The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. Edward L Bernays, Propaganda
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it. ibid.
The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as society has changed. Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion 1923
This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas. Edward Bernays, Manipulating Public Opinion
People act on those commercials. Those commercials have real influence. They are done scientifically to get into your unconscious mind. Charles Juntikka, Bankruptcy Attorney
Boraxo waterless hand cleaner. It really cleans up warts. Ronald Reagan
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside the swill bucket. George Orwell
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. George Orwell, Why I Write
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. Stephen Leacock, Garden of Folly 1924
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half. Lord Leverhulme, 1851-1925
We have to counteract the influence of advertising by creating advertisements for things we do need. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. Samuel Johnson
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising. John Lahr, cited Guardian 2nd August 1989
You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded. Bob Garfield, author Advertising Age
Advertising was manipulation. It was a way to get you to do something that didn’t come out of you. It came out of somebody else ... And I said, Why? That’s not who I am ... I want to be me. Robert Pardun, 1960s student activist
In 1974 more than $26 billion was spent on advertising in America – that was an all-time record ... But isn’t there meant to be a recession, a crisis of confidence in the great supermarket of the West, with great cities devastated by unemployment? Yes of course, but the heart of America is the hard sell. John Pilger, Streets of Joy
In most countries the media have the power to con people. The power might rest in one TV image, one headline, one piece of slick copy writing. In America, the land of the media, that power is now so refined and so pervasive that a politician like Jimmy Carter – the image-maker’s dream – can be a serious candidate for president without anybody really knowing what he stands for, who he is, why he is so popular. But that’s the game. The £26 billion Madison Avenue game. It would take just one billion of those dollars to put all the poor farmers in the world on their feet. ibid.
It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The ‘Obama brand’ has been named ‘Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008’, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as ‘an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force’. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – ‘Sí, se puede!’ or ‘Yes, we can’ – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.
No-one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous ‘Change you can believe in’, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. ‘We will be the most powerful’, he often declared.
Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as ‘adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion ...’ (Charlotte Higgins in the The Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: ‘Many spiritually advanced people I know ... identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who ... can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet’ ...
Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s ‘grand design’, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a ‘brand collapse’ whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘Obama’s 100 Days – The Mad Men Did Well’
In 1974 more than $26 billion was spent on advertising in America. That was an all-time record … The heart and soul of America is the hard sell, the advertising man’s ability to persuade people to buy the things they don’t need. John Pilger, 1976, Our History Youtube 25.25
This year more than $300 million will be spent on the choosing of an American president and half of this will go to advertising agencies and to image makers who specializing in the selling of politicians. ibid.
Large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes ... The result is that many of us are being influenced and manipulated, far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives. Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders
An entire television station devoted to selling live on TV non-stop. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends s2e1: Informercials, BBC 1999
The headquarters was my point of entry into a sub culture of inventors, pitchmen and visionaries all obsessed with using television to make their unique product the next thing. ibid.
Hello, faggot lovers everywhere. James Bolan, early commercial
If you’re not a barber, you need a Hair Wizz ... No matter how much they squirm, you’ll still be able to give them a good haircut. Early self-cutting hair product
HRS Hair Replacement Systems. Leonard Nimoy’s voice
GLH means Great Looking Hair. Just spray GLH on and it instantly covers your bald spot ... It’s an amazing powder that clings to the hairs on your head ... And GLH isn’t just for men. US spray-on hair TV advertisement
It’s everywhere you look. They call it a clutter crisis. And the multi-billion-dollar advertising industry is in a desperate struggle to break through. Professor Douglas Rushkoff, The Persuaders PBS 2004
Welcome to the new American metropolis. ibid.
Advertisers have become prospectors for new space in an ever more crowded landscape. ibid
The more messages they create the more they have to create to reach us. ibid.
Top 10 Un-Miraculous Miracle Products: Tiddy Bear Snuggle Strap [for car-seat-belts] ... Wearable Towel ... Gun Rack [beside bed] ... Burglar Blast ... Comfort Wipe [Telebrands: extends toilet paper reach] ... Music Vest [Toshiba] ... Better Marriage Blanket [soaks up marriage juices and farts] ... Sticky Nips ... Uroclub [for golfers] ... Hawaii Chair [PYC Fitness]. David Walliams’ Awfully Good Ads, Channel 4 2011
Never get away with it today: Saturdae [ABC television, smiling penis-like banana] ... Fairy Liquid: ‘Hey, what are you doing with my Fairy Liquid? You are an idiot’ ... ‘Hello Faggot Lovers Everywhere’ ... People Who Need People: Barbra Streisand Retarded Children’s Association: 'The retarded are people who need people’. ibid.
Just A Little Bit Racist: Jell-O [Small Chinese-type baby waiting for desert] ... Walker’s Crisps [Japanese kung-fu kicking man] ... Kellogg’s Bran Flakes [Black man whites his eyes] ... Castrol [mad Scottish person with dipstick]. ibid.