Daily Inspiration Quote by Michael Schudson

Schudson’s line is a coolly aimed pin at one of capitalism’s favorite myths: that markets reliably reward rational, self-correcting behavior. By saying firms “very likely” overspend “for their own best interests,” he’s not moralizing about manipulation so much as questioning the supposed efficiency of corporate decision-making. The phrasing matters. “Very likely” reads like a sociologist’s raised eyebrow: not a courtroom claim, but a patterned observation. It invites you to see advertising not as a calibrated tool, but as a social ritual with its own momentum.

The subtext is that advertising budgets often answer to pressures that are organizational and cultural, not strictly economic. Executives fear invisibility; boards demand “growth”; competitors force an arms race; agencies sell certainty in the form of spend. In that environment, “best interests” becomes slippery. The firm may be buying reassurance, status, or narrative control as much as sales. Schudson is pointing to advertising as a kind of institutional insurance policy: wasteful in the narrow spreadsheet sense, rational in a world where blame is punished more than inefficiency. If you under-advertise and miss targets, you’re negligent; if you over-advertise and miss, at least you “invested.”

Contextually, this lands inside a broader sociological critique of consumer culture that treats advertising as a system that helps stabilize markets by manufacturing attention and legitimacy. The jab isn’t that ads never work. It’s that advertising’s real function often exceeds persuasion, making overspending not an exception but a predictable feature of how modern firms manage uncertainty and compete for cultural space.