Bob Hoffman > Quotes

“Every year or so I like to take a step back and look at a few key advertising, marketing, and media facts just to gauge how far removed from reality we advertising experts have gotten. These data represent the latest numbers I could find. I have listed the sources below. So here we go -- 10 facts, direct from the real world: E-commerce in 2014 accounted for 6.5 percent of total retail sales. 96% of video viewing is currently done on a television. 4% is done on a web device. In Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared. The rate of engagement among a brand's fans with a Facebook post is 7 in 10,000. For Twitter it is 3 in 10,000. Fewer than one standard banner ad in a thousand is clicked on. Over half the display ads paid for by marketers are unviewable. Less than 1% of retail buying is done on a mobile device. Only 44% of traffic on the web is human. One bot-net can generate 1 billion fraudulent digital ad impressions a day. Half of all U.S online advertising - $10 billion a year - may be lost to fraud. As regular readers know, one of our favorite sayings around The Ad Contrarian Social Club is a quote from Noble Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who wonderfully declared that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” I think these facts do a pretty good job of vindicating Feynman.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“It's such a moronic strategy, it can only have come from a trained marketing professional.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“most of what we call “brand loyalty” is simply habit, convenience, mild satisfaction or easy availability.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“You want customers raving about your brand? Sell them a good fucking product.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“10 Ideas For Transforming Advertising 1. No cranberry bagels at meetings. No exceptions. 2. While on duty, copywriters required to wear those Peruvian knit hats with the funny earflaps. 3. Reinstatement of the three martini lunch. After a 6-month trial period, optional upgrade to four. 4. Confiscate all computers and baseball caps from art directors. 5. Use of the following terms will be considered justifiable cause for termination: ecosystem, conversation, engagement, landscape, seared ahi tuna, and quirky. 6. When making presentations, account planners must dress up as pirates and hop around on one foot. 7. Breakthrough idea for tv spots: Animals that talk! 8. Criminalize all products containing pomegranates or acai berries. 9.  Increase touch points from 360 degrees to 380 degrees. 10. Require Sir Martin Sorrell to walk around with his weenie out.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“It is true that humans are not logic machines. But, remember, emotion is a response. Not a stimulus.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“Digital has changed delivery systems -- pipes -- but it hasn't changed what's going through the pipes.”
― Bob Hoffman, Quantum Advertising: A brief reflection on the nature of advertising

“Creativity is what happens after the strategy is done. Creativity is the process that transforms a strategy into a terrific ad.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“in marketing, advertising, and media our strategies have no inevitability about them. Just probabilities and likelihoods.”
― Bob Hoffman, Quantum Advertising: A brief reflection on the nature of advertising

“I’m afraid I have a very old guy opinion. You want customers raving about your brand? Sell them a good fucking product.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“It has been said that " man is an animal who cuts down big trees and plants little trees in their place." Too often man is an animal who just cuts down big trees, for there are many farms near here where not a single tree beautifies the farm home grounds or shades the house from the hot sun of summer or serves as a windbreak during the cold blasts of winter.”
― Bob Hoffman, I Remember The Last War

“there are two kinds of people: people who simplify things and people who complicate them.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“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”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“Hiring is everything. If you have terrific people the advertising business isn’t that difficult.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, Quantum Advertising: A brief reflection on the nature of advertising

“Everywhere we turn, there is advertising. You can’t swing a dead social media consultant without hitting some.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“Posting an online recipe may be useful to a food marketer, but calling it “content” is just pretentious drivel.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“When you say something that no one believes, you are not only wasting your money, you are undermining your credibility. And all the spurious "support points" in the world don't make absurd claims any more believable.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“The most powerful force in marketing is not price, quality, distribution, advertising, or branding -- it's the resistance to change.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“The point is this: our brands are very important to us marketers and very unimportant to most consumers. Please read that again.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

“Marketers prefer clear answers that are wrong to vague answers that are right.”
― Bob Hoffman, Quantum Advertising: A brief reflection on the nature of advertising

“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.”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“Scientists have named this newly discovered species “Nebranderthal Man" (Homo nebranderthalensis.)”
― Bob Hoffman, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

“Without creativity, nobody gives a shit. The world is full of dull opinions, almost-funny banter, and dreary monographs.”
― Bob Hoffman, Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey