“Be serious and dignified, but active and lively. Leave wit, however good it may be, entirely aside” (George P. Rowell, 1888).
“To me there is nothing so unrefined as excessive laughter” (Miss Caroline Bingley in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice).
“Humor is like a frog. You can dissect the thing, but it dies in the process” (E. B. White).
“It’s all right if your ads make people smile—provided also that they make them purchase from you” (Printers’ Ink, 1902).
“Coarse jokes and ribald jests and vulgar slang in advertisements are not likely to cause buyers to open their purses” (Advertiser, 1903).
“Don’t sacrifice dignity to misapply humor in copy” (Advertiser, 1909).
“Appeal for money in a lightsome way and you will never get it. People do not buy from clowns” (Claude Hopkins).
“Scare-copy with the velvet glove of humor enclosing it, may offer the germ of a new idea” (Printers’ Ink, 1919).
“The purely irrelevant fun, dragged in by the heels to make a holiday of a headline, is certainly not good business” (Townsend, 1923).
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is” (Oscar Wilde).
“Rule No. 18: Avoid humor. You can entertain a million people and not sell one of them. There is not a single humorous line in two of the most influential books in the world—the Bible and the Sears, Roebuck catalog” (John Caples, 1975).
“Everyone likes funny commercials. Creative people like creating them. Advertisers are pleased to be running them. The consumer enjoys them” (Roman and Maas, 1976).
“Students creating advertisements for the first time seem to go through the same catharsis. The first stage seems to be the relentless pursuit of the best pun, augmented with a visual deemed ‘wild and wacky,’ in a futile attempt at being funny” (Constantin G. Cotzias, 1996).
“If it bends, it’s funny; if it breaks, it’s not funny” (Alan Alda in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors).
“How can major advertisers who refuse to risk two top-level executives in the same corporate jet gamble so casually with advertising dollars by using humor?” (Holger Enge, 2004).
