Great Advertising Quotes & Sayings

Don's Mancini father was an advertising executive and I think Don really grew up and all of that stayed in his head. Some of the really great slogans we came up with, over the years, the big advertising buzz-words that we had, Don created those. It's just kind of fun just thinking about what we both love about pop culture and applying it to Chucky film and any others. — David Kirschner

Great advertising is the expression of deep emotional sincerity. — Storm Jameson

For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last
newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising
pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this
one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor
patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the
smallest boy into the burning plea: Almighty God, bless our arms
when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now
whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle! — Adolf Hitler

It's not about how much money you have. It's not about the physical. It's about male role models. When a young boy feels secure and can watch and learn and receive praise from a man he admires, that boy will become a real man. All the money in advertising and all of the crazy superstars in this world can't touch that. When a boy hears words like "I love you", "You're great", "You're daddy's little man", "You're growing up", "I'm so proud of you because...", from a male figure they admire, they will gain a positive and healthy self image that will last them a lifetime. — Wayne Reese

I was a journalist, but I was starving. And I've written fiction, but I couldn't get a publisher. So, I was basically a very frustrated creative person working in advertising, and even there, I have a great idea that client won't buy it. — Jeffrey Zeldman

When I was in advertising, I did a great deal of work on television commercials. A co-worker and I wrote a screenplay, which led to a few more screenplays, and some were optioned by production companies. I was advised to move to California but didn't want to make the move. I decided to use another form of storytelling, so I wrote a novel. — M.J. Rose

If you want quality service, you have to pay for it. You don't buy into waste. I have great misgivings about the amount of advertising that we see in the health care field, some by hospitals, a lot by drug companies. — Dave Obey

Your company ... will send drugs to all the underdeveloped countries of the world, and since they do not have any standards, we will fool them all and can make a great big profit and never tell the doctors that there is a risk ... You will meet the standards of the country in which you are advertising, not the ... proper standard ... I would think that you would not sleep at night ... I do not think this country will not stand for it. — Gaylord Nelson

It's great when you can bait and switch people - and I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean that in truth. If we were advertising this movie as a very serious indictment about the hunt for war criminals, and it's a very dark drama, it would probably get great reviews, but people would stay away from it because no one wants to be lectured. — Richard Shepard

'Flappy Bird' was one of those phenomena. If we could all build one now, we would. Probably a bunch of us are trying. Those kinds of games are interesting. Rumor has it he was making $50,000 a day just from advertising, which is great, especially given the cost of living in Vietnam. — Chris DeWolfe

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

Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. "
"Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry."
"Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."
Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed.
"But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics. — Maud Hart Lovelace

My one great fear about advertising and media is that they, too, will become irrevocably unbundled, that marketers will no longer have need of media, — Jeff Jarvis

It's one of the great temptations, you see
wanting to prove the strength of your own faith by making others believe what you believe. It shows you're right.
But it doesn't prove anything of the sort. All it proves is that you're condescending and arrogant and good at doing what half-decent actors can do, or advertising agents, or pop stars, or politicians, or con men, or any of the professional persuaders. They sell illusions. And that's all they do. And they feel good when they succeed. That's what their lives depend on.
Which isn't true about religion. Or shouldn't be. Your belief shouldn't depend on what other people think about it. And it certainly should not depend on whether other people believe the same as you. — Aidan Chambers

The one conclusion I have reached is that whiskey is a great leveler. You might be a hotshot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard. — Vikas Swarup

The global aid community is mobilised into fighting drought in a district that gets 1,500 mm of rainfall annually. The reverse spiral begins. Donor governments love emergency relief. It forms a negligible part of their spending, but makes for great advertising. (Emergencies of many sorts do this, not just drought. You can run television footage of the Marines kissing babies in Somalia.) There are more serious issues between rich and poor nations - like unequal trade. Settling those would be of greater help to the latter. But for that, the 'donors' would have to part with something for real. No. They prefer emergency relief. — P.Sainath

The enemy is noise. By noise I mean not simply the noise of technology, the noise of money or advertising and promotion, the noise of the media, the noise of miseducation, but the terrible excitement and distraction generated by the crises of modern life. Mind, I don't say that philistinism is gone. It is not. It has found many disguises, some highly artistic and peculiarly insidious. But the noise of life is the great threat. Contributing to it are real and unreal issues, ideologies, rationalizations, errors, delusions, nonsituations that look real, nonquestions demanding consideration, opinions, analyses in the press, on the air, expertise, inside dope, factional disagreement, official rhetoric, information - in short, the sounds of the public sphere, the din of politics, the turbulence and agitation that set in about 1914 and have now reached an intolerable volume. — Saul Bellow

