The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
David OgilvyRead
Why do eight out of ten new consumer products fail? Sometimes because they are too new. The first cold cereals were rejected by consumers. More often new products fail because they are not new enough.
Interpretation
New products often fail due to lack of innovation or being ahead of their time.
David Ogilvy's quote addresses the challenges faced by new consumer products in the market. It emphasizes that products can fail either because they are too innovative and unfamiliar for consumers or because they do not offer enough novelty compared to existing options. This highlights the delicate balance required in product development between novelty and consumer acceptance.
In practice
During a business seminar discussing product development strategies.
The headline is the 'ticket on the meat.' Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
Experience has taught me that advertisers get the best results when they pay their agency a flat fee. It is unrealistic to expect your agency to be impartial when its vested interest lies wholly in the direction of increasing your commissionable advertising.
It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.
People pitch me all the time. But hopefully, you'll just go ahead and do it. We are trying to eliminate the need for pitches. I'd rather sit there and applaud. Customers buy products, not Powerpoint presentations.
At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.
When you are making a decision about how best to serve your customers, your own experience is often a better guide than a more sophisticated analysis of the market.
In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.
The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.
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