Michael Bastian Quotes

No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway.

What is your Unique Selling Proposition? What makes you different than your competitors? Wrap your advertising message around that USP and communicate it in a clear and concise manner.

My general premise is not about selling clothes. If that's your end goal, then all of a sudden everything looks the same, you know - you start designing by numbers.

You really need a unique selling proposition, and people need to care about that unique selling proposition.

Any brand in the world wants to make desirable product. But we don't shove it down people's throats.

Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

We want consumers to say, 'That's a hell of a product' instead of, 'That's a hell of an ad.'

A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.

When looking at trends I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?'

Fans will come if you have a good product.

You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that's what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don't yet understand.

The basic idea that marketing is wrong at its core is one of the main reasons why innovation seems blocked and unpredictable.

The marketers can compete with free; it just has to be better. Look at bottled water if you don't believe me.

What we need to do is run our business. We need to come up with a value prop that is so compelling that customers have to go for it.

We are always focused on how can we differentiate ourselves. In today's world, where people are gravitating toward experiences, it is even more important.

Auto companies need to quickly separate the stuff that will be swallowed by commodity from the brand stuff.

You have to do things right to stay in business, and that's not easy, and that's a choice on a daily basis, the choices you make in how to run your business and how to have a point of differentiation and how to be true to your brand, how to offer something that people want and to offer something that you love.

Brand loyalty starts in the cradle and ends in the grave, as I wrote in my first book, 'Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers.'

My books didn't fit a marketing niche.

In a marketplace where it's so easy to produce products, where your competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added value is the identity, the idea behind your brand.

Beats succeeded because, as music lovers, we knew oscilloscopes don't buy headphones - people do.

I never think in terms of how we can compete against the other companies; rather, our primary focus is to make consumers feel the uniqueness and attractiveness of our products.

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

Positioning should be decided before the advertising is created

We could be the biggest pantyhose seller in America, but we don't want to weaken the link in shoppers' minds between Home Depot and do-it-yourself projects.