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Nina DiSesa has worked in the quintessential boys clubs of advertising for almost thirty years. In 1994, she became the first woman EVP, Executive Creative Director for McCann Erickson New[…]
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You can’t sell somebody something they don’t want, DiSesa says.

Nina DiSesa: I don’t think that you can sell somebody something that they don’t want. I know that mean when I go around speak to universities, I still get the question of do is the subliminal advertising, I said why knew how to do that I would do it, because I think it would will be cool, but I have never heard that anybody subliminal, having subliminal messages in the advertising that would be use long, and I don’t think you can sell somebody, you can make a brand more attractive but there has to be some substance there. You can make a product desirable but if you don’t need the product, here with the product this in good one, you can’t make a product, survive if its not worthy and you can’t make people buy things if they don’t want. You can open up their eyes to the possibilities of a new way of doing things or a new way of having luxury around you but you can’t really force them to buy something they don’t want. So I don’t really think that advertising is manipulative. We do have strong powers of persuasion, this is one of the reasons why I have person never worked on a political campaign because I do have strong powers of persuasion. I have talents that allow me to be persuasive. And I don’t want to persuade somebody to vote for someone, I want the candidate to do that. I don’t really believe that people who are brilliant persuaders. So do something that is on ethical, I don’t think that’s unethical to do advertising for political people. I mean make that sound by go everywhere, but you have to be careful. I didn’t want a I was always very careful to be really good at what I did, so I didn’t have to work on products that I didn’t personally believe and I don’t want to say what those products are, but I in my entire career, I never had to work on something that I did not think was the right thing to do, I didn’t sell things to children that children shouldn’t have and I didn’t do things that I thought were bad, but you have to make that decision yourself as a creative person, and you have to good enough that you crap so when you say I don’t want to work on bla bla bla they don’t fire you...

Recorded on: 2/29/08


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