38. People used to say that advertising wasn't in Google's DNA, and that's obviously not true anymore. They used to say that display advertising isn't in Google's DNA, and that's not true any more.
Susan Wojcicki
#39. Communication, that's what I do. Advertising is the best way to communicate because you reach a lot of people. I still cant understand though, why people are shocked by something that obviously exists. Its like a family that avoids talking about its real problems.
Oliviero Toscani
#40. You have to prove that the Freberg way will sell their product better than if they just did straight advertising. Whenever I give a lecture or seminar, that's what I try to get across to people. I hear very few radio commercials that sound like I could have written them or that they got the idea.
Stan Freberg
#41. I've never found a client's business problem that could be solved solely through advertising.
Lee Clow
#42. Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'
Leo Burnett
#43. One thing I've always been concerned about is the objectification of women in ads, and that's one thing where I was like, 'Well, if I become a part of advertising, I could change that.'
Yara Shahidi
#44. Advertising is what I do. It's got me everything I have, and I'm not going to leave it.
Jerry Della Femina
#45. Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility.
Leo Burnett
#46. I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas
David Ogilvy
#47. The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers ... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment.
Michael Schudson
#48. In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.
Jerry Della Femina
#49. It's pointless to spend millions on advertising before ensuring that the promise keepers (employees) understand and can keep the promises made by the promise makers
Ian P. Buckingham
#50. I don't want to kill ads. I think advertising is great, and I'm very aware that there's multiple revenue streams in television, subscription and advertising. But I also don't want to put my head in the sand, and I think the world is changing.
Charlie Ergen
#51. Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world ... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.
Kenneth Koch
#52. A superhero's catchphrase should be like a really memorable advertising slogan. It sticks in your head and you can't stop humming it. And let's face it, superheroes are just really selling themselves as products.
Stan Lee
#53. Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film.
Jerry Saltz
#54. America Online customers are upset because the company has decided to allow advertising in its chat rooms. I can see why: you got computer sex, you can download pornography, people are making dates with 10 year-olds. Hey, what's this? A Pepsi ad? They're ruining the integrity of the Internet!
Jay Leno
#55. See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!
Bill Hicks
#56. Radio is paid by advertising. They decide what songs to play that'll keep people listening. And that's what promoters and the Classic Rock people do.
George Thorogood
#57. No one's family is normal. Normalcy is a lie invented by advertising agencies to make the rest of us feel inferior.
Claire LaZebnik
#59. Everything's stolen. Everything precious - be it a kiss, or be it James Brown - gets misappropriated to the aid of the advertising executives. So, an act of reclamation, somewhere else to be: that's what I want my music to be. Somewhere you can step into. A place.
David Gray
#60. You're only as good as your next idea. And if you can't agree on that, then it's time to walk.
John Hegarty
#61. It's very possible that advertising business models will simply never do as well on mobile devices as those oriented around transactions.
Patrick Collison
#62. Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising.
David Whyte
#63. People of all ages, including children, have been exposed to clever and eye-catching advertising material, .. All that will now change. Tobacco advertising is going to end, and it's going to end soon,.
Frank Dobson
#64. The only thing that really annoys me is when all of a sudden you hear yourself on the radio advertising Smith's tyre shop or Blenkinsop's jam. They simply can't do that. And in Australia, occasionally I have to take action.
Richie Benaud
#65. Advertising tries to stimulate our sensuous desires, converting luxuries into necessities, but it only intensifies man's inner misery. The business world is bent on creating hungers which its wares never satisfy, and thus it adds to the frustrations and broken minds of our times.
Fulton J. Sheen
#66. If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.
David Ogilvy
#67. The Death of Advertising? I think that's in the book of Revelation. It's the day when people everywhere become satisfied with their weight, their hair, their skin, their wardrobe, and their aroma.
Jef I. Richards
#68. Don't play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It's a seduction.
Al Ries
#69. Creativity is an advertising agency's most valuable asset, because it is the rarest.
Jef I. Richards
#70. It's almost as if creativity is dead. The visual power of advertising was everywhere - now it's basically gone.
