“In 7 years the 59-second commercial made more money than the movie Gone With The Wind had in a quarter-century.”

Wiki about Rosser Reeves (relation!?)

Rosser Reeves was a significant real life advertising exec who shook things up a bit (part of Don Draper’s character is based on Reeves… now that feels good to say).

He was die hard about bringing the ads back to the product:

“No, sir, I’m not saying that charming, witty and warm copy won’t sell. I’m just saying I’ve seen thousands of charming, witty campaigns that didn’t sell.”

He actually coined the phrase “unique selling proposition” (abbr: USP) which one hears so often these days in marketing circles.

“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.”

This predates Seth Godin by a decade or two (Godin’s initial boom of success came from books like Purple Cow and others where he reminded marketers all over the world of this simple truth: if the product isn’t interesting, you’re in a losing position over time).

You can find some interesting Rosser Reeves advertisements for the Eisenhower campaign here.

“You gotta commit. You’ve gotta go out there and improvise and you’ve gotta be completely unafraid to die. You’ve got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time. You’re goin’ out there with just a whisper of an idea. The fear will make you clench up. That’s the fear of dying. When you start and the first few lines don’t grab and people are going like, ‘What’s this? I’m not laughing and I’m not interested,’ then you just put your arms out like this and open way up and that allows your stuff to go out. Otherwise it’s just stuck inside you.”

Bill Murray

Everyone holds hands and jumps out of the airplane with the promise that they’ll build a parachute before they hit the ground.”

Pete Doctor, Pixar

[laughs] So true. It’s funny because I get calls from producers down in Hollywood asking for the secret recipe. And I always say it’s really hard work, and committing to slog through the bad times. Trusting that if we stick with it and support each other we’ll get there. There’s no short cut for getting it right. We’re willing to keep going back to the drawing board, put it up, look at it, throw it all away and start over. We’re willing to do that over and over and over again. It’s not always fun—despite the images of us all riding around on scooters.

On every project, there’s a point where we think we’ll never crack it. We really despair. We think the story sucks. And that’s when everybody does the hand-holding and commits to making it better.

It’s never been easy. I’ve been here twelve years and there’s never been an easy one.”

Mary Coleman, Pixar

“…even though we pioneered this technology, the technology is always a tool to serve storytelling.”

Mary Coleman, Pixar