200+ Best Advertising Quotes of All Time

Are you looking for the best advertising quotes of all time for entrepreneurs and creators? Then you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, you’ll discover an ultimate collection of 200+ of the most inspirational and best advertising quotes to inspire and motivate you to grow your business faster (be sure to check out the FAQ section for some bonus content as well).

Let’s get started.

Advertising quotes on honesty

Here are some inspiring advertising quotes about honesty from famous personalities.

“The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.” – Bill Bernbach

“The worst thing for a brand is to have a kind of false part of who they are exposed out there.” – Lee Clow

“Certainly, it seems true enough that there’s a good deal of irony in the world … I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there’s obviously a lot of deception.” – Kenneth Koch 

“Telling lies does not work in advertising.” – Tim Bell

“Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.” – Bill Bernbach

“The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.” – Thomas Jefferson

Best advertising quotes on content

Here are some helpful advertising quotes on content from famous personalities.

“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” – Leo Burnett

“We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.’” – Leo Burnett

“I don’t know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody.” – Howard Gossage

“You have to be daring and make something that doesn’t look like anybody else.” – Lee Clow

“It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.” – David Ogilvy

“The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.” – David Ogilvy

“What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.” – David Ogilvy

“Let’s say you have $1 million 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 goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” – Rosser Reeves

“If you are writing about baloney, don’t try and make it Cornish hen, because that’s the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darn good baloney.” -Leo Burnett

Advertising quotes on creativity

Here are some motivating quotes about creativity in advertising from well known personalities.

“Creativity is like washing a pig. It’s messy. It has no rules. No clear beginning, middle or end. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, and when you’re done, you’re not sure if the pig is really clean or even why you were washing a pig in the first place.” – Luke Sullivan

“Nothing comes from nothing. You must continuously feed the inner beast that sparks and inspires.” – George Lois

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it well enough yourself.” – Albert Einstein

“If you want to understand how a lion hunts, don’t go to the zoo. Go to the jungle.” – Jim Stengel

“Curiosity about life, in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” – Leo Burnett

“Creativity may well be the last legal unfair competitive advantage we can take to run over the competition.” – Dave Trott

“Advertising isn’t a science. It’s persuasion. And persuasion is an art.” – Bill Bernbach

“If you break the rules, you’re going to stand a better chance of breaking through the clutter than if you don’t.” – Tom McElligott

“Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.” – David Ogilvy

“Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret… to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink.” – Leo Burnett

“All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame and even dangerously bad ideas.” – Seth Godin

“Chaos is the only thing that honestly wants you to grow. The only friend who really helps you be creative.” – Dan Weiden

“When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.” – David Ogilvy

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” – Henry Ford

“Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not in your life. It’s the most practical thing a businessman can employ.” – Bill Bernbach

“You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different.” – Rosser Reeves

“Creativity isn’t about predictability, it has to surprise and challenge, it has to be daring and yet motivating.” – John Hegarty

“The majority of businessmen are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.” – David Ogilvy

“You have to accept the creative process is completely dysfunctional. If you deny that fact, you will ultimately fail.” – John Hegarty

“A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.” – Richard Branson

“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops the clock to save time.” – Henry Ford

“Content is king, but marketing is queen, and runs the household.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“Every single element in an advertisement – headline, subhead, photo, and copy – must be put there not because it looks good, not because it sounds good, but because testing has shown that it works best!” – John Caples

“Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn’t work.” – Seth Godin

“For every curiosity headline that succeeds in getting results, a dozen will fail.” – John Caples

“Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing results you seek.” – Seth Godin

“Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.” – Leo Burnett

“I’m not saying that charming, witty and warm copy won’t sell. I’m just saying I’ve seen thousands of charming, witty campaigns that didn’t sell.” – Rosser Reeves

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin

“No sentence can be effective if it contains facts alone. It must also contain emotion, image, logic, and promise.” – Eugene Schwartz

“Now, if you truly understand how marketing works today, you know there is no individual six-month campaign; there’s only the 365-day campaign, during which you produce new content daily.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.” – Leo Burnett

“Unless a product becomes outmoded, a great campaign will not wear itself out.” – Rosser Reeves