If you want to be a model, then you should probably become an actor. That's the only way to get hired to do the great advertising campaigns that are really interesting or the magazine covers, and it's hard to build a name for yourself as a model without those things. — Stephanie Seymour

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

The distance between Don Quixote and the petty bourgeois victim of advertising is not so great as romanticism would have us believe. — Rene Girard

When advertising is great, it's transcendent. It's art. — Jared Leto

We have looked for myths that include us in great novels, music, the latest comic book, or even some stupid advertising campaign. We'll look *anywhere* for a mythology that embraces people like ourselves. — Kate Bornstein

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

I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising. — Jerry Della Femina

But Sabbath is not only resistance. It is alternative. It is an alternative to the demanding, chattering, pervasive presence of advertising and its great liturgical claim of professional sports that devour all our "rest time. — Walter Brueggemann

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

Persuasion is not a science but an art — William Bernbach

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don't like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on. — Raymond Chandler

I've spent some time working with a non-Italian designer; I've been helping him organize fashion shows, the advertising, also helping with the creative part. But the great part about this work is that I am no one! — Allegra Versace

Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome by the beauty of the picture - and forget that merchandise must be sold. — James Randolph Adams

I had a friend who was the King's surgeon in England. One day I asked him what makes a great surgeon. He replied, "What distinguishes a great surgeon is his knowledge. He knows more than other surgeons. During an operation he finds something which he wasn't expecting, recognizes it and knows what to do about it." It's the same thing with advertising people. The good ones know more. How do you get to know more? By reading books about advertising. By picking the brains of people who know more than you do. From the Magic Lanterns. And from experience. — David Ogilvy

Google was founded to get information to everybody. A by-product of that strategy is that we invented an advertising business which has provided great economics that allows us to build the servers, hire the employees, create value. — Eric Schmidt

I've been doing documentaries for about 25 years and want to continue to do that, but I love the idea of working in a different medium. Advertising pushes the envelope creatively, and there is some really great work being done right now, so I'm excited to jump into it. — Rory Kennedy

Google did a great job hacking the Web to create search - and then monetizing search with advertising. And Apple did a great job humanizing hardware and software so that formerly daunting computers and applications could become consumer-friendly devices - even a lifestyle brand. — Douglas Rushkoff

When you internalize an author whose vision or philosophy is both rich and out of fashion, you gain a certain immunity from the pressures of the contemporary. The modern world, with it's fads, propaganda, and advertising, is forever trying to herd us into conformity. Great literature can help us to remain fad-proof. — Joseph Sobran

Advertising agencies come to you and they are great fans, they are great creative people themselves, but they ask you to do something, and you say, "Well, we will, we'll create something together." And it is work. It's like you're doing something and they're saying, "Change this" and "Change that." It's not hard, horrible work, but creatively it's not just freedom. — Wayne Coyne

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

Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant. They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! But we live in an abnormal country, governed by experts in deceptive advertising. — Gore Vidal

I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert. — Jeff Bezos

You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after. — George Lois

If you look at the heritage of the best advertising, you can make stuff that is great for both readers and advertisers. I don't think Don Draper would have loved banner ads. — Jonah Peretti

If a young man tells his date she's intelligent, looks lovely, and is a great conversationalist, he's saying the right things to the right person and that's marketing. If the young man tells his date how handsome, smart, and successful he is, that's advertising. If someone else tells the young woman how handsome, smart, and successful her date is, that's public relations — Anonymous

Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth. — Brene Brown

No movie becomes a hit without good reviews and word-of-mouth. No agency ever became a great brand by merely saying it was great - in advertising or by any other medium. — Rochelle B Lazarus

Chuck Palahniuk
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War, No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't — Chuck Palahniuk

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And you whom the windows observe shame keeps you
From entering a church and confessing this morning
You read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloud
That's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapers
There are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteries
Portraits of great men and a thousand different headlines
("Zone") — Guillaume Apollinaire

In practice, ship and iterate means that marketing programs and PR pushes should be minimal at launch. If you are in the restaurant business, you call this a soft opening. When you push the babies out of the nest, don't give them a jetpack or even a parachute - let them fly on their own. (Note: This is a metaphor.) Invest only when they get some lift. Google's Chrome is a great example of this - it launched in 2008 with minimal fanfare and practically no marketing budget and gained terrific momentum on its own, based solely on its excellence. Later, around the time the browser pushed past seventy million users, the team decided to pour fuel on the fire and approved a marketing push (and even a TV advertising campaign). But not until the product had proven itself a winner did it get fed. — Eric Schmidt

