Marketing Quote by Leo Bogart

Bogart’s line lands like a quiet rebuke to the industry’s favorite alibis: data, targeting, “brand purpose,” and the endless PowerPoint theology of persuasion. “In my opinion” is doing more work than it seems. It’s a modest preface that also signals dissent from whatever orthodoxy was dominant in the room. He’s not claiming a scientific law; he’s calling out a practical truth practitioners keep forgetting.

“Fun” sounds lightweight, almost unserious, which is exactly why it’s a sharper argument than “creativity” or “emotion.” Fun is the part of advertising that admits it’s competing for attention in a world where people would rather do literally anything else. It’s not just about jokes. Fun means play: surprise, rhythm, a sense of permission. It lowers resistance. It makes the audience a willing participant instead of a target being processed. In that sense, fun isn’t the opposite of strategy; it’s strategy’s delivery system.

The subtext is also slightly cynical: advertising “success” isn’t framed as truth, beauty, or social good. It’s framed as effectiveness, and the quickest route to effectiveness is getting people to enjoy the encounter long enough to remember it. Fun becomes a kind of cultural camouflage, smuggling a sales message inside a pleasurable experience.

Contextually, it reads like a mid-century corrective, when mass media advertising had to win broad audiences, not micro-segments. The principle still bites today, maybe more: in feeds optimized to ignore you, fun is often the only humane way to earn a second of attention.