Jaron Lanier Quotes

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

To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I'm not lying; I'm just saying, 'This one's more fun, this one's more exciting.'

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.

Studies indicate that these children are more susceptible to advertising and even less likely to understand the purpose of this advertising.

Advertisements ordinarily work their wonders, to the extent that they work at all, on an inattentive public.

Leave America and you'll find that the consumers in many other countries enjoy watching advertising. Not because the products are better, but because the ads are produced to be entertaining. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are dramatic. Sometimes they are just beautiful.

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.

If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

One thing that hasn't changed, though, is that we still have to hear the new ad 2 or 3 times before it begins to affect us, even when we're already familiar with the advertiser in question and have a positive opinion of them.

Advertising creates and changes this foundation of all popular action, public sentiment, or public opinion. It is the most potent influence in adopting and changing the habits and modes of life, affecting what we eat, what we wear, and the work and play of the whole Nation. Formerly it was an axiom that competition was the life of trade. Under the methods of the present day it would seem to be more appropriate to say that advertising is the life of trade.

When you get $1 billion of free advertising, it's hard not to have anybody buy the product.

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

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 is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practicing precision microsurgery on the public consciousness.

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.

Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens inside these agencies.

Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

Advertising gets such a bashing from the world. At parties you are always asked, 'Aren't you just selling people things they don't want?'

When you invest in high-quality brands, it pays off with high-quality audiences and, ultimately, high-quality advertising rates.

The first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise... and cultivate the delightfully vague.

Advertising generally works to reinforce consumer trends rather than to initiate them.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

Trying to do business without advertising is like winking at a pretty girl through a pair of green goggles. You may know what you are doing, but no one else does.