Advertising and Marketing Quotes

“He who has a thing to sell and goes and whispers in a well is not so apt to get the dollars as he who climbs a tree and hollers.” – author unknown
“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.” – David Ogilvy
“Advertising is the ‘wonder’ in Wonder Bread.” – Jef I. Richards (1995), advertising professor, The University of Texas at Austin.
“Advertising is selling Twinkies to adults.” – Donald R. Vance
“Words are loaded pistols.” – Jean Paul Sartre
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” – unknown
“So this is the little lady who wrote the book that started this Great War?” – Abraham Lincoln to Uncle Tom’s Cabin writer Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.” – Edward George Bulwer Lytton, an English novelist (1839)
“In good times people want to advertise, in bad times, they have to.” – Bruce Barton, co-founder BBDO (Batten Barton, Durstine and Osborn) Agency
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals. Preferably big ones.” – Donald Trump
“Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.” – Two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Ben Franklin
“The right name is an advertisement in itself.” – Claude Hopkins
“Let’s say you have $1,000,000 tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn’t working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it . . . Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” – Rosser Reeves
“Yes, I sell people things they don’t need. I can’t, however, sell them something they don’t want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to.” – John O’Toole
“The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell.” – Jay Abraham
“You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.” – Zig Ziglar
“Words mean things.” – Rush Limbaugh
“Top-flight sales copy is never a cost. It’s a profit center.” – Clayton Makepeace
“Loving your customer boils down to one thing – creating an almost fanatic sense of loyalty in your customer such that they wouldn’t think of buying from anyone else.” – Brad Antin / CommonSenseMarketing.com
“Your offer can make a hero or a bum out of the finest, slickest string of words you ever turned out.” – Eugene Schwartz
“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.” – Samuel Johnson
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” – Mark Twain
“Every word, sentence, and headline should have one specific purpose – to lead your potential customer to your order page.” – Shelley Lowery
“People go through life with their minds only half turned on, except when they are promised an adequate reward for their full attention. Ordinarily their attitude toward nearly everything they see, read and
experience is – so what?” – Maxwell Sackheim
“The written word is the strongest source of power in the entire universe.” – Gary Halbert
“Don’t underestimate the value of beginning a headline by naming the people you want to reach.” – John Caples
“Everyone – no exceptions – responds to well-written, persuasive, emotionally based copy. Not everyone can write it, that’s why copywriters are often paid so much, but no one can escape its power.” – Joe Vitale
“Before a test is run, you have to have a set of logical arguments in favor of each ad tested. After, you learn which set of arguments is stronger.” – Walter Weintz
“Clearly in today’s skeptical environment, people buy people long before they buy products or services. Even with the best intentions, people often do not buy simply because sales professionals do a lousy job of positioning or presenting themselves before the sale takes place.” – Richard Weylman
“If you don’t get noticed, you don’t have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.” – Leo Burnett
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him or her and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker
“Delay is the death of the sale.” – Gary Halbert

Why Is It? (a/k/a The Advertising Poem)
A man wakes up after sleeping
under an advertised blanket,
on an advertised mattress,
pulls off advertised pajamas,
bathes in an advertised shower,
shaves with an advertised razor,
brushes his teeth with advertised toothpaste,
washes with advertised soap,
puts on advertised clothes,
drinks a cup of advertised coffee,
drives to work in an advertised car,
and then, refuses to advertise,
believing it doesn’t pay.
Later when business is poor,
he advertises it for sale.
Why is it?