Quotes from Sally Hogshead

Fascination is not the same as interest. It's a neurological state of intense focus, one that creates an irresistible feeling of engagement.

Sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—these senses are practically built for black magic. If you speak the language of relationship, use them whenever you can. Stimulating the five senses heightens the brand experience, making it more intensely fascinating.

It matters less how you see the world. It matters more how the world sees you. If you fail to understand what your audience truly values, then you can't communicate yourself in a way that makes people want to build connection and loyalty.

When you speak the language of creativity, you can transform a dull commodity into something magical. Rather than charging just for the generic value of the product, you can charge for the experience.

Alarm-based marketing logic often goes something like this: There is a limited quantity (scarcity). Unless you act now (urgency), you'll lose your opportunity (consequence). When crafting a message for an audience who is stuck in apathy or indecision, deadlines and consequences overcome inertia to create action.

The Modern Marketing Maze Today, the maze changes every day, making a marketer's job far more difficult than it was in the good old days. Unless you have the biggest budget of all your competitors, it no longer works to repeatedly drill in messages. You must

If you communicate with a slew of haphazard and conflicting messages, it's difficult to develop a clearly established route. You'll seem confused, or inauthentic, and the audience will be less likely to understand what you stand for.

Emblems fulfill a deep, instinctive need because they say something about us. Abraham Maslow calls this "esteem": the need to feel important, respected, and recognized as an achiever. We satisfy this need by communicating our value to the world around us.

Here's your choice: Spend a lot of time and money in pursuit of better. Or find what makes you different, and then do it on purpose.

Too often, marketers rush in and smother consumers. Instead of a high-pressure pitch, what if you used a low-pressure (or anti-pressure) approach? Consider backing off a little. Pull customers in, rather than pushing them to buy. Build an anticipation gap.

Mr. Winston once purchased a 726-carat stone in London, setting off a heated debate about the safest way to get it back to the States. A league of bodyguards? Chartered ship? Colossal insurance policy? Harry Winston wouldn't say which method he'd picked. Two weeks later, the priceless jewel arrived at his Fifth Avenue store, sent via standard registered mail, for 64 cents postage.

If you are not creating a negative response from somebody, you're probably not very fascinating to anybody.

Now you need to "front-load" your value. Cut to the chase. Get to the point. Make it short and sweet. The pressure is on. It's almost as if people have developed collective ADD, swimming like a goldfish from one message to another, jumping from one email to the next.

Sometimes the most fascinating advertising isn't what your brand says to the world, but what it actually does in the world.

Whether you're an old or new brand, you can draw on mythology, as long as you present it in a new way.

A million generations after our reptilian brains retreated to the base of our brain stems, fascination continues to be our most basic form of attention. Why? Because fascination, at some level, is based upon survival. And to survive, you must fascinate.

David Dilcher wrote, "flowering plants were the first advertisers in the world. They put out beautiful petals, colorful patterns, fragrances, and gave a reward, such as nectar or pollen, for any insect that would come and visit them.

By working in and among and between world-class teams, I could combine different methodologies for new combinations. I didn't have to adhere to a fixed set of rules, and handpicked the best of each.

Sometimes a company wants to create an un-Passionate experience for strategic reasons. Shopping malls contain an intentionally unfascinating environment in the middle, so that customers are more likely to flock to the stores. That's also why you won't see a clock in a mall (so you lose track of time and stay there longer). And it's also why the acoustics are bad in malls, so that stores seem like a comforting alternative.

The word "familiar" comes from familia, meaning family. Family is more than just an emotional bond, and so is familiarity. Neurochemically, there's a lot going on with familiarity. Our minds look for patterns. When we recognize them, we not only rely on them, but also develop preferences based on pattern repetition. Our brains use these patterns to map everything we see, hear, and experience in order to establish an expectation for the future.

It's about your product, and brand, and you, and whether or not you will win the battle for attention. Every time you market, you are offering either the orange ticket, or the green. You're either captivating, or a commodity. You're fascinating, or forgotten.

By developing symbols of value, groups can strengthen participation and commitment. People eagerly work to acquire and show off emblems. So it only makes sense that companies should develop emblems of value. Prestigious groups monitor access to remain sought-after, rare, and valuable. Insider brands usually control how many people get access to the brand; otherwise, oversaturation cheapens status and destroys value.

While this initial finding isn't a shocker, the news wasn't that the activity occurred, but rather exactly where the activity occurred. It took place in the nucleus accumbens, a deep and primal area linked to intense physical reward

Instead of trying to outdo your competition, focus on what makes you different. The goal is to find where you and your product diverge from standard expectations.