Will spending your time in the company of other marketers make you a better one? This is how Woody Allen seems to question the sense of making it to yet another industry conference. Find out more of Woody Allen’s quotes that look as if they were meant specifically for the world of marketing, giving you an insight into a sure-fire way of becoming a better marketer.
Woody Allen (1935 – ) is a film director born to a family of American Jews. For many years, he worked as a comedian and a stand-up performer, which seems to have weighed heavily on his future career as a film-maker. The combination of black humour and the absurd went on to become his hallmark, even though his style quite possibly delayed his fame as it remained on the margins of the mainstream Hollywood film-making. His most famous productions include: Annie Hall, Manhattan or – somewhat more contemporary – Midnight in Paris. As a director, he received widespread recognition and, despite some controversy that followed in he aftermath of the ‘#MeToo’ movement, still many film stars shows appreciation for working with him. He made frequent appearances in his own movies as an actor, he also wrote scripts for his movies. Apart from his achievements in the film industry, Woody Allen is best known for his innumerable quotes and comments on the nature of the world, love or relationships.
‘Standing in a garage no more makes you a car than standing in a church makes you a Christian’
Do you seriously believe that going to marketing conferences and attending industry events will make you a better marketer? Or perhaps you are falling victim to popular beliefs, common knowledge and commonplace viewpoints which, in fact, make you run in place? How about taking part in a philosophy lecture, joining a math club or enrolling in a course you simply find interesting? Be it a belly-dance instructor classes, your-small-pet-first-aid course or a training programme for sober-only party entertainers. Rest assured that any of these would give your skills a stronger boost than any of marketing round-up with your personal level of creativity showing a marked improvement.
‘I can levitate birds. No one cares’
Marketers tend to fall victim to an illusion that anything they do is remarkable, noteworthy and downright amazing while their magic powers may lead to consistently more-than-average results. However, in practice, nature often gains the upper hand and regardless of the techniques you use, certain parameters will stay unaffected as they remain forever in the domain of general mechanics of things. A good example should be the Pareto principle, which underlies one of the fundamental statements in the marketing trade: ‘80 % of potential customers are not yet ready to buy”.
‘If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.’
The ‘always-be-on-the-safe-side’ policy is what afflicts not exclusively politicians. The majority of marketers, fearing loss of jobs or being ridiculed, will be very reluctant to think – and act – outside the box, which begs the question of whether this is the best way to build a real competitive advantage. Will following only those well-known paths be enough to equip marketing with all the new experience it requires?
‘Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem’
Superficial judgments give you an illusion of self-confidence. However, any attempts at a more detailed analysis of a problem invariably lead to increased uncertainty – sometimes to such an extent, that at the end of the day, according to other experiments, instead of final reasoning, a dice roll will statistically yield similar odds of accurate judgment.
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