History had been man's effort to accomodate himself to what he could not do. Amereican history in the 20th century would, more than ever before, test man's ability to accomodate himself to all the new things he could do.
Daniel J. BoorstinRead
We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready - even eager - to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Advertisements reveal our hidden desires and cravings for products we didn’t initially realize we wanted.
In this quote, Daniel J. Boorstin suggests that advertisements play a crucial role in identifying and amplifying our desires. It implies that through marketing, companies reveal not only products but also the underlying wants and needs of consumers, often awakening long-buried cravings that we may not have consciously recognized.
Themes
AdvertisingDesiresConsumersMarketingProducts
In practice
Example use cases
A marketing presentation on how to tap into consumer desires effectively.
More from Daniel J. Boorstin
All quotes →The most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.
Daniel J. BoorstinRead
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
Daniel J. BoorstinRead
Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.
Daniel J. BoorstinRead
Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.
Daniel J. BoorstinRead
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
Daniel J. BoorstinRead
Similar quotes
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.
William BernbachRead
Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other.
Raymond LoewyRead
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
Virginia PostrelRead
A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.
William BernbachRead
The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you arenot a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.
Philip KotlerRead
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
David OgilvyRead