Breakthrough Advertising Quotes

The Third Reich made it its mission to use the authority of the state to coordinate efforts within industry to devise standardized and simplified versions of key consumer commodities. These would then be produced at the lowest possible price, enabling the German population to achieve an immediate breakthrough to a higher standard of living. The epithet which was generally attached to these products was Volk: the Volksempfaenger (radio), Volkswohnung (apartments), Volkswagen, Volkskuehlschrank (refrigerator), Volkstraktor (tractor).34 This list contains only those products that enjoyed the official backing of one or more agencies in the Third Reich. Private producers, however, had long appreciated that the term ‘Volk’ had good marketing potential, and they, too, joined the bandwagon. Amongst the various products they touted were Volks-gramophone (people’s gramophone), Volksmotorraeder (people’s motorbikes) and Volksnaehmaschinen (people’s sewing machines). In fact, by 1933 the use of the term ‘Volk’ had become so inflationary that the newly established German advertising council was forced to ban the unlicensed use of the term.

10 Ideas For Transforming Advertising 1. No cranberry bagels at meetings. No exceptions. 2. While on duty, copywriters required to wear those Peruvian knit hats with the funny earflaps. 3. Reinstatement of the three martini lunch. After a 6-month trial period, optional upgrade to four. 4. Confiscate all computers and baseball caps from art directors. 5. Use of the following terms will be considered justifiable cause for termination: ecosystem, conversation, engagement, landscape, seared ahi tuna, and quirky. 6. When making presentations, account planners must dress up as pirates and hop around on one foot. 7. Breakthrough idea for tv spots: Animals that talk! 8. Criminalize all products containing pomegranates or acai berries. 9.  Increase touch points from 360 degrees to 380 degrees. 10. Require Sir Martin Sorrell to walk around with his weenie out.

We found the common ground between gun owners and nonowners by using questions,” Bond told me. Among the questions people could agree on: Do you care about gun violence? Are you for gun responsibility? “These elicited unqualified yeses,” Bond said, “whereas statements like ‘Gun owners must be more responsible’ elicited personalized, defensive answers.” Bond considers questions to be “the verbal equivalent of nonviolent conflict resolution.” The only way to get any traction on polarizing issues is to attract people on both sides, “not bully them into submission.” As he noted, questions—if worded sensitively—can show respect to both sides of an issue, invite participation, and open up conversation. Bond, the former advertiser, described it as “the art of ‘pull’ versus ‘push.’ It can’t be done without questions.

If you had an Internet connection and lived in North America at the time, you may have seen it. Vasquez is the man behind the “Double Rainbow” video, which at last check had 38 million views. In the clip, Vasquez pans his camera back and forth to show twin rainbows he’d discovered outside his house, first whispering in awe, then escalating in volume and emotion as he’s swept away in the moment. He hoots with delight, monologues about the rainbows’ beauty, sobs, and eventually waxes existential. “What does it mean?” Vasquez crows into the camera toward the end of the clip, voice filled with tears of sheer joy, marveling at rainbows like no man ever has or probably ever will again. It’s hard to watch without cracking up. That same month, the viral blog BuzzFeed boosted a different YouTuber’s visibility. Michelle Phan, a 23-year-old Vietnamese American makeup artist, posted a home video tutorial about how to apply makeup to re-create music star Lady Gaga’s look from the recently popular music video “Bad Romance.” BuzzFeed gushed, its followers shared, and Lady Gaga’s massive fanbase caught wind of the young Asian girl who taught you how to transform into Gaga. Once again, the Internet took the video and ran with it. Phan’s clip eventually clocked in at roughly the same number of views as “Double Rainbow.” These two YouTube sensations shared a spotlight in the same summer. Tens of millions of people watched them, because of a couple of superconnectors. So where are Vasquez and Phan now? Bear Vasquez has posted more than 1,300 videos now, inspired by the runaway success of “Double Rainbow.” But most of them have been completely ignored. After Kimmel and the subsequent media flurry, Vasquez spent the next few years trying to recapture the magic—and inadvertent comedy—of that moment. But his monologues about wild turkeys or clips of himself swimming in lakes just don’t seem to find their way to the chuckling masses like “Double Rainbow” did. He sells “Double Rainbow” T-shirts. And wears them. Today, Michelle Phan is widely considered the cosmetic queen of the Internet, and is the second-most-watched female YouTuber in the world. Her videos have a collective 800 million views. She amassed 5 million YouTube subscribers, and became the official video makeup artist for Lancôme, one of the largest cosmetics brands in the world. Phan has since founded the beauty-sample delivery company Ipsy.com, which has more than 150,000 paying subscribers, and created her own line of Sephora cosmetics. She continues to run her video business—now a full-blown production company—which has brought in millions of dollars from advertising. She’s shot to the top of a hypercompetitive industry at an improbably young age. And she’s still climbing. Bear Vasquez is still cheerful. But he’s not been able to capitalize on his one-time success. Michelle Phan could be the next Estée Lauder. This chapter is about what she did differently.

The iGods started pure—Google wasn’t sure they wanted advertising. Going public with their stock resulted in the need for quarterly returns. It forced Google and Facebook to bow down to the even greater gods of commerce. The question of access remains. Who will control the flow of information? Will a few get rich at the expense of others? Techno-enthusiasts at the annual TED conference envision a gift economy where the sharing of ideas leads to profound breakthroughs in science and education. Others fear the controlling power of information technology. What happens when the information we share freely is aggregated aggressively, when too much information lands in the hands of the wrong company or country?

Immelt wanted division heads to generate imaginative new product and service concepts, which in turn would generate the new organic revenue on which his vision depended. It was a tall order: a handful of product ideas that would each pull in $100 million in new sales for each business. More important, Immelt wanted these “breakthrough” sessions to be led by each unit’s marketing department—to have the division that usually dictated advertising and branding stepping into the role that had been the province of product engineers. Immelt’s inspiration for the directive was an article he read about a smaller industrial conglomerate called Danaher Corporation that had formed an internal incubator to develop new ideas that could drive revenues and profits. Its CEO was a young whiz named Larry Culp who, at age thirty-seven, was even younger than Immelt had been when he took the reins.

The doubters soon realized that “Imagination at Work” wasn’t just advertising. Immelt was intent on putting marketing at the heart of GE strategy to dictate not just how the company sold the things it made but what it made in the first place. Much as Welch had before them, Comstock and Immelt hatched new jargon to express the process they wanted the company to follow. GE business leaders would now convene to come up with “Imagination Breakthroughs”—that is, ideas about products the company should design and sell.