Success Quote by Fairfax Cone

Cone’s line is a polite insult aimed at the industry he helped professionalize. By reducing advertising to a substitute for “go see somebody,” he strips it of glamour and exposes it as a second-best form of human contact: a mediated handshake for when the real one is impossible, too expensive, or too slow. The casual “That’s all it is” lands like a gavel. No mysticism about persuasion, no romance about creativity - just a reminder that the medium exists because distance (geographic, social, logistical) exists.

The intent is clarifying, but the subtext is disciplinary. Cone is warning both clients and ad people not to confuse the tool with the relationship. If you can be in the room, listen, negotiate, build trust, you should. Advertising enters when scale replaces intimacy: when a company has millions of “somebodys,” or when the seller can’t physically earn credibility one person at a time. That’s less an artistic mission than a structural necessity of modern markets.

Context matters: Cone’s career sits in mid-century American consumer expansion, when mass media turned brands into familiar faces. His quip pushes back against the era’s tendency to treat advertising as omnipotent mind-control. It’s not magic; it’s proxy. Which also implies an ethical edge: proxies can flatter, distort, and overpromise in ways a real meeting can’t sustain. Cone’s cynicism is pragmatic: good advertising doesn’t replace reality; it tries to earn the right to be followed by it.