“Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.”
January 4th, 2008 by Dominic Canterbury
Whoop, There it is!
Thank you Robert Stevens (founder of Geek Squad) for summing it all up.
The quote can be found in this article in Business Week. The article is so fundamentally, profoundly dead-on, there’s little need to add my own commentary.
I will, however, offer some highlights:
“The best stories of well-marketed businesses and brands have come from companies that haven’t spent their money on conventional media but have adopted new approaches. Take for example the plucky crew at Blendtec and their wonderful Will It Blend? viral video series that has been viewed more than 70 million times.”
[ed: They blended an iPhone. And yes, it will blend… to smoking powder. But what really convinced me was when they blended a golf club… to smoking powder.]
“We’ve moved past the point where bragging rights belong to the creators of articulate analogies or metaphors for why one generic car drives better than another. Instead we’re beginning to see a greater focus on something that is not even a new idea—that the products and services businesses create should be fundamentally good.”
[ed: Yeeeeah!]
“If your product is not as good as the competition, or if it fails to live up to your claims, the world will soon know about it and no amount of cleverness will save you—nor should it.”
[ed: Oh SNAP.]
That would be the same man who once kept a box of urinal cakes under his desk in an attempt to figure out how to stamp them with his company’s logo. (no joke).
Cheers,
Aaron
Former Rookie Agent #63
This is sticky. The Business Week article is excellent.
Will it Blend? Absolutely amazing.
I appreciate the pathways into the marketing world that I wouldn’t find in many other places.
Thank you Dominic.