Marshall McLuhan

"The copy of an ad is merely a punning gag to distract the critical faculties while the image of the product goes to work on the hypnotized viewer. Those who have spent their lives protesting about 'false and misleading ad copy' are godsends to advertisers, as teetotalers are to brewers, and moral censors are to books and films. The protesters are the best acclaimers and accelerators. Since the advent of pictures, the job of the ad copy is as incidental and latent as the 'meaning' of a poem is to a poem, or the words of a song are to a song."

5 likes

Source: Laws of Media: The New Science. Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p.217, 1988.

About the author

Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

Philosopher, Media Theorist

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher known for his work on media theory, particularly his concept of 'the medium is the message.'

All quotes by Marshall McLuhan →

Same author

More quotes by Marshall McLuhan

See all →
Marshall McLuhan Philosopher, Media Theorist

"All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical."

Read quote
Marshall McLuhan Philosopher, Media Theorist

"As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself.'"

Read quote