Saul Bellow – Mosby’s Memoir’s and Other Stories. 1968

Most stories seem to be about ‘intelligence vs. the world’. And how the world wins.

“”If you don’t do as he therapist tells you, Hattie, you’ll need another operation. Do you know what adhesions are?”

She knew, but Hattie thought, How long must I go on taking care of myself?” (Bellow, Leaving the Yellow House, 1968, p.16).

“I can see bright, but I feel dim.” (Bellow, Leaving the Yellow House, 1968, p.27).

Whom to leave the yellow house after her death: “”It is too soon! Too soon! Because I do not find it inmy heart to care for anyone as I would wish. Being cast off and lonely, and doing no harm where I am. Why should it be? This breaks my heart. In addition to everything else, why must I worry about this, which I must leave? I am tormented out of my mind. Even thoughby my own fault I have put myself into this position. And I am not ready to give up on this. No, not yet. And so I’ll tell you what, I leave the property, land, house, garden, and water rights to Hattie Simmons Waggoner. Me! I realize this is bad and wrong. Not possible. Yet it is the only thing I really wish to do. So may God have mercy on my soul.” (Bellow, Leaving the Yellow House, 1968, p.42).

“Only tonight I can’t give the house away. I’m drunk and so I need it. And tomorrow, she promised herself, I’ll think again. I’ll work it out for sure.” (Bellow, Leaving the Yellow House, 1968, p.42).

“Respectable elms about his house sighed with him for the past.” (Bellow, The Old System, 1968, p.64).

“But once humankind had grasped its own idea, that it was human and human through such passions, it began to exploit, to play, to disturb for the sake of exciting disturbance, to make an uproar, a crude circus of feelings.” (Bellow, The Old System, 1968, p.82).

“Again, nothing! It was only an imitation of understanding. A promise that mankind might – might, mind you – eventually, though its gift which might – might again! – be a divine gift, comprehend why it lived. Why life, why death.

And again, why these particular forms – these Issacs and these Tinas?” (Bellow, The Old System, 1968, p.83).

“”I’ll report it and see what can be done.”

“Nothing can be done, I expect. You know and I know. There ain’t so little ways to make things better, and the only big thing is money. That’s the only sunbeams, money. Nothing is black where it shines, and the only place you see black, is where it ain’t shining. What we colored have to have is our own riches. There ain’t no other way.”” (Bellow, Looking for Mr. Green, 1968, p.102).

“Rebuild after the Great Fire, this part of the city was, not fifty years later, in ruins again, factories boarded up, buildings deserted or fallen, gaps of prairie between. But it wasn’t desolation that this made you feel, but rather a faltering of organization that set free huge energy, an escaped, unattached, unregulated power from the giant raw place. Not only must people feel it but, it seemed to Grebe, they were compelled to match it.” (Bellow, Looking for Mr. Green, 1968, p.104). “To be compelled to feel this energy and yet have no task to do – that was horrible; that was suffering.” (Bellow, Looking for Mr. Green, 1968, p.104).

“Objects once so new, so concrete that it could never have occurred to anyone they stood for other things, had crumbled. Therefore, reflected Grebe, the secret of them was out.” (Bellow, Looking for Mr. Green, 1968, p.104).

“I’m not much on modern poetry in English. Some of it is very fine, of course, but it doesn’t express much wish to live. To live as a creature, that is.” (Bellow, The Gonzaga Manuscrips, 1968, p.113).

“His Belly was like a drum, and he seemed also to have a drumlike soul. If you struck, you wouldn’t injure him. You’d hear a sound.” (Bellow, The Gonzaga Manuscrips, 1968, p.137).

“Money surrounds you in life as the earth does in death. Superimposition is the universal law.” (Bellow, A Father-to-Be, 1968, p.145).

“Seated, one of the passngers, Rogin recovered his calm, happy, even clairvoyant state of mind. To think of money was to think as the world wanted you to think; then you’d never be your own master.” (Bellow, A Father-to-Be, 1968, p.148).

“”You have the healthiest looking scalp,” she said. “It’s all pink.”

He answered, “Well, it should be white. There must be something wrong with me.”

