What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.
The eros of advertising is lurid but not specific.
Fear is the greatest salesman.
People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.
The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.
Good advertising can make people buy your product even if it sucks ... A dollar spent on brainwashing is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on product improvement.
Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.
We wanted people to remember the name as soon as they heard it. When people become so accustomed to the Wii name, nobody is going to say it's a strange name, just like nobody is going to say that Google is a strange name or IKEA is a strange name today.
I'm a pushover for cleaning items that come in packages of three or more.
When I lecture kids, I say, 'You've got to be ambitious by the advertising - ambitious. You've got to say, 'See, this product? Maybe I can change the world with this product.'' They look at me like I'm nuts, but that's what you can do.
To sell something, tell a woman it's a bargain; tell a man it's deductible.
Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad.
Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer's mind.
Much brass has been sounded and many cymbals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell.
Shampoo doesn’t have to foam, but we add foaming chemicals because people expect it each time they wash their hair. Same thing with laundry detergent. And toothpaste—now every company adds sodium laureth sulfate to make toothpaste foam more. There’s no cleaning benefit, but people feel better when there’s a bunch of suds around their mouth. Once the customer starts expecting that foam, the habit starts growing.
You shake a slogan at an American and it's just like showing a hungry dog a bone.
In marketing, the familiar is everything.
Clothes are expensive. You have to buy them, and to buy them, you have to believe in them.
The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad.
What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue.
Selling wine is all about sizing people up, and it takes a certain amount of chutzpah. The tableside bottle sell is a very funny thing - you take a look at the guy's blazer, what kind of shoes he's wearing, what kind of broad he's with. Is he trying to be a hero?
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!
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.
The product itself should be it's own best salesman. Not the product alone, but the product plus a mental impression, and atmosphere, which you place around it
