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Famous Alan Philips Quotes

“Let’s discuss our Swoosh-less Nike sneaker for a moment. My guess is that if you removed the branding from a pair of Nike Dunk sneakers, they would be worth no more than twenty-five percent of their retail price. That means that at least seventy-five percent of the value of a Nike sneaker is tied up in the emotional elements you can’t see or touch, the intangibles. But just because you can’t see them or touch them doesn’t mean they aren’t real. For a parallel example, let’s look at Kanye West’s relationship with Adidas. Kanye has little or no athletic prowess—he’s a musi- cian, a tastemaker, a hype man. Whatever you may think of Kanye, he gets people talking and has been able to use his brand to create value for his partners. And that’s exactly what he did when he designed a line of sneakers for Adidas, the Yeezy Boost. In February 2015, a limited run of his shoes sold out within ten minutes at a retail price of two hundred dollars. The shoes were then released to a wider audience a month later and once again sold out in record time. This is where things start to get interesting. According to Complex magazine, in the following quarter the Yeezy Boost accounted for $2.3 million in sales on eBay, three times the gross sales of its closest competitor, for an average price of $751 per pair. Let’s generously assume it cost Adidas fifty dollars per pair to produce and market a pair of Yeezy Boost. If that’s the case, Kanye West’s creativity is worth $701 per pair, and that doesn’t include the halo value to the overall Adidas brand.”

CreativityMarketingBrandingNikeAlan PhilipsAge Of IdeasAdidasKanye WestYeezy
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“At Supreme they do things their way, with little if any con- cern for how the rest of the fashion industry operates. Instead of releasing their new collections all at once, Supreme releases a small number of items at a time, usually somewhere between five and fifteen. The “drop,” as they call it, occurs online at 11 A.M. local time in America, the UK, and Japan, typically selling out in minutes. While many people believe this strategy is about building hype, the truth is that short runs of product were actually born out of not wanting to saddle their business with excess inventory. The strategy was discov- ered, not manufactured.”

CreativityMarketingSupremeBrandingAlan PhilipsAge Of IdeasJames Jebbia
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“the ability to reach customers is more cost effective than ever—therefore the intangible and emotional elements have become the key differentiating factor. There are plenty of places to purchase a great spicy tuna roll, but there’s only one Masayoshi Takayama. According to his website, “Masayoshi Takayama’s appreciation for food started at a young age, growing up working for his family’s fish market in a town of Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. From his early years of delivering fresh sashimi to neighbors on his bicycle, to prepping and grilling hun- dreds of fish courses to cater weddings in high school, his relation- ship with food has always been a way of life.” That’s the beginning of a story that makes Takayama’s sushi different and special—that makes it art. And that art is what induces people to pay $600 per person in his New York restaurant for a chance to try it.”

CreativityMarketingBrandingExpertSushiConsultantAlan PhilipsAge Of IdeasMasa
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“The value of story—of creator reputation—was vividly demon- strated in a social experiment conducted by the street artist Banksy during a 2013 New York residency. This is an artist whose work has sold for as much as $1.87 million at auction. Banksy erected a street stall on a sidewalk bordering Central Park and had a vendor sell his prints for sixty dollars each. He then posted a video of his experi- ment. Footage from a hidden camera captures some of his most iconic images displayed on a table. Tourists and locals meander by. His first sale doesn’t come for hours. A woman buys two small works for her children, negotiating a fifty percent discount. Around four in the afternoon, a woman from New Zealand buys two more. A little over an hour later, a Chicago man who “just needs something for the walls,” buys four. With each sale, the vendor gives the buyer a hug or kiss. At 6 p.m., he closes the stall, having made $420. In June 2015, one of these stenciled prints, Love Is in the Air—an image of a masked protestor throwing a bouquet of flowers—sold for $249,000. How much of the value of Banksy’s art is tied up in his name, his global brand?”

ArtCreativityEntrepreneurMarketingBrandingExpertConsultantAge Of IdeasBanksy
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“Visual art is a compelling illustration of the power of story because art serves no practical purpose. Its value doesn’t grow because more people need paintings, like we need shovels after a blizzard—it grows because people connect with the artist through the art. The combination of the work and the story make them feel, and when that happens, people take action to satisfy their emotional need—in this case, desire—by buying and sharing the art. And it’s occurred this way since the beginning of time, except now the art—the intangibles—have more power than ever before.”

