INTRODUCTION
What a title for an article. Long. Wordy. Humorous. Daring. A quote. A famous quote. For the uninitiated, that statement comprising the title of this piece is by a popular psychologist cum advertising academic and has been my favourite advertising quote since I was old enough to wink at girls myself. And if I should confess, I just couldn’t resist this favourite Steuart Henderson Britt quote with the hope of grabbing as much of your attention as it did mine decades ago.
The renowned Britt (1907-1979) was a prolific professor who for a decade was editor of the Advertising journal. He passed away the year after I was born. This famous quote is found in what one might arguably term his magnum opus, Marketing Management and Administrative Action.
AFRICAN PROVERB VERSUS AMERICAN APHORISM
As an AfriCanadian professional—or sometimes I say Ghanadian—I’ve had to balance Britt’s American aphorism with an African proverb that translates as, “Good things sell themselves; those that are bad have to be advertised.” Even the British will agree that “empty barrels make the most noise” but in a hyperconnected world with a cacophony of voices, how does one get heard, seen and taken seriously—or at least your products and/or services patronised—without some serious advertising? Come on, let’s face reality: “In a nation [I would say world] that has developed to a high art advertising,” asserts Gore Vidal, “the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.” Advertising then, would be the next best thing that happened after word of mouth.
Moreover, as Reed Tan poignantly asks, “Would the likes of Google, Facebook, Linkedin really prioritise businesses to beat the algorithm that they own to cut into their own ad revenue space?” For a company such as Perbi Paradigms with a vision of “Platforming the good for renewed minds, transformed lives, and a reformed world,” you can see why we take so much solace in the words of another two of the field’s greatest. David Ogilvy’s distinctive and distinguished words are “Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.” Advertising is good for good. Again, as succinctly stated by Stuart Chase, “Sanely applied advertising could remake the world.” That is our mission ultimately, a reformed world.
As someone once humorously-yet-seriously drew my attention to, even Jesus Christ had to be advertised by John the Baptist. Come to think of it, the latter’s entire purpose was to prepare the way for repentance (change of mind and change of ways) and acceptance of the greatest ‘Product and Service’ of all time! Like the attention-grabbing Britt quote, here are two dozen more humorous-yet-thought-provoking quotes on advertising:
- Advertising is judged not by what it says, but by what the consumer thinks it says. ~ Kenneth Roman
2. Advertising is an expected part of everyday life, but it is also alien to it: the ever-expected but uninvited guest; on magazine pages, during TV programs, and round each city corner. ~ Iain Macrury
3. You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. ~ Norman Douglas
4. Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. ~ David Ogilvy
5. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. ~ Mark Twain
6. Advertising is a business within a business and the man who neglects it will soon find himself with a business without a business. ~ Frank Farrington
7. The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague. ~ Bill Cosby
8. History will see advertising “as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge
9. It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything. ~ Anthony Trollope
10. Advertising is the fuel of enterprise. ~ George French
11. The right name is an advertisement in itself. ~ Claude Hopkins
12. Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. ~ Jerry Della Femina
13. No method of advertising is too expensive if it brings proper results. ~ S.Roland Hall
14. The more facts you tell, the more you sell. ~ Dr. Charles Edwards
15. Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise. ~ Ted Turner
16. The base of advertising is the mob movement … to make a mass of people move in a certain direction. ~ Thomas Dockrell
17. The only business that is worth advertising is the business that would succeed without advertising. ~ N. W. Ayer
18. Our society’s values are being corrupted by advertising’s insistence on the equation: Youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness. ~ John Fisher
19. Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. ~ Thomas Jefferson
20. The only way to advertise is by not focusing on the product. ~ Calvin Klein
21. Politics is gut; commercials are gut. ~ Frank Luntz
22. Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. ~ Stephen Leacock
23. Good advertising is advertising that gets the money. ~ Julius Schneider
24. Most sermons sound to me like commercials – but I can’t make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
CONCLUSION
So! Let’s end where we began: “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.” You must be convinced by now. Advertise. Advertise with us, Perbi Paradigms.