“But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you,” she said, and pressed against him from behind, surrounding him, pouring the water gently over him, until it seeled to him that the water came from within him, it was the warm fluid of his own secret loving spirit overflowing into the sink, green and foaming, and the words he had rehearsed he forgot, and his anger at his son-to-be disappeared altogether.” (Bellow, A Father-to-Be, 1968, p.155).

“But the French cannot identify originality in foreigners. That is the curse of an old civilization. It is a heavier planet. Its best minds must double their horsepower to overcome the gravitational field of tradition. Only a few will ever fly. To fly away from Descartes.” (Bellow, A Father-to-Be, 1968, p.159).

“He was quite ugly with his information. The Water Table, the Caverns, the Triassic Period. Inform me no further! Vex not my sould with more detail. I cannot use what I have.” (Bellow, A Father-to-Be, 1968, p.181).

The Brand in the Boardroom – Joanna Seddon 2013

A good summary. Well written.

“the marketing budget is an investment, not an expense. If brand is an asset that generates value for the company, then marketing is an investment in increasing the value of the brand asset. Brand, just like any other asset, needs to be invested in, put to work to generate value and held accountable for the results.” (Seddon, 2013, p.50).

“Because it looks over the head of the different channels to the financial outcome, brand valuation can initiate a holistic approach to marketing. This is needed urgently to cope with the great fragmentation we live with now. (…) Measurement is as fragmented as media. (…) from the big picture (market mix modellingand brand equity tracking) to the most micro (e.g. campaign specific copy testing, impressions-based analysis, social media metrics” (Seddon, 2013, p.68).

“Brand valuation looks at every measure of marketing, in all media, unconcerned with fragmentation, and brings it all together under a common unit.” (Seddon, 2013, p.68).

 “Because it looks at the whole experience, brand valuation allows the ROI from investments in intangibles, such as brand and marketing, to be compared with investments in tangibles such as technology, R&D, or hiring more salespeople.” (Seddon, 2013, p.72).

“Brand tracking must in the future blow past intermediate measures such as awareness, preference, differentiation, or recommendation. It must go all the way to the only measure that has real meaning outside the marketing department – money.” (Seddon, 2013, p.74).

David Copperfield Charles Dickens 2010

A book almost free any ideas, concepts and philosophies but the love and understanding of mankind.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” (Dickens, 2010, p.355).

““What! Bewitching Mrs Copperfield’s encumbrance?” cried the gentleman. “The pretty little widow?”

“Quinion,” said Mr. Murdstone, “take care, if you please. Somebody’s sharp.”

“Who is?” asked the gentleman, laughing.

I looked up quickly; being curious to know.

“Only Brooks of Sheffield,” said Mr. Murdstone.

I was quite relieved to find it was only Mr. Brooks of Sheffield; for, at first, I really thought it was I.” (Dickens, 2010, p.369).

“We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but where a child too, and always at play.” (Dickens, 2010, p.378). “We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.” (Dickens, 2010, p.378). “So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of the tide.” (Dickens, 2010, p.380).

“how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers.” (Dickens, 2010, p.441).

“I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.” (Dickens, 2010, p.507).

“Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days that are to come. (…) He has not staggered the world yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the same as if he had never joined it.” (Dickens, 2010, p.529).

“My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk neckerchief continually. I have no relief but putting on my best clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I seem, then, to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins.” (Dickens, 2010, p.530).

“He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it.” (Dickens, 2010, p.549).

““I think my memory has got as short as my breath,” said Mr. Omer” (Dickens, 2010, p.552).

Best description of being drunk: “Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. (…)

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. (…)

We went down-stairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at the false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation to it. (…)

The whole building looked to me as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.” (Dickens, 2010, p.590).

“I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to me.” (Dickens, 2010, p.595).

“if I could oblige her with a little tincture of cardamums mixed with rhubarb, and flavoured with seven drops of the essence of cloves, which was the best for her complaint; - or, if I had not such a thing by me, with a little brandy, which was the next best. It was not, she remarked, so palatable to her, but it was the next best.” (Dickens, 2010, p.614).

“If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.” (Dickens, 2010, p.664).

