Daily Inspiration Quote by Jef I. Richards

Richards lands the joke with a professor's deadpan: he condemns advertising as "truly putrid", then offers the sort of faint praise that feels like a slap. Calling the good stuff "really quite mediocre" is a precision insult, and it works because it refuses the industry's favorite self-mythology that advertising is, at its best, art.

The intent is twofold. First, it's an indictment of the baseline: if the median ad is embarrassing, the culture has normalized a level of noise, manipulation, and aesthetic laziness that would be unacceptable in most other forms of public communication. Second, it's a jab at the way "not all advertising is bad" is often deployed as an alibi. Richards grants that caveat, then immediately shrinks it. Even when advertising clears the low bar of not being "putrid", it frequently tops out at competent, forgettable, strategically safe.

The subtext is about incentives. Advertising isn't primarily rewarded for truth, beauty, or insight; it's rewarded for attention and sales. That leads to a lot of shouting, a lot of trend-chasing, and a lot of copy optimized by committee. Mediocrity becomes the rational outcome: boldness risks backlash, subtlety risks being ignored, honesty risks undercutting the pitch.

Context matters here: coming from a professor, it's also an institutional wink. Academia is full of careful critiques that end in mild conclusions. Richards flips that dynamic, using understatement as a weapon. The line leaves both camps uneasy: critics don't get a clean moral victory, and practitioners don't get to hide behind a few standout campaigns. The best defense he offers advertising is that, occasionally, it manages not to embarrass itself.