"I've learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one"
About this Quote
The barb lands because it reverses the usual ego story of advertising: creativity isn’t the hard part, restraint is. Boorstin, a historian who spent his career diagnosing how modern life turns reality into “images,” is pointing at the quiet vandalism baked into institutions that can’t stop polishing what already works. “Any fool” can produce a bad ad because badness often comes from default settings: cliché, noise, the anxious need to say everything. The “genius” is the person with enough authority, patience, and self-control to stop the machine from “improving” a message into mush.
The subtext is less about copywriting than about power. A good ad is fragile because it threatens committees: if it’s already effective, what is the manager, client, or consultant for? Touching it becomes a way to justify one’s role, to leave fingerprints, to convert a clean idea into a negotiated settlement. Boorstin’s gendered “his” marks the era and also hints at the boys-club dynamics of mid-century business culture, where meddling can masquerade as leadership.
Context matters: coming from a historian, it’s not merely an industry quip. It’s a miniature theory of modern persuasion, where the worst distortions aren’t created by lack of talent but by incentives that reward intervention over judgment. The line flatters the rare editor who can say “ship it,” but it’s also an indictment of a culture that confuses activity with intelligence.
The subtext is less about copywriting than about power. A good ad is fragile because it threatens committees: if it’s already effective, what is the manager, client, or consultant for? Touching it becomes a way to justify one’s role, to leave fingerprints, to convert a clean idea into a negotiated settlement. Boorstin’s gendered “his” marks the era and also hints at the boys-club dynamics of mid-century business culture, where meddling can masquerade as leadership.
Context matters: coming from a historian, it’s not merely an industry quip. It’s a miniature theory of modern persuasion, where the worst distortions aren’t created by lack of talent but by incentives that reward intervention over judgment. The line flatters the rare editor who can say “ship it,” but it’s also an indictment of a culture that confuses activity with intelligence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
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