Advertising Quotes - page 23
A hundred years ago one has the impression that people had made a clear distinction between the outer world of work and of agriculture, commerce and social relationships - which was real - and the inner world of their own minds, day-dreams and hopes. Fiction on the one hand; reality on the other. This reality which surrounded individuals, the writer's role of inventing a fiction that encapsulated various experiences going on in the real world and dramatising them in fictional form, worked. Now the whole situation has been reversed. The exterior landscapes of the seventies are almost entirely fictional ones created by advertising, mass merchandising... politics conducted as advertising. It is very difficult for the writer.
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
J. G. Ballard
The debate has not genuinely altered the old consensus, but it has been an interesting case-study in manipulation by unscrupled academics. How else should we call the practice of seemingly learned publications advertising themselves as "objective" studies of the controversy, but systematically concealing the arguments put forth by one of the parties? ... The VHP scholars have pointed out 4 cases of attempted fraud by their opponents (removing relevant old books from libraries, adding words on an old map).
Koenraad Elst
America...is being lost through television. Because in advertising, mendacity and manipulation are raised to the level of internal values for the advertisers. Interruption is seen as a necessary concomitant to marketing. It used to be that a seven– or eight-year old could read consecutively for an hour or two. But they don't do that much anymore. The habit has been lost. Every seven to ten minutes, a child is interrupted by a commercial on TV>Kids get used to the idea that their interest is there to be broken into. In consequence, they are no longer able to study as well. Their powers of concentration have been reduced by systematic interruption.
Norman Mailer
I love advertising because I love lying. [pause for laughter] In advertising, everything is the way you wish it was. I don't care that it won't be like that when I actually get the product being advertised, because in between seeing the commercial and owning the thing, I'm happy! And that's all I want.
Jerry Seinfeld
"But what about church attendance figures?" ventured Harriet. "Aren't modern people supposed to be feeling a lack in their lives that they need religion to fill?" Martha shrugged. "An advertising gambit," she said. "First you convince people that they lack something and then you send them a product to remedy it. People 'need' religion to 'deepen their awareness' or give them 'tragic irony' - the way I 'need' a facial cream to make my life more glamorous." [...] "But if there is a lack, Martha?" said Dolly. "Then it ought not to be filled," said Martha. "If it's a real lack, it's a necessary hollow in life that can't be stuffed up, like a chicken. Insufficiency. Shortcoming. I don't need God as a measure to feel that. Do you, Dolly?" "God, no!" said Dolly.
Mary McCarthy
The collective wisdom and the collective will of the nation resides not in any little Whitehall clique but in the whole mass of the people-in the producers, listening to the voice of the customer at home and abroad; in the savers and investors, using their eyes and their brains to lay out their resources to best advantage; in the consumers themselves, expressing through all the complex nervous system of the market their wishes, their needs, their expectations. In short, the true national economic plan is being made all the time by the very people and institutions which the intellectual arrogance of the Socialist affects to despise. "Under Tory free enterprise" says Labour's policy, "no limit is set to the amount of our national resources and intellectual talent consumed by the popular newspaper, the glossy magazine, the cinema, commercial television and the advertising industry." What a world of contempt for the ordinary man and woman breathes in that haughty sentence!
Enoch Powell
Strange business," said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon.
Kurt Vonnegut
Since the commercialization and banality of editorial magazine pages have made this work uninteresting, advertising has become an increasingly important part of my work. It is interesting to compare European and American mores in regard to my work. One will notice that most of my European images have a stronger sexual content that those destined for American publication. The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes.
Helmut Newton
I had a special project to do a campaign for a Philadelphia politician named Arlen Spector (sic). "When do I get to see Arlen Spector?” I asked. "You don't.” Spector was a district attorney in Philadelphia, running for mayor. He wanted New York advertising but he had placed through a Philadelphia agency. I complained about not being able to see Arlen Spector. "Are you crazy?” his people said. "Nobody gets to meet Arlen Spector. We can't even see him.” "All right,” I said, "what's Arlen Spector for?” "Arlen Spector is for getting elected.” "All right,” I said, "what's Arlen Spector against?” "Arlen Spector is against losing.” I did the campaign, but Arlen Spector lost.
Jerry Della Femina
I started producing before I even joined the Legends-around 1962... I produced some local R&B, rock and gospel acts at Baldwin Sound in Mechanicsburg [Pennsylvania]. People would hear what I'd done on someone else's record and call me up and ask if I'd produce them, too. I even wrote and recorded an advertising jingle for Sutliff Chevrolet out on Paxton Street when I was 16. So it's always been something that I could fall back on throughout my career--to keep my mind going, to keep me musically inspired, and to keep me moving without having to make statements of my own...
Dan Hartman
