Success Quote by Morris Hite

Advertising, in Morris Hite's blunt formulation, is not art or public service; it’s a workaround for human limits. The line strips the industry down to its industrial logic: salesmanship, scaled. The phrase "mass produced" does real work here, borrowing the language of factories to reframe persuasion as manufacturing. It’s a reminder that advertising’s defining feature isn’t creativity, it’s replication: one pitch, endlessly duplicated, delivered to people who never asked for it.

Hite’s intent is refreshingly unsentimental. He’s telling fellow businesspeople to stop romanticizing ads and start measuring them like any other sales tool. If you could sit across from every prospect, read their hesitation, answer objections, and close in real time, you would. You can’t, so you build a proxy: copy, images, repetition, media buys. The subtext is almost an admission of loss. Advertising is what happens when selling becomes too big to stay personal; it’s sales without the feedback loop.

There’s also a quiet justification embedded in the pragmatism. Advertising isn’t inherently noble, but it’s not pointless spectacle either. It exists because markets are crowded and attention is scarce. Hite came from a business culture that valued direct response and results over prestige campaigns; his worldview treats consumers less like an audience and more like a pipeline. That framing still haunts modern marketing, even when it’s dressed up as "storytelling": behind every brand voice is a salesperson who simply can’t get to you face-to-face.