photo credit: Merideth Farmer

Here’s a great article from the NYT about one of the biggest pitfalls in marketing: talking to yourself. Many very intelligent people and innovative businesses have been found guilty of the offense. The author points the finger at the “Curse of Knowledge.”

Chip Heath (author of Made to Stick) illustrates the problem very well: “It’s kind of like the ugly American tourist trying to get across an idea in another country by speaking English slowly and more loudly. You’ve got to find the common connections.”

As an advertiser, it’s vitally important to place new technologies into a proper context; keeping a connection with the things people valued in the past.

Marshall Mcluhan said, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”

The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid. It is doing the simple and the obvious. The human being, by contrast, is not logical; he is perceptual. This means that he is slow and sloppy. But he is also bright and has insight. The human being can adapt; that is, he can infer from scant information or from no information at all what the total picture might be like. He can remember a great many things nobody has programed.

- Peter F. Drucker

Flickr photo credit: absolutewade

Also at the Idea Conference (brought to you by Ad Age and Creativity), we had the opportunity to listen to Steven Heyer, CEO of Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Steven had a lot to say, including this: “Each of our hotels is a themepark.”

Here’s an .mp3 of Steven speaking with architect, David Rockwell.

I don’t know if I even have an aura, man. I just try to win.
–Tiger Woods

(Age 30: 12 majors)

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“Fútbol is the opera of the people.”

–Stafford Heginbotham, 1985

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

–Bill Shankly (Scottish Soccer Player and Manager, 1913-1981)

photo credit: Andreas Fennhagen

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

- George Bernard Shaw

- “I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

Thomas Jefferson

photo credit: Lee Steffen

“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course…the space between your ears.”

- Bobby Jones