“All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.” – Richard Branson

“Anyone who thinks that people can be fooled or pushed around has an inaccurate and pretty low estimate of people – and he won’t do very well in advertising.” – Leo Burnett

“I think the real risk comes in being willing to try to be authentic.” – Dan Weiden

“Maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.” – Jim Stengel

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” – Henry Ford

“Dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.” – Leo Burnett

“The best marketing strategy ever: CARE.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. People, once unfooled, talk about the experience.” – Seth Godin

“Advertising must respect the intelligence of its audience and if it does not prompt them to think, it will be instantly dismissed.” – Maurice Saatchi

“Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.” – David Ogilvy

“To impress your offer on the mind of the reader or listener, it is necessary to put it into brief, simple language. You have got to hit them where they live in the heart or in the head.” – John Caples

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” – Dale Carnegie

“You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.” – Bill Bernbach

“Creativity without strategy is called art, creative with strategy is called advertising.” – Prof. Jef L. Richards

“An idea can turn to magic or dust, depending on the talent that rubs against it.” – Bill Bernbach

“Creativity and innovation are about finding unexpected solutions to obvious problems, or finding obvious solutions to unexpected problems.” – Rei Inamoto

“I’ve learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.” – Leo Burnett

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.” – Ken Hakuta

“There’s nothing more dangerous than an idea, when it’s the only one you have.” –  Emile Chartier

“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” – Linus Pauling

“Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.” – David Ogilvy

“When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” – Leo Burnett

“Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport.” – Robert Wieder

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when you grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

“It takes courage to be creative. Just as soon as you have a new idea, you are a minority of one.” – E. Paul Torrance

“A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.” – Frank Capra

“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.” – David Ogilvy

“There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately, they talk the best game. They know all the rules … but there’s one little rub. They forget that advertising is persuasion, and persuasion is not a science, but an art. Advertising is the art of persuasion.” – William Bernbach

“To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is to swear off having ideas.” – Leo Burnett

“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” – David Ogilvy

“I’d much rather overestimate the intelligence of the consumer than underestimate it.” – Tom McElligott

“Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.” – Seth Godin

“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.” – Seth Godin

“The brands that can connect with clients in a real way will win.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“Creative without strategy is called ‘art.’ Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising.” – Jef I. Richards

“To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” – George Kneller

“Be creative while inventing ideas, but be disciplined while implementing them.” – Amit Kalantri

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.” – David Ogilvy

“A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it also must afflict the comfortable.” – Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

“Advertising, as a single entity is capable of creating vast changes in our social structure, simply does not exist. Its impact is too diffuse, too omnidirectional.” – William Hesse

Top advertising quotes from famous personalities

Here are some of the top advertising quotes about writing content from famous personalities.

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” – Howard Luck Gossage

“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” – David Ogilvy

“I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.” – Leo Burnett

“Creativity about life, in all aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” – Leo Burnett

“An ad is finished only when you no longer can find a single element to remove.” – Robert Fleege

“Every time a message seems to grab us, and we think, ‘I just might try it,’ we are at the nexus of choice and persuasion that is advertising.” – Andrew Hacker

“Brands should think of themselves not as storytellers but story builders. We plant seeds of content and let our community build on it.” – Amy Pascal

“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.” – David Ogilvy

“Great content is the best sales tool in the world.” – Marcus Sheridan

Advertising quotes about truth and reality

Here are some inspiring quotes about reality from famous personalities and authors.

“Advertising is legalized lying.” – H. G. Wells

“The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.” – Bill Cosby

“Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.” – Seth Godin

“That’s the kind of ad I like, facts, facts, facts.” – Samuel Goldwyn

“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in & be what people are interested in.” – Craig Davis

“Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.” – Bill Bernbach

“Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” – Howard Luck Gossage

“The only people who care about advertising are the people who work in advertising.” – George Parker

Quotes about the importance of advertising

Here are some awesome quotes about the importance advertising from famous personalities.

