Originally published November 2014. Edited on Jul 7, 2026.
The best communicators in business have always known something the rest of the industry keeps rediscovering: the message is the asset. Get the message right, repeat it across every surface for long enough, and the market eventually has no choice but to repeat it back.
The quotes below are from people who built things — each one mapping to a principle that holds harder now than when it was written.
"A business has to be evolving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts." — Richard Branson
"Business only has two functions — marketing and innovation." — Peter Drucker
"Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need." — Harvey Firestone
"The entrepreneur is not really interested in doing the work; he is interested in creating the way the company operates." — Michael Gerber
"Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition." — Ed McCabe
"Creativity gives you a competitive advantage by adding value to your service or product, and differentiating your business from the competition." — Linda Naiman
"Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ." — Bill Bernbach
"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." — George Lois
"In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create." — David Ogilvy
"Ideas and creativity still matter a lot, but they need to be connected to technology, consumer insights, and analytics." — Christopher Vollmer
"There is no innovation without creativity. The key metric in both creativity and innovation is value creation." — Linda Naiman
Every quote above was written before the current marketing stack existed. The principle underneath every one of them is the same: the idea, executed consistently, wins. The channel changes. The mechanics of distribution change. The frameworks change. The people who understand that the message is the durable asset are the people whose work compounds.
That is why the quotes on this page are still cited fifty years after they were written — and why the campaigns that ignored the principle are forgotten.
Ogilvy's most cited line on the subject: "In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create." The commercial application of the creative idea is the measure.
Drucker reduced business to two functions: marketing and innovation. Everything else, he argued, is a cost. The formulation has held across seven decades because it is structural, not tactical.
Ed McCabe: "Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition." McCabe was one of the founders of Scali, McCabe, Sloves and a member of the Copywriters Hall of Fame.
Bernbach — co-founder of DDB and architect of the Volkswagen "Think Small" campaign — put it in five words: "Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ."
Ogilvy's most cited line on the subject: "In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create." The commercial application of the creative idea is the measure.
Drucker reduced business to two functions: marketing and innovation. Everything else, he argued, is a cost. The formulation has held across seven decades because it is structural, not tactical.
Ed McCabe: "Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition." McCabe was one of the founders of Scali, McCabe, Sloves and a member of the Copywriters Hall of Fame.
Bernbach — co-founder of DDB and architect of the Volkswagen "Think Small" campaign — put it in five words: "Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ."
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
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