Marshall McLuhan Business Quotations

When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

Ideally, advertising aims at the goal of a programmed harmony among all human impulses and aspirations and endeavors. Using handicraft methods, it stretches out toward the ultimate electronic goal of a collective consciousness.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.