S. I. Hayakawa Quotes

The power of ads rests more in the repetition of obvious exhortations than in the subtle transmission of values.

You can feel how much money goes into commercials by how swiftly they act on your mind. And they've got, like, a hypnotic quality to the way they present their products.

I always thought marketing in general was an interesting kind of thing. I always liked commercials and billboards.

If you really think about it, when watching television, you have product placement all the time.

'Powers of Persuasion: The Story of British Advertising' by Winston Fletcher - the impression you get from reading this book, which covers post-war advertising until the present, is of a chaotic, self-serving, occasionally brilliant but ultimately shallow business.

Ads push the principle of noise all the way to the plateau of persuasion. They are quite in accord with the procedures of brainwashing.

Advertising is 'an evil service'.

I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.

Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.

The interesting thing about advertising is that the things that annoy us sometimes about it are really human. It's us looking at ourselves - and like all human endeavors it's imperfect.

In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.

Brands are in your face 24/7; I'm sure you've consumed a couple brands today. So it's fun working with them. People recognize brands, and people are starting to recognize my brand.

The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people.

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

It is the growth of advertising in this country which, more than any single element, has brought the American magazine to its present enviable position in points of literary, illustrative and mechanical excellence.

Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread.

I love commercials.

I have to admit I've always had quite a complex relationship with modeling and with the idea of advertising: not always knowing what I'm advertising and selling.

Advertising is a very fundamental need, so I don't think it's going to go away.

It always ended up that they said, 'Tony, are Frosted Flakes good?' And he would laugh and say, 'Good? Why, they're great.' And I said, 'Well, we've gotta do something with the word 'great' to make It explode. It has to really knock the packages off the shelves.'

What needs to change is the nature of advertising itself. That business hasn't really evolved since the days of Don Draper.

You shake a slogan at an American and it's just like showing a hungry dog a bone.

I do voiceovers, but being on-camera and selling something? I wasn't really interested. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Everybody's selling something. When you turn on the tube... And then if you go to Europe or Asia, everyone is selling something. All the guys that don't want to be seen selling something here are selling something there. So I thought what the hell?

Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt don't wear clothes with your name on it, so why should you wear their name?