Andrew Tindall usually bangs on about what makes ads effective. Today he shares the adland quotes that make him (and hopefully you) more effective. Old inspirational advertising quotes, can be useful and inspirational.
But many are like the Live, Laugh, Love of marketing. LinkedIn wallpaper with no real-world applications. When I moved from brand-side FMCG to agency life, a few things changed.
Sleep became a luxury, and when awake, which is now always, I became a student of marketing scripture, or, as a normal person would call me, boring. I can ’t go a day without having a “legendary” marketing quote forced upon me. And it was always paired with a dusty black-and-white picture of said icon.
You can’t help but imagine them storming into rooms and dropping nuggets of wisdom. It’s enough to make you want to drop to your knees to recite verses of the Long and Short of It or go door-to-door converting our neighbors to the Church of Ehrenburg Bass. The issue? Not all quotes are profound.
Or useful. And some are twisted to suit whatever someone is selling you. So, I’ve hunted down the nine timeless quotes that reveal the core marketing principles that will never change.
These are principles that allow marketers to focus on what we need to be doing rather than chasing new tools and metrics. And before I dive in and have a love-in with adland’s past, I acknowledge the old white elephant in the room. I’ve dug out these quotes from an era rife with inequity and injustic.