“He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them.” (Dickens, 2010, p.668).

“I thought it possible that I could truly love one creature in the world, and not the rest.” (Dickens, 2010, p.733).

“”Oh, to be sure!” said Uriah. “When a person’s humble, you know, what’s an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,” with a jerk, “you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield.” (Dickens, 2010, p.734). “I mean that he forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable.” (Dickens, 2010, p.760). “”I do, and you can’t help yourself,” replied Uriah. “To think of your ging and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you! But there can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be a friend to you, in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to expect.” (Dickens, 2010, p.761).

Helping a married couple that were estranged of each other: “I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their breasts, each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and he became what not one else could be – a link between them.” (Dickens, 2010, p.762).

“”Mr. Copperfield,” returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, ”when I was an inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on those glorious terms!”” (Dickens, 2010, p.817).

“I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell – off a tower and down a precipice – into the depths of sleep.” (Dickens, 2010, p.874).

“We look into the glittering windows of the jewellers’ shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents, coiled up on white satin (…) and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices, butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we couold both afford it; and we really go away as if we had got them.” (Dickens, 2010, p.910).

The unpublished David Ogilvy – David Ogilvy, 2012

“In general, study the method of your competitors and do the exact opposite.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.5).

“You must always be faced soon or later with questions and objections, which may indeed be taken as a sign that the prospect’s brain is in working order, and that she is conscientiously considering the Aga as a practical proposition for herself.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.11).

“Develop your eccentricities while you’re young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.14).

“My conclusion: “The better the advertising, the more profitable the office.”” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.23).

“Great hospitals do two things: They look after patients, and they teach young doctors.

Ogilvy & Mather does two things: We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.26).

“Now I hear that you are retiring. What a waste of genius. May your shadow never grow less” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.32).

“They were too dull to penetrate the filter which consumers erect to protect themselves against the daily deluge of advertising. Too dull to be remembered. Too dull to build a brand image. Too dull to sell.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.46).

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds … Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.” (Ogilvy quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2012, p.47).

“I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.58).

“I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until that statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.58).

“The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.69).

“(10) If you want action, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.70).

“It’s no use telling the truth if people don’t believe you. So, how can we copywriters make our ads more believable?” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.83).

“make crystal clear to your agency that you aren’t looking for soft, gutless advertising. And that you aren’t looking for mere entertainment.

Explain that you still want advertising with selling teeth in it. Honest teeth, but biting teeth.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.85).

“Every time you run an advertisement that is genuinely creative and interesting, you not only benefit your own company, but all your fellow advertisers.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.85).

“Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.” (Ogilvy quoting Gardner and Levy, 2012, p.86).

“There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second-rate work.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.94). “Don’t let your people fall into a rut. Keep leading them along new paths, blazing new trails. Give them a sense of adventurous pioneering.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p95).

“Really, the amount of paper we have to read nowadays is horrible. For Pete’s sake write shorter memos. Don’t argue with each other on paper.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.96).

“Knowledge is useless unless you know how to communicate it – in writing.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.107).

“Manufacturers are buying volume by price-discounting. (…) As my partner Graham Philipps says, they are training consumers to buy on price instead of brand.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.120). “A cut price offer can induce people to try a brand, but they return to their habitual brands as if nothing had happened.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.122).

“In meetings with clients, do not assume the posture of servants. They need you as much as you need them.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.133).

“While you are responsible to your clients for sales results, you are also responsible to consumers for the kind of advertising you bring into their homes. Your aim should be to create advertising that is good taste.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.133).

“Ex cathedra:

1.     “Ogilvy & Mather – one agency indivisible.

2.     “We sell – or else.”

3.     “You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.”

4.     “Raise your sights! Blaze new trails” Compete with the immortals!!!”

5.     “I prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles.”

6.     “We hire gentlemen with brains.”

7.     “The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence.”

8.     “Unless your campaign contains a Big Idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”

9.     Only First Class Business, and that in a First Class way.”

10. “Never run an advertisement you would not want your own family to see.” “(Ogilvy, 2012, p.151).

