In Other Words…
July 18th, 2006
I am in the mood for a slightly esoteric post today, so bear with me.
I was an English major, so I really enjoy a good, concise quote. I have little notebooks all over the place, filled with quotes from famous thinkers and amusing tidbits I pick out of conversations. I often find The Quotations Page a useful resource when I’m trying to find an elegant way of expressing the essence of a particular brand attribute. So, today I just wanted to share a couple of interesting quotes that I find inspiring:
- “I passionately hate the idea of being ‘with it.’ I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.” –Orson Welles (Much more interesting and active than everyone’s favorite “Think outside the box,” eh?)
- “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” –Bertolt Brecht (Every advertising and marketing person should have this engraved on the wall facing their desks.)
- “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” –Albert Einstein (I just like that one.)
- “Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.” –Jack Kerouac (It’s easy to be a courageous client or agency… right up to the point of decision and execution. Push through the panic, and that’s where you find true remarkability.)
- “Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” –Edward R. Murrow (Gareth Kay wrote a great post about this quote the other day, bringing up the difference between companies who think big and companies who spend big. Which messages end up deserving to travel past the end of the bar?)
There you go. Your moment of Zen for the day.
Other posts by Jennifer.
paul says:
Now and zen I like to share a few of my favorites, too. I was also an English major, and like The Portable Curmudgeon handy for at-the-ready pith. And vinegar.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452266688/002-7080789-5020016?v=glance&n=283155
“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
“The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.”
“Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”
(Above from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer, a great, albeit political, handbook for marketers.)
And:
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
Never moon a werewolf.
July 18th, 2006 at 12:42 pmAnonymous says:
The goal is to make money… and you don’t do that by being different just to be different… but rather by giving people what thay want but otherwise don’t have.
“There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.” Albert Einstein (great entrepreneurs get what he’s saying.)
Or put another way…
“Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.” John Naisbitt
July 19th, 2006 at 12:22 amwebecho says:
Nice post.
It was great to find the Einstein quote(one of my favourites) mentioned by someone else.
It may be irrelevant to marketing but it’s a classic.
Another:
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Albert Einstein
July 19th, 2006 at 4:00 ampaul says:
Einstein insisted there was a unified field theory. I think he was wrong. And so do a lot of others, by the way. Application of clearly observable and tested “laws” in the wrong places sometimes simply causes real problems.
On the topic of what people want and making money giving it to them, this article from WIRED is interesting because it discusses what amounts to a new economic model. Not sure about that but some of the thinking was refreshing.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
July 19th, 2006 at 11:48 am