Wit & Attitude Quote by Leo Burnett

Burnett is selling a surprisingly democratic idea from inside one of capitalism's most manipulative-looking rooms: the ad business. The line reads like a rebuke to the Mad Men caricature of advertising as mind control. In his framing, the real amateur move is contempt. If you assume the public is dim, you make lazy work - louder, pushier, more desperate - and people sense it instantly. Not because consumers are saints, but because they have finely tuned defenses: boredom, skepticism, the ability to smell a pitch.

The intent is partly moral (respect your audience) and partly brutally practical (respect your audience or you will fail). Burnett isn't denying persuasion; he's drawing a boundary between persuasion and coercion. "Fooled or pushed around" evokes a bully and a con artist, not a storyteller. He implies that good advertising doesn't win by overpowering people; it wins by aligning with what they already care about, or by making a product legible in human terms. It's the same worldview behind his famous belief in "inherent drama": find the truth in the product, then dramatize it.

Context matters: mid-century mass media was consolidating national audiences, and the industry was fighting for legitimacy. Burnett is also defending his own craft against accusations of propaganda. The subtext is a warning to clients and copywriters alike: manipulation is short-term sugar. Trust is the only repeatable strategy, and the audience, underestimated, will punish you for forgetting it.