Excerpts

For me, every marketing campaign begins with the same question: What is the intrinsic value of the product or service? When I talk about “rubies in the orchard,” that’s what I mean. Where does the value reside? And how can we coax it out and communicate it to consumers in a creative and cost-effective way? -- Chapter 1, Page 12

We had come this far by focusing on the fundamentals, going deeper and deeper inside our product to understand its intrinsic value. Everything we needed to know was there inside the pomegranate. We had to resist the temptation to “think outside the box.” I know that’s become a fashionable cliché in recent years, but it’s just about always wrong. The answers are not outside the box – they’re inside. They’re inherent in whatever task you’ve undertaken, whatever product you want to market. -- Chapter 1, Page 16

… inside every threat is an opportunity. In fact, I call these pivotal moments “oppor-threats,” because like ying and yang, they always come in pairs. -- Chapter 5, Page 88

Your package at the point of sale is a mini-billboard for your brand. You must use that space effectively to communicate your product virtues, outshine your competitors, and reassure consumers that they are making the right choice when they select your product. -- Chapter 6, Page 100

If your message is a paragraph long, you need to go back to the drawing board because you don’t have a message – you have a paragraph…The shorter the message, the more easily it adapts to different circumstances – and the more readily it travels between different media. -- Chapter 7, Page 108

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years is also one of the most counterintuitive: if you want to make money on a product, you have to learn how to give it away. -- Chapter 7, Page 118