John Slattery Quotes

Those who tell us to be in touch with our own desires are often merely trying to make us believe that what we want is the thing that they are selling. […] We're used to that kind of persuasion, for political candidates as well as commercial products.

I'm a pitchman, my business comes from the pitch, nothing else.

Everyone is someone else's catalyst for selling something these days.

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.

Children's television has been grossly over-commercialized. The subtle message is, "Buy me! Buy me!

I know how to pitch.

If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything.

I'm a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!

The greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever sold

Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.

The faults of advertising are only those common to all human institutions. If advertising speaks to a thousand in order to influence one, so does the church. And if it encourages people to live beyond their means, so does matrimony. Good times, bad times, there will always be advertising. In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times they have to.

Think of a pitch in terms of advertising: You're trying to hook a reader the way a commercial tries to hook a detergent user.

I think people don't like when you're not confident about what you're pitching, and they don't want to invest in you or get behind you.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

Almost every single commercial on television for shampoo, sports shoes, drinks, food, clothes, perfume, cars, etc., is a short fairy tale, for they are given magical qualities.

What we want is a social harmony, even as we live in a world where any idea about 'the real thing' is as likely to evoke the ancient memory of an advertisement for a soda pop as anything solid or necessary.

Advertising is a wonderful lubricant for business, if it's used properly.

Everything is designed to help you sell out.

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

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.

The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter.

I don't really care about, Oh I really have to sell these things.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

I fell in love with commerce and the opportunities that come with compelling visual storytelling.