George Lois
#71. Television, I would say,
isn't an advertising medium.
It's a selling medium.
William S. Paley
#72. To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I'm not lying; I'm just saying, 'This one's more fun, this one's more exciting.'
George Lois
#73. The first lesson of branding: memorability. It's very difficult buying something you can't remember.
John Hegarty
#74. It's never the next brief, it's ALWAYS THIS brief .
Paul Arden
#75. The dark comedies tend to be in a non-releasable area. There can be romantic comedies. There can be dramas. But there's no 'dark comedy' inbox for the advertising.
Gus Van Sant
#76. That's the kind of ad I like, facts, facts, facts.
Samuel Goldwyn
#77. A lot of advertising has gotten worse. I think it's kind of lost its nerve, to be honest with you. I feel like the advertising of the '60s, they were nervier. You know why? Because there was less at stake.
Jerry Seinfeld
#78. I saw on HBO they were advertising a boxing match "It's a fight to the finish". That's a good place to end.
Mitch Hedberg
#79. It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.
Brene Brown
#80. There's a card up in your little sweetshop advertising Pomeranian cross puppies free to a good home," he observed. "What's your point?" "I'm not a puppy, you can't give me away.
Sarah Rees Brennan
#81. Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before.
William Bernbach
#82. I have always championed the concept of administrators of color. My mother worked in advertising, and growing up, I saw my mother's community of women working behind the scenes. I had the opportunity from a young age to know that I could do this work.
Lisa Lucas
#83. The purpose of American culture is to create a norm, Morris. That means extraordinary people must be leveled, and it happens to Jimmy. He ends up working in advertising, for God's sake, and what greater agent of the norm is there in this fucked - up country?
Stephen King
#84. And it's interesting, when you look at the predictions made during the peak of the boom in the 1990s, about e-commerce, or internet traffic, or broadband adoption, or internet advertising, they were all right - they were just wrong in time.
Chris Anderson
#85. When I lecture kids, I say, 'You've got to be ambitious by the advertising - ambitious. You've got to say, 'See, this product? Maybe I can change the world with this product.' They look at me like I'm nuts, but that's what you can do.
George Lois
#86. We passed gas stations and chain food restaurants, with their billboards advertising happiness. I know the images in magazines and on TV aren't true representations of the world; I mean, that's obvious. But I still get this sinking feeling of disappointment, as if it is the world I should see.
Ethan Hawke
#87. A lot of kids do not know my club exists yet. I did not do any big advertising, and that's what I might do in the next two or three weeks, put something in the paper.
Thomas Dooley
#88. Not everyone reads advertising; they read what they are interested in, and sometimes, that's advertising.
George Parker
#89. It's very complicated. There's been this broader mechanism, an industry, which wants people to use free services, from the old days of advertising-supported papers and magazines, to ad-supported free television.
Astra Taylor
#90. Advertising is, of course, important because advertise is the final design. It's the last layer that speaks to the customer, that tells them what you have.
Tom Ford
#91. Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.
David Ogilvy
#92. Any time an investment company has to spend heavily on advertising, it's probably a bad business in which to invest.
Robert Kiyosaki
#93. When executing advertising, it's best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly.
John O'Toole
#95. The record labels used to spend money on advertising, and social media has replaced that entirely - it's putting magazines out of business. It's put big companies into completely reinventing their strategies.
Steve Aoki
#96. Outside of advertising, the person who's influenced me most is quite possibly Frank Gehry.
Jay Chiat
#97. Before a marketer can build trust, it must breed familiarity. But there's no familiarity without awareness. And awareness - the science of letting people know you exist and getting them to understand your message - can't happen effectively in today's environment without advertising.
Seth Godin
#98. There's no such thing as bad publicity,
P.T. Barnum
#99. An incredible advertising career is not about creating an incredibly amazing ad, it's about making an incredible amazing ad every single day of your career, it's about getting those adds killed, and resurrecting them over and over again. It's about your season average not that occasional home-run.
Lee Clow
#100. There are huge advertising budgets only when there's no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.
Carl Sagan
