Marketing quotes

In some way, shape or form I have been in marketing all my life. I studied it. I taught it. I mentored others in it. One of the things I have come to understand, sadly, is that most business people – especially marketers – really don’t have a good handle on what it is. To that end here are some enduring quotations from those who are in touch with what marketing truly is.

Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department. ~ David Packard, HP.

Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation. ~ Milan Kundera, author.

I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination. ~ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy & Mather

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built they’ll want something new. ~ Steve Jobs

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. ~ Peter Drucker, author and teacher.

Marketing is a contest for people’s attention. ~ Seth Godin, author

When you enchant people your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight. ~ Guy Kawasaki, author, former Apple Evangelist, and founder of Alltop.

Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising. ~ Milton Hershey, Founder of The Hershey Chocolate Company

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. ~ Peter Drucker

Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers. ~ Seth Godin, author

And then there are these quotes about marketing that – offbeat, funny, sometimes true and insightful, and sometimes way off the mark.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct. ~ Karl Lagerfeld, fashion designer

Let advertisers spend the same amount f money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise it. ~Will Rogers, actor

In marketing you must choose between boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you want? ~ Roy H Williams, author

It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive. ~ Nicholas Johnson, former FCC commissioner

Marketing is what you do when your product is no good. ~ Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid

No great marketing decisions have ever been made on quantitative data. ~ John Scully, former CEO of Apple

There is more similarity in the marketing challenge of selling a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible. ~ A. Alfred Tobman, real estate developer

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public. ~ Vilhjalmur Stefansson, explorer and ethnologist

It will work. I am a marketing genius. ~ Paris Hilton, celebrity of sorts

Written by Michael

Michael Douglas has held senior positions in sales, marketing and general management since 1980, and spent 20 years at Sun Microsystems, most recently as VP, Global Marketing. His experience includes start-ups, mid-market and enterprises. He's currently VP Enterprise Go-to-Market for NVIDIA.