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.
A lot of entrepreneurs hate big companies. But if you hate them so much, why are you trying to build a new one? The truth is, as soon as a startup has any kind of success whatsoever, it will face big company problems.
It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable.
Be influenced by nothing but your clients' interests. Tell them the truth.
Profitability, growth, and safeguards against existential risks are crucial to strengthening a company's long-term prospects. But if these three factors constitute a company's 'hard power,' firms also need 'soft power': public trust and acceptance, won by fulfilling a company's social responsibility.
No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.
China is very entrepreneurial but has no rule of law. Europe has rule of law but isn't entrepreneurial. Combine rule of law, entrepreneurialism and a generally pro-business policy, and you have Apple.
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