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.” – George Santayana

“One ad is worth more to a paper than forty editorials.” – Will Rogers

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” – Mark Twain

“There’s an ad for every vice. That’s advice.” – Brian Spellman

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

“Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.” – Sinclair Lewis

Advertising quotes on finding the right audience

Below you’ll find some of the best advertising quotes on finding the right audience from famous internet personalities and enterpreneurs.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.” – Scott Cook

“Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn’t happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.” – Simon Mainwaring

“Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people’s mediocrities. That’s precisely what ‘trends’ are – a search for something ‘safe’ – and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.” – George Lois

“Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.” – Jonah Sachs

“Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” – John Edson

“Building a profitable personal brand online is not a sprint, and something that happens over night. Don’t aim for perfection early on. Instead allow your brand to evolve naturally over time and focus on providing massive value and over deliver to your target audience. Then you will get more clear over your message and brand as well. Always remember that!” – Navid Moazzez

Advertising quotes about work and life

Here are some uplifting quotes about career life from famous personalities.

“Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.” – David Ogilvy

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” – Ted Turner

“Learn the rules. Then learn how to change them, and get others to follow.” – Heidi Minx

“The only way to keep on top of creativity internationally, is to be part of it internationally.” – Peet Pienaar

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.” – Ray Bradbury

Advertising quotes about customers

Here are some awesome quotes about customers from famous personalities.

“I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.” – Leo Burnett

“Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.” – Leo Burnett

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.” – David Ogilvy

“Customers buy for their reasons, not yours.” – Orvel Ray Wilson

Advertising quotes on selling

Here are some motivating quotes about selling from famous advertising personalities.

“The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising, in my opinion, is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself.” – Leo Burnett

“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” – David Ogilvy

“In the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain’t got nothin.’” – Leo Burnett

“There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.” – Jerry Della Famina

“Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed . . . but dull?” – William Bernbach

Advertising quotes about rules

Here are some inspiring quotes about rules from famous personalities and authors.

“By definition, remarkable things get remarked upon.” – Seth Godin

“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

“Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.” – David Ogivly

“Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula.” – Bill Bernbach

“In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.” – Bill Bernbach

Advertising quotes about product quality

Here are some inspiring quotes about quality from famous advertising personalities.

“Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.” – Milton Hershey

“If dogs don’t like your dog food, the packaging doesn’t matter.” – Stephen Denny

“Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers.” – Seth Godin.

Advertising quotes about communication and sharing

Here are some motivating quotes about communication from famous personalities and authors.

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” – William Butler Yeats

“In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.” – Peter Nivio Zarlenga

“People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.” – Malorie Lucich

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” – David Ogilvy

“People spend money when and where they feel good.” – Walt Disney

“I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.” – David Ogilvy

Advertising quotes about brands

Here are some motivational quotes about branding from famous advertising personalities and authors.

“There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.” – David Ogilvy

“Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.” – Henry Ford

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.” – Steuart Henderson Britt

Funny advertising quotes

Here are some feel-good quotes about advertising from famous personalities.

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” – Stephen Leacock

“Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.” – Fred Allen

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.” – Zelda Fitzgerald

“Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.” – John Lahr

“Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.” – Jerry Della Femina

Seth Godin advertising quotes

Here are some inspiring quotes about advertising from Seth Godin.

“The brand of the future…is patient, consistent, connected, and trusted. The new brand is based on the truth that only comes from experiencing the product, not just yelling about it. Word of mouth is more important (by a factor of 20) than TV advertising, and the remarkability word of mouth demands comes from what we experience, not from spin or taglines or a campaign slogan.” – Seth Godin

“Real content marketing isn’t repurposed advertising, it is making something worth talking about.” – Seth Godin

“Facts are irrelevant. What matters is what the consumer believes.” – Seth Godin

“By all means, fire the customers who aren’t worth the time and the trouble. But understand that the moment you insist the customer is wrong, you’ve just started the firing process.” – Seth Godin

“You can define advertising as the science of creating and placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets him or her to take some action.” – Seth Godin

“If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising.” – Seth Godin

Mark Zuckerberg advertising quotes

Here are some powerful quotes about advertising from Mark Zuckerberg.

“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.” – Mark Zuckerberg

“People are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.” – Mark Zuckerberg

“Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do.” – Mark Zuckerberg

Jeff Bezos advertising quotes

Here are some great great advertising quotes from Jeff Bezos.

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos

“The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.” – Jeff Bezos

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.” – Jeff Bezos

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Final thoughts on advertising quotes

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