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.
People love advertising in particular but they hate advertising in general.
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
In a way, advertising, for all its shallowness, its love of design, its modishness and its self-justification, is curiously innocent. The idea of the hidden persuader or the manipulator is largely absurd.
It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look, and read.
Most car advertising assumes that people have IQs that are missing a digit.
People have romantic notions about television. In the highest realms they think it's some sort of art medium, and it's not. Others think it's an entertainment medium, it's not that either. It's an advertising medium. It's a method to deliver advertising like a cigarette is a method to deliver nicotine.
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?'
Contrary to popular belief, Americans don't hate advertising.
I don't even notice the advertisement that comes up on my screen. I'm a smart person and it's just something I've just blacked out because it doesn't seem right to me.
Everyone thinks with 'Smash,' because it looks glossy and big, they think they're spending a fortune, and they think it's taking weeks to shoot.
