The Marketing Bureau

Selling in Advertising. The sixth in a series of collections of useable quotations to make you look really smart in your next presentation or report. 

"The one essential, driving aim of the agency's campaign is not to please and sell you, the public, but to sell the advertiser and get his initialled okay. The public is a poor also-ran."

Samm Sinclair Baker, The Permissible Lie: The Inside Truth About Advertising, 1968, Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, p. 13.

 

"A good ad which is not run never produces sales."

Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, p. 63.

 

"[A] good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself."

David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 79.

 

"Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped."

David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (1985), New York: Vintage Books, p. 171.

 

"Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything."

David Ogilvy (1984), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: Stonesong Press, p. 70.

 

"If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative."

David Ogilvy, quoted in Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Book of Quotations, 1993, Canada: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, p. 18.

 

"In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create."

David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 17.

 

"Yes, I sell people things they don't need. I can't, however, sell them something they don't want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to."

John O'Toole, The Trouble with Advertising . . ., 1981, New York: Chelsea House, p. 53.

 

"No, sir, I'm not saying that charming, witty and warm copy won't sell. I'm just saying I've seen thousands of charming, witty campaigns that didn't sell."

Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 94.

 

"Let's say you have $1,000,000 tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn't working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family's future depends on it, other people's families depend on it . . . Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?"

Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, p. 101.

 

"I think that I shall never see
An ad so lovely as a tree.
But if a tree you have to sell,
It takes an ad to do that well."

Jef I. Richards (1995), advertising professor, The University of Texas at Austin, "Retort to Ogden Nash."

 

"Sales may lead to advertising as much as advertising leads to sales."

Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. 29.

 

"It is entirely plausible . . . that advertising helps sell goods even if it never persuades a consumer of anything. So long as investors, salespeople, and retailers believe advertising affects consumers, advertising will influence product availability and this, by itself, shapes consumer choice. Availability, as marketers sometimes say, equals sales. Advertising may be an important signal system within the business world." "Despite efforts at 'psychographics' which, here and there, have proved useful guides for advertising, the most consistently used and efficient criteria for describing consumers are the most psychologically blunt -- demographics .... It is the most consistently employed kind of data in advertising work."

Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. 63-64.

 

"[C]hances are that neither the client nor the agency will ever know very much about what role the ad has played in sales or profits of the client, either short-term or long-term."

Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. 85.

 

"The advertising agencies and the media can argue the point either way. If they are trying to convince an advertiser to increase the media budget, they can cite examples of devastatingly successful advertising campaigns. But if they are defending themselves before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or a civic organization decrying television advertising to children, they trot out the data that demonstrate that advertising has slight or no effect on product sales."

Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 1984, New York: Basic Books, p. 15-16.

 

"Don't confuse selling with art."

Jack Taylor, vice chairman of Jordan, McGrath, quoted in Randall Rothenberg, Where the Suckers Moon: An Advertising Story (1994), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 113.