“They (leaders) do not suffer from the crippling need to be universally loved; they have the guts to make unpopular decisions (…). Gladstone once said, that a great Prime Minister must be a good butcher.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.158).

“There’s an old French saying: He who is absent is always wrong.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.183).

“Bores. Above all bores. I think boring is the ultimate sin.” (Ogilvy, 2012, p.183).

Confessions of an Advertising Man - David Ogilvy, 1963

“We hire gentlemen with brains.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.20).

“Any damn fool can put on a price reduction, but it takes brains and perseverance to create a brand.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.22). “Ask a drug addicted brand manager what happened to his share of the market after the delirium of the deal subsided.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.23).

“I am almost incapable of logical thought, but I have developed techniques for keeping open the telephone line to my unconscious, in case that disorderly repository has anything to tell me. I hear a great deal of music. I am on friendly terms with John Barleycorn. I take long hot baths. I garden. I go into retreat among the Amish. I watch birds. I go for long walks in the country. And I take frequent vacations, so that my brain can lie fallow – no golf, no cocktail parties, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration; only a bicycle.

While thus employed in doing nothing, I receive a constant stream of telegrams from my unconscious, and these become the raw material for my advertisements. But more is required: hard work, an open mind, and ungovernable curiosity.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.48).

 “But I regard the hunt for new clients as a sport … if you play it grimly you will die of ulcers. If you play it with lighthearted gusto, you will survive your failures without losing sleep. Play to win, but enjoy the fun” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.65).

“I have never wanted to get an account so big, that I could not afford to lose it. The day you do that, you commit yourself to living with fear. Frightened agencies lose the courage to give candid advice; once you lose that you become a lackey” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.73).

“I always tell prospective clients about the chinks in our armour. I have noticed that when an antique dealer draws my attention to flaws in a piece of furniture, he wins my confidence” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.82).

When he did a bad ad to appease to the client, staff thought he had gone mad and six month later O&M was fired anyways. “For several years afterward I found it impossible to get any serious marketing man to join Ogilvy, Benson & Mather until I had told him that my opinion of my idiotic Rinso campaign was as low as his own. This episode taught me that it does not pay to appease clients on matters of grand strategy. One Munich was enough.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.92).

“Bad advertising can unsell a product.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.100).

“Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.101).

„Committees can criticize advertising, but they should never be allowed to create them“ (Ogilvy, 1963, p.108).

“My observation ihas been that mediocre men recognize genius, resent it, feel compelled to destroy it.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.115).

 “a good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.118).

“When we advertise Shell, we give the consumer facts, many of which other gasoline marketers could give, but don’t” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.124).

“The average woman now reads only four of the advertisements which appear in the average magazine. She glances at more, but one glance is enough to tell her that the advertisement is too boring to read.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.125).

“We make advertisements that people want to read. You can’t save souls in an empty church.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.125).

 “A lot of advertisements and television commercials look like the minutes of a committee meeting.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.126).

“they use it (research) as a drunkard uses a lamppost, for support rather than for illumination.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.128).

“Most manufacturer are reluctant to accept any limitation on the image of their brand. They want it to be all things to all people.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.128).

 “A steady diet of price-off promotions lowers the esteem in which the consumer holds the product; can anything which is always sold at a discount be desirable?” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.130).

“nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.131).

“A good advertisement has this in common with drama and oratory; that it must be immediately comprehensible and directly moving.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.142).

“There is no need for advertisements that look like advertisements.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.151).

“There are very fewproducts which do not benefit from being given a First-Class ticket through life.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.155).

“As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one which was improved by a billboard.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.156).

 “A habit of graceful surrender on trivial issues will make you difficult to resist on those rare occasions when you must stand and fight on a major issue” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.176).

“My experience has been that it is relatively easy for advertising to persuade consumers to try a new product. But they grow maddeningly deaf to the advertising of products which have been around for a long time.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.182).

“I am less offended by obscenity than by tasteless typography, banal photographs, clumsy copy, and cheap jingles.” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.193).

“Tell the truth but make the truth fascinating” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.195).

“Tolerate genius” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.195).

“We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance” (Ogilvy, 1963, p.195).