Great quotes about business and marketing

Mary Kay Ash

“Those who are blessed with the most talent don't necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.”

P.T. Barnum

“Advertising is like learning – a little is a dangerous thing. If a man has not the pluck to keep on advertising, all the money he has already spent is lost.”

William Bernbach

“Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.”

“Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, good writing can be good selling.”

“The heart of creativity is discipline.”

“The memorable never emerged from a formula.”

“The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.”

“If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.”

“Execution isn’t a vehicle for delivering a selling message. It is a selling message.”

Steuart H. Britt

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.”

Charles Browder

“There is no such thing as ‘soft sell’ and ‘hard sell.’ There is only ‘smart sell’ and ‘stupid sell.’ ”

Warren Buffett

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

Jeremy Bullmore

“75% of the benefit of advertising, is that you advertise.”

Leo Burnett

“When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.”

“If you can’t turn yourself into a consumer, you probably shouldn’t be in the advertising business at all.”

“A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain’t got nothin’.”

“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”

Dale Carnegie

“People aren’t interested in you. They’re interested in themselves.”

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”

Jay Chiat

“Sometimes the most important job advertising can do, is to clarify the obvious.”

Walter P. Chrysler

“The real secret of success is enthusiasm.”

Robert Collier

“We have become so accustomed to hearing everyone claim that his product is the best in the world, or the cheapest, that we take all such statements with a grain of salt.”

“Playing safe is probably the most unsafe thing in the world. You cannot stand still. You must go forward.”

“Any thought that is passed on to the subconscious often enough and convincingly enough is finally accepted.”

Dr. W. Edwards Deming

“Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.”

Carly Fiorina

“A required change never has unanimity of support, and by the time it does, it’s usually too late.”

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

“A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it also must afflict the comfortable.”

“No ad is ever sought out and read by anybody except the person who wrote it or the one who paid for it. It must cut across the reader’s complacency and rivet his attention.”

“Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?”

Carlos Ghosn

“We don't want to be something for everybody, we want to be everything for some people.”

Howard Gossage

“People don’t read advertising, they read what interests them. Sometimes, it’s an ad.”

“Advertising may seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but there’s some evidence that the fish don’t hold still as well as they used to and are developing armor plate. They have control over what type of ammo you have, when the trigger gets pulled, and how fast your shot moves. Oh, and they’re not all in the same barrel anymore.”

“I don’t know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody.”

Claude Hopkins

“The good salesman does not merely cry a name. He doesn’t say ‘Buy my article.’ He pictures the customer’s side of his service until the natural result is to buy.”

Morris Hite

“Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can’t.”

Lee Iacocca

“In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. ”

Thomas Jefferson

“Advertisements contain the only truth to be relied on in a newspaper.”

Erica Jong

“If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.”

John E. Kennedy

“Advertising is Salesmanship in Print.”

Milan Kundera

“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.”

Ray Kroc

“Creativity is a highfalutin word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday.”

Estee Lauder

“If you don’t sell, it’s not the product that’s wrong, it’s you.”

Shelly Lazarus

“If you can go from a big idea to a big ideal; if you can tap into a cultural truth; if you can tap into something in which society is wildly interested in at the moment, you have a huge opportunity.”

Jay Conrad Levinson

“If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down.”

Harvey Mackay

“If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.”

“Don't confuse visibility with credibility.”

“The sale begins when the customer says yes.”

Ed McCabe

“Imagination is one of the last remaining legal means you have to gain an unfair advantage over your competition.”

Tom McElligott

“Selling is an art of passion. When you’re passionate about an idea, it shows.”

Marshall McLuhan

“All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.”

“The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.”

“Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old.”

David Ogilvy

“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”

“The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything.”

“Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.”

Pablo Picasso

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”

Shirley Polykoff

“Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer.”

John E. Powers

“Let’s try honesty.”

Rosser Reeves

“The consumer tends to remember just one thing from advertising – one strong claim, or one strong concept.”

“You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that’s what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don’t yet understand.”

“What do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?”

“Advertising is, actually, a simple phenomenon in terms of economics. It is merely a substitute for a personal sales force – an extension, if you will, of the merchant who cries aloud his wares.”

George P. Rowell

“The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain words exactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to an acquaintance.”

Raymond Rubicam

“Resist the usual.”

Esa Saarinen

“The opposite of creativity is cynicism.”

Dorothy L. Sayers

“It pays to advertise.”

Margaret Thatcher

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”

“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies. So it is something in which no one believes, and to which no one objects.”

Robert Townsend

“If you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?”

Ted Turner

“Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell, and advertise.”

Mark Twain

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

Meg Whitman

“For the past 20 years I had thought that great brands were features and functionality – you know, ‘whiter whites’ or ‘cleaner cleans’ – and if you can get the emotional connection then you have a huge winner on your hands.”

“Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community.”

Boris Yeltsin

“It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical; at such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold.”

James Webb Young

“An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements.”