William Gibson on Advertising

“"They didn't find those men?" Cayce says. "No. The one you head-butted is probably in a clinic now, getting his nose taped back into shape." Bigend creases his forehead. "You didn't learn that studying marketing, did you?" No. "For all we know. You might have just broken the nose of a junior creative director." "The next junior creative director who tries to mug you, you might break his nose too. But Italians who work in Tokyo ad agencies don't wear Albanian Prada knockoffs."”

“"The heart is a muscle," Bigend corrects. "You 'know' in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as 'mind' is only a sort of jumped−up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things."”