“That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.”

Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.

Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.

The Law of the Generic: One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.

Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.

It normally takes decades to build a brand because it takes decades to penetrate the gray matter in between your ears.

Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store.

After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about the brand forever.

You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.

Each year we send more and receive less.

The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.

What should a brand leader advertise?

Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands.

It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.

Even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.

Attack even from a position of inferiority, to disrupt the enemy’s plans.

The fighter in the opening of a dogfight must detect the opponent as early as possible in order to attain a superior position for the attack.

This often results in improving one’s own position.

Like the hunter who stalks his prey and maneuvers himself unnoticed into the most favourable position for the kill

Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful.

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

Only I can’t do them so I ended up on my ass followed by the most unsightly backward roll out of it, followed by the cast falling over in laughter and a good portion of the audience too.

For some reason it made me want to curl up in the fetal position. I could have slept right there on their kitchen table.