Out-entertain your rivals

You are competing with every piece of content ever made for every person’s attention. You need to be entertaining. Don’t outsmart. Out entertain.

Dolf van den Brink, President & CEO – Heineken USA

Advertising is salesmanship in print

John E Kennedy, copywriter

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.

Pythagoras

Let the audience fill in some blanks…

“When baiting a trap with cheese, always remember to leave room for the mouse” Howard Gossage, advertising icon

What he meant was, don’t just tell the audience what you want them to think. Leave some blanks for the audience to fill in themselves, so they reach the destination on their own. A conclusion or idea formed by the customer in their own mind is likelier to stay there.

Marketing lesson: keep trying

“What I had to do was get in the box 500 times a season. 100 times I’d connect. 50 times the goalkeeper would save it. Half of the rest would go in and 25 goals a season would do me – just by making sure I got in the box 500 times”

Jimmy Greaves, England football international

(H/T Dave Trott)

Innovation is less about producing something new, and more about enabling something new and important for customers

Clayton Christensen, strategy expert