Dave Trott Quotes

She said, ‘Standard El Al procedure. If you check the passengers’ luggage, you have to fly on the plane.’ How about that? The person who inspects the passengers’ luggage for bombs has to bet their life on how well they do their job.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

There was nothing there except some woods with a lunatic asylum and a graveyard in the middle.

It’s a classic advertising problem. How do you take something very complicated and reduce it to something very simple, while still retaining the core truth?

People who are good want to grow. They want to get off this rung and onto the next rung. They want to get all the way up the ladder. So they’re not looking for praise, they’re looking for criticism.

As Churchill said, “Never let the truth spoil a good story.

And Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? went on to pull in bigger audiences than EastEnders. And it only happened because Paul Smith stopped expecting his client to understand his idea rationally, and got his client to feel it. Because that’s where the sell happens. Paul Smith moved the sell from what Kahneman calls System Two thinking (the slow, rational mind) to System One thinking (the fast, emotional mind). As in any sell, desire must precede permission

I also like what Voltaire said about the English. ‘The English are like their own beer: the dregs are at the bottom, the top is nothing but froth, but the middle is quite excellent.

The product creates the experience. The experience creates the reputation. The reputation creates the brand.

France was about to fall to the Germans, and Neville Chamberlain was about to resign as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He called Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax into his office. He said, “Well, one of you two will have to replace me. Who’s it going to be?” Churchill wrote, “I knew no Englishman could ever say ‘Give it to me’. So whoever spoke first would be the loser. It was the longest 30 seconds of my life, but nothing would induce me to speak.” Eventually Halifax couldn’t bear it any longer. He cracked. He said, “Well, I suppose you’d better give it to Winston.” Churchill accepted, and became Prime Minister. Imagine the course of history if Churchill had spoken first.

According to the laws of aerodynamics the bumblebee can’t fly. But the bumblebee doesn’t know that, so it just carries on flying around.

Orson Welles summed it up best in The Third Man. ‘In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Don’t try to force or nag people into doing what you want. Accept that they are free to choose. But you help them choose what you want.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, had a similar view. He didn’t believe in research. He said, ‘It’s not the public’s job to know what they’re going to want. It’s my job to know what they’re going to want.

Every week they would have one hour scheduled, sitting quietly at their desk. Learning to be alone with their thoughts. Learning to be comfortable with themselves. Learning it was OK to be silent. How great is that?