QUOTES & QUOTABLES FROM THE WORLD OF ADVERTISING
B-TO-B
ABOUT DAVE
JUST FOR FUN
HOMEPAGE
Radio gave birth to impertinent advertising. Never before the advent of radio did advertising have such a golden opportunity to make an ass out of itself.
--William J. Cameron
Who is the consumer? Show me a consumer.
--General Hugh Johnson
Every time I get mixed up with my advertising problems I feel the ground sink away from me, and I am floated away into the imponderable ether, where I can't clutch at even a straw for support.
--Anonymous client, 1908
Advertising is a lying art. It depends on suggestions that aren't wholly true. And you can't expect art to deal in half truths. Business can't expect art to tell lies for it.
--Thomas Hart Benton
See the man.
He does advertising work.
He is called an "ad-man."
See his funny tight suit.
See his funny haircut.
Hear his funny stomach churn.
Churn, churn, churn.
The ad-man has a funny ulcer.
Most ad-men have funny ulcers.
But then, some ad-men are lucky.
They do not have funny ulcers.
They have funny high blood pressure.
--Mad magazine, 1957
THE TRUE BELIEVERS:
To create good selling copy, advertisement writers must be bubbling over with enthusiasm. A day's work with the glow of magic fire is worth a week of galley slave plugging. Real copy "artists" are self-hypnotists.
--Judicious Advertising magazine, 1912
One of the real reasons for being in the advertising business is that you have to be alive if you are any good at it.
--Hugh Baillie
To be a really good copywriter requires a passion for converting the other fellow, even if it is something you don't believe yourself.
--Helen Woodward
Soup can produce emotion. You can write as emotionally about ham as about Christianity.
--Edith Lewis
COPY, PRO AND CON:
Some people, perhaps most people, think words are not really important, but I am a word man and I attach the very highest importance to words.
--E.B. White
The words don't matter, friend. It's feeling that counts. The great thing is feeling. You got to put passion into it. You got to make that hog believe you got something that hog wants.
--Kansas hog-calling champion, 1929
ON COPYWRITERS:
Most good copywriters are very strange people who have only reached copywriting after eliminating every other means of making a living through writing. Once a man becomes resigned to making a good living by writing a few words at a time and writing them over and over again in various combinations, he is likely to think of himself as a professional copywriter.
--Howard Gossage
STAY TUNED FOR FUTURE EDITIONS ...