Brian Acton Quotes

I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone who believes advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything.

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

'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.

Advertising is 'an evil service'.

I'm sounding like an old fart talking about how bad advertising is today, but it's true. Advertising sucks. Guys like me and Bob Gage and certainly Bill Bernbach and two or three other guys, we exemplified and led the creative revolution.

I think the ongoing discussion of the world of advertising is, 'Where is the soul in advertising?'

I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.

No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things.

You can define advertising as the science of creating and placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets him or her to take some action.

During the Second War, the U.S.O. sent special issues of the principal American magazines to the Armed Forces, with the ads omitted. The men insisted on having the ads back again. Naturally. The ads are by far the best part of any magazine or newspaper. More pains and thought, more wit and art go into the making of an ad than into any prose feature of press or magazine. Ads are news. What is wrong with them is that they are always good news.

Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad.

Advertising is tax deductible, so we all pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled.

The advertising men made it clear that there were two ways of looking at ideas in a war against fascism. Those of us who were working on the project believed ideas were to be fought for; the advertising men believed they were to be sold. The audience, those at home in wartime, were not 'citizens' or 'people.' They were 'customers.'

I don't want people ever to think I'm not in advertising. It's such a business of enthusiasm that if you're not totally excited about it, you should leave it.

Advertising's always been a considerable pressure on publishers.

I usually hate most of my work: probably at least more than half of it.

People like to complain.

I'm tired of all the angry stuff out there.

After completing my studies, I got into advertising.

I always complain.

I'm sick of all the hate and anger and stuff like that going on.

I think people like to have something to have a moan about.

Did I have a heart to be contented? Well, no, not particularly. I had a tendency to be discontented: ambitious, dissatisfied, fretful, and tough to please...It's easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.

The monster of advertisement...is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat.

Scientific advertising has altered many old plans and conceptions. It has proved many long established methods to be folly