Quotes from Bob Hoffman

If we cannot provide clients with the one thing they really want from us -- creativity -- there is little future for the ad industry as it is currently configured.

in marketing, advertising, and media our strategies have no inevitability about them. Just probabilities and likelihoods.

I mean...um... they are Web 2.0 savvy consumers whose engagement with their own personal brands make them willing to join the conversation in an interactive way that leverages social media to become engaged customers for life. You know, that kind of thing. Well, whatever the hell they are, they got money and we want it! Remember, engaging content is how you engage their engagement.

The best advertising will be great because of an indefinable quality that communicates with us as humans, not consumers. The very best advertising is not about benefits or features, it's not about mysterious subconscious needs that can only be stimulated emotionally. It's about connecting the product or brand with ideas that tickle our humanity.

Marketers prefer clear answers that are wrong to vague answers that are right.

Digital has changed delivery systems -- pipes -- but it hasn't changed what's going through the pipes.

Everywhere we turn, there is advertising. You can't swing a dead social media consultant without hitting some.

Without creativity, nobody gives a shit. The world is full of dull opinions, almost-funny banter, and dreary monographs.

Marketing Man is an imaginary character (or as we like to call him, a "target audience") who exists mainly in ad agency briefing documents and marketing department Powerpoint presentations.

I'm afraid I have a very old guy opinion. You want customers raving about your brand? Sell them a good fucking product.

Hiring is everything. If you have terrific people the advertising business isn't that difficult.

4. Politicians: Insufferable egotists pretending to be "public servants.

It is true that humans are not logic machines. But, remember, emotion is a response. Not a stimulus.

Now that computers can write and design ads, we can get down to the real business of advertising -- you know, meetings and downloads and uploads and briefings and off-sites and Powerpoints and metrics and brand audits and deep dives. We

Anthropologists speculate that previously there was another species of human-like primates that did not have the brand gene. These proto-humans walked upright and developed primitive tools, but couldn't tell Jif from Skippy, and believed Evian and Crystal Geyser were pretty much the same stuff. Scientists marvel at their survival.

Scientists have named this newly discovered species "Nebranderthal Man" (Homo nebranderthalensis.)

report adds fuel to the ongoing disagreement between those who believe branding is a fundamental component of human existence -- like eating, breathing, sex and shoplifting -- and those who believe it's just a load of marketing bullshit.

The most powerful force in marketing is not price, quality, distribution, advertising, or branding -- it's the resistance to change.

What makes their new campaign so awful is that they're trying to convince business travelers that flying Southwest will make us more "productive." Right. That's the big airline issue for me. Not price. Not schedule. Not comfort. Not reliability. "Bob, what airline you wanna take?" "I don't know. Which one makes me more productive?" It's such a moronic strategy, it can only have come from a trained marketing professional.

You want customers raving about your brand? Sell them a good fucking product.

The point is this: our brands are very important to us marketers and very unimportant to most consumers. Please read that again.

there are two kinds of people: people who simplify things and people who complicate them.

Creativity is what happens after the strategy is done. Creativity is the process that transforms a strategy into a terrific ad.

We thought that interactivity would make advertising more engaging. We thought that traditional advertising was on the way out. We thought that the DVR was going to devastate TV. We thought the PC and the television were going to converge. None of this has happened.