General

"I demand that you take my name off the door."

Did you know the adman, Leo Burnett?  He created the “Marlboro Man” ad campaign.

For years, Mr. Burnett worked 364 days a year. Despite that, he didn’t hit his creative stride until he was 60 (!). That’s when he came up with that now-famous and super-successful Marlboro Man ad campaign.

Anyways, not long before he died (1891-1971), when his ad agency was the biggest in the world outside of New York, he told his staff:

“Somewhere along the line, after I’m finally off the premises, you may want to take my name off the premises, too.

“But let me tell you when I might demand that you take my name off the door.  That will be the day when you spend more time trying to make money and less time making [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][good] advertising.

“When your main interest becomes a matter of size just to be big, rather than good, hard, wonderful work.”  Ogilvy on Advertising, p. 202 

The wrong motivation tends to get just average results. Compare Nokia, who is and wants to be big, to Apple, who wants to wow their customers (see here 41 seconds in).   Worse still, the wrong motivations also get us into trouble.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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Kim Klaver

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