Dan Savage Quotes

I'm also looking for the psychological elements that fuel commodity culture. For example, if we imbue girls with deep insecurity about their bodies through images of an impossible ideal, we create a really vulnerable and avid consumer. If somebody feels that they're not OK without a certain product, you have a very deep and loyal market that will come back to the product again and again. Sometimes, this process is both rational and irrational.

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

What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.

Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed consumer will refuse.

I am still a consumer; the consumer world was the world I emerged into, whose air I breathed for a very long time, and its assumptions still dominate my psyche—but maybe a little less each year....There are times when I can feel the spell breaking in my mind….There are times when I can almost feel myself simply being.

No production without a need. But consumption reproduces the need.

Once upon a time I was riding on the top of a First Avenue bus, when I heard a mythical housewife say to another, "Molly, my dear, I would have bought that new brand of toilet soap if only they hadn't set the body copy in ten point Garamond." Don't you believe it. What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

I knew I was gay when I was around 13. There wasn't the internet, there weren't support groups, AIDS was everywhere. I mean, it was really dark.

Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.

What we found was that of the people who stopped when there were 24 different flavors of jam out on display only 3% of them actually bought a jar of jam whereas of the people who stopped when there were 6 different flavors of jam 30% of them actually bought a jar of jam.

Consumers have to understand that the purpose of these claims is to get them to buy the product.

This is at a time when you know most of us drank tap water, so I used to go to this store and examine all the varieties and we used to marvel at all the choices out there, but I found that I rarely bought anything and I kind of thought that was kind of curious. I mean, they had things that the other grocery stores didn't have and yet I never bought anything.

People were actually 6 times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they had encountered 6 than if they encountered 24, so what we learned from this study was that while people were more attracted to having more options, that's what sort of got them in the door or got them to think about jam, when it came to choosing time they were actually less likely to make a choice if they had more to choose from than if they had fewer to choose from.

I've done really well on one core principle which is, I think I have an intuitive ability to understand consumer behavior more than the average bear, and I'm not scared to bet the farm on that gut feeling.

I once truly believed that if I had to stand in line for twenty minutes to have a package gift-wrapped it actually gave the recipient more pleasure.

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things.

The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.

In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it likes.

If you're gay or lesbian, it's a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex.

Here was long period on my life when I was very disappointed by the fact I wasn't gay. Because I grew up going to gay clubs, living in New York and LA, both very gay cities.

I don't feel there's anything about my experience of being gay that gives me more insight into "don't ask, don't tell," for example, than anybody else.

You notice how they always put the fruit and veg at the entrance to the supermarket? You go in thinking 'this is a fresh shop, everything in here is FRESH! I will do well to shop here'. You never go straight to the bit with the toilet paper, loo brushes and such do you? You'd think 'this is a POO shop! Everything in here is themed on POO!

We either put out 6 different flavors of jam or 24 different flavors of jam and we looked at 2 things. First, in what case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam?

The most gentle people in the world are macho males, people who are confident in their masculinity and have a feeling of well-being in themselves. They don't have to kick in doors, mistreat women, or make fun of gays.

What is the disposition which makes men rejoice in good bargains? There are few people who will not be benefited by pondering over the morals of shopping.