Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we
can buy shit we don't need.
-- From the movie "Fight Club", based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk

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

Advertising is the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket.
-- George Orwell

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.
-- Will Rogers

There is one thing you absolutely must know about modern advertising. No matter how true any single advertisement is, modern advertising itself, taken as a whole, tells a lie - that you need the thing being advertised. It is a lie because consumer goods of real value do not need to be advertised - such goods are part of a natural market that flows "beneath" the [consumerist] marketplace, although as time passes these basic necessities represent a shrinking percentage of the total flow of goods.
-- "Consumer Angst",
http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/consumerangst.html*

Virtually all consumer products, above a rudimentary level of complexity, have accessories and "enhancements." One can easily imagine a graph of products with the simplest (fewest accessories) on the left and the most complex (most accessories) at the right. At the very left of our imaginary graph is a screwdriver. Not a Phillips screwdriver, just a plain old-fashioned straight-slot screwdriver. If you buy one of these carefully, you will have it decades from now. Your children will inherit it from you. From the standpoint of marketing, this is a nightmare - any number of advertising executives start up from their pillows in terror, having just imagined that screwdriver in reliable service over years and years, its original brand name slowly wearing off.
-- "Consumer Angst",
http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/consumerangst.html*

By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing . . . kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke . . . " there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! "Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar . . . " How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?
-- Bill Hicks