I don’t know what legendary media critic, A.J. Liebling thought of advertising. Whatever he thought of it, he knew how to use advertising to his advantage.
Here’s a small piece of his Wikipedia entry:
He returned to Providence in autumn 1927 to write for the Journal. He then moved to New York, where he proceeded to campaign for a job on Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, which carried the work of James M. Cain and Walter Lippmann and was known at the time as ‘the writer’s paper.’ In order to attract the attention of the city editor, James W. Barrett, Liebling hired an out-of-work Norwegian seaman to walk for three days outside the Pulitzer Building, on Park Row, wearing sandwich boards that read Hire Joe Liebling.
That’s some old school direct marketing. I like it.