All television is an advertisement - that's why it exists. It wasn't the art-form first and then the commerce - it was that they could put on entertainment long enough to distract people into looking at products. It's for focusing people on advertising and separating you from money in some way. Some people forget that. The side product is that we get some great eye candy. TV is the best it has ever been right now. I don't have a problem with that since it's what keep us employed. — Chris Hardwick

Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising. — Howard Schultz

Nature is a strong brand name. Everybody knew that. First thing, Nomenclature 101. Slap Natural on the package, you were golden. Those words on the package promise ease from metropolitan care, modern worries. And out here, if you opened things up, underneath the cellophane, what did you find inside? That fruit has splendid packaging, it has solid consumer awareness and is an animal favorite. Its seeds will be deposited in spoor miles away and its market dominance will increase. Splendid and beautiful petals are great advertising
the insects buzz and hop from all points every weekend to hit this flower-bed mall. Natural selection was market forces. In business, in the woods: what is necessary to the world will last. — Colson Whitehead

It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera. — Ian Fleming

If somebody says to you, 'MTV,' you think of Mick Jagger on a phone screaming at that phone: 'I want my MTV.' That, to me, was always the epitome of great advertising. — George Lois

That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in. — Jerry Della Femina

Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness. — Leo Burnett

In the advertising business, a good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. — Phil Dusenberry

Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public's great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is 'readable'. — P.G. Wodehouse

Advertising is prima facie evidence that the man who pays believes that advertising is good. It has brought great results to others, it must be good for him. So he takes it like some secret tonic which others have endorsed. If the business thrives, the tonic gets the credit. Otherwise, the failure is due to fate. — Claude C. Hopkins

Jobs and Clow agreed that Apple was one of the great brands of the world, probably in the top five based on emotional appeal, but they needed to remind folks what was distinctive about it. So they wanted a brand image campaign, not a set of advertisements featuring products. It was designed to celebrate not what the computers could do, but what creative people could do with the computers. " This wasn't about processor speed or memory," Jobs recalled. " It was about creativity." It was directed not only at potential customers, but also at Apple's own employees: " We at Apple had forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are. That was the genesis of that campaign. — Walter Isaacson

I'm always prepared for the worst. I was prepared to have the book come out, sell seven copies, and have to keep working in advertising, so it was just great that it was received so well and by such a huge audience. — Augusten Burroughs

Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind. — Calvin Coolidge

Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as the great new force. It really does the thing, you know. — Henry James

Great advertising, in and of itself, becomes a benefit of the product. — George Lois

The Americans are the nature of the future," she would announce in her hearty voice. "Here's to 'em. God bless their gadgets, great and small, God bless Frigidaire, Tampax and Coca-Cola. Yes, even Coca-Cola,darling." (It was generally conceded that Coca-Cola's advertising was ruining the picturesqueness of Morocco.) — Paul Bowles

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

The censors were great. There's always back and forth. But it's Hostel 2, it's not Happy Feet 2. Everybody knows what Hostel is and people that are going to see it are going for more of what they loved in the original. No one is accidentally going to walk into it, no parent is accidentally going to take their child, and we're not pretending what it is in the advertising. We're saying it's very violent, it's very scary and a continuation of the first one. — Eli Roth

Great hospitals do two things. They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people. — David Ogilvy

Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people. — Jonathan Tropper

Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands. — Al Ries

All right, You Great Git, You've asked for it. I'll cover the world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burgers. I'll fill it with concrete runways, motorways, aircraft, television, automobiles, advertising, plastic flowers, frozen food and supersonic bangs. I'll make it so noisy and disgusting that even You'll be ashamed of Yourself! No wonder You've so few friends. You're unbelievable! — Peter Cook

My concern is the really great concepts that are features, not companies. There isn't enough advertising to support all those features, and in compression times, advertisers tend to flock to safe names and sites that have real traction. — Ross Levinsohn

Original Sin has great marketing potential. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Advertising and content have always been bound together - in print, on television, and on the web. Sure, you can skip the ad - just flip the page, or press 'ffwd' on your DVR. But great advertising, as I've long argued, adds value to the content ecosystem, and has as much a right to be in the conversation as does the publisher and the consumer. — John Battelle

The ad industry isn't struggling for a new set of principles or abandoning the ones that made it great from the start. It's simply in the midst of a business cycle. I don't think it's more profound than that. And despite the economic downturn, I'm having more fun today than at any other moment in my 30-year advertising career. The game is more interesting and more relevant than ever. — Rochelle B Lazarus