In advertising, a hard sell is an advertisement or campaign that uses a more direct, forceful, and overt sales message. This approach works in opposition to a soft sell.
Theorists have examined the value of repetition for hard sell versus soft sell messages to determine their relative efficacy. Frank Kardes and others have concluded that a soft sell with an inferred conclusion rather than an overt hard sell can often be more persuasive.
Famous quotes containing the words hard and/or sell:
“A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man’s door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I would sell my life to avoid
the pain that begins in the crib
with its bars or perhaps
with your first breath
when the planets drill
your future into you....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)