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“The beauty, quality, and deeply personal nature of Chapman’s music, which had clearly resonated with so many early listeners in Boston, did so in exactly the same way with a large national audience. While she didn’t fit into any clear category, the fact that she was different and had manifested a deeply personal message resonated powerfully with the world. Chapman was recently asked what advice she might have given herself when she was starting out, and she responded, “It really is okay to be yourself.... If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you’re willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it’s mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that’s what matters.”

CreativityMarketingBrandingExpertConsultantAlan PhilipsAge Of IdeasTracy Chapman
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“The fact is, your creative potential is unrealized without execution. You love Apple products not only because they’re beautiful, you love them because they work really well. You love your favorite restaurant not only because the food is great, but because it’s consistently great.”

CreativityExperienceMarketingExecutionBrandingExpertFlawlessConsultantAlan Philips
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“Emotional generosity is when an individual or organization combines empathy—the willingness to feel, understand, and share another person’s experiences and emotions—and sacrifice, surren- dering something you need or desire so that someone else can have it. The result of combining these two attributes is trust: the belief that someone or something is good, honest, and reliable. And when someone trusts you, they’re willing to emotionally connect with you. That connection, that bond, is invaluable, both in personal relationships and organizational loyalty and growth. When people feel trust and connection, they allow themselves to be taken on a journey, and that’s what makes it possible to create something truly special.”

ExperienceMarketingExecutionBrandingExpertConsultantAlan PhilipsEmotional GenerosityMichael Bonadies
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“Before humans started messing around with the system, nature existed in harmony for millions of years—a beautiful symphony of seasonal change, birth and death, creation and destruction. This same harmony that drives the natural world applies to the intangible, emotional world of humans. We, too, must achieve harmony between all the elements of our lives, between the internal self and the external world.”

PurposeCreativityHarmonyMarketingBrandingIntegrationExpertAlan Philips
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“Bottled water is another example. Free, high-quality water is available in much of the developed world. But the developed world is exactly where the majority of bottled water is consumed. In 2012, in the U.S. alone, we spent $11.8 billion dollars on bottled water. Because packaging is a fixed price and water is a low-priced com- modity, what exactly are we paying the rest of the money for? The answer is that much of the value is tied up in the brand, the idea, how it makes you feel, the creativity.”

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“Freed from incessant worry about securing the bare essentials to live, the majority of us in the Western world are able to focus on tending to our higher needs—on pursuing happiness, on thriving. And one group has benefited from this shift more than all the rest—millennials, the largest, most diverse generation ever. Millennials, those Americans born between 1980 and the early 2000s, spent their youth in relatively comfortable surroundings. They watched as their parents—the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers—obeyed the rules of the industrial complex, getting steady corporate jobs and saving for retirement. Their parents achieved modern society’s definition of success: material wealth. But millennials could see that, rather than bringing fulfillment, this path often ended with their parents unhappy, divorced, stressed-out, or on antidepressants. In response to this, millennials went in another direction. Well-educated and communicative, they learned from their parents’ experiences and adjusted their needs hierarchy to put meaning ahead of money. Millennials want lives marked by creativity, spiritual satisfaction, expanded knowledge, societal contribution, and multilayered experiences. Sound familiar? We’re in Maslow territory—millennials are seeking to live self-actualized lives and enjoy peak experiences, a generational change that has had extensive repercussions.”

EntrepreneurMarketingBrandingExpertAlan PhilipsCreative Age Of Ideas
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“Extraordinary opportunity is now available and accessible to individuals and organizations with the creativity, passion, ambition, and work ethic to manifest their ideas. And, coincidentally, this is happening at the exact same time that a growing portion of the population is seeking out and rewarding creators for their work. Millennials (and those living with a millennial mind-set) support and consume products, services, and content made by passionate and authentic individuals and organizations they feel a connection with. That’s what we call a product-market fit. Except it isn’t a micro-market—it’s the largest market in the world, and that has changed everything. Welcome to the Age of Ideas.”

OpportunityCreativityMarketingEntrepreneurshipBrandingExpertConsultantAlan PhilipsThe Age Of Ideas
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“in the Age of Ideas, regular people are able to harness the power of perception in the same way celebrities and big companies have for years. Whether on LinkedIn, Facebook, Ins- tagram, or personal blogs, you can influence your value by affect- ing how people perceive you. And the same way an entrepreneur can change the value of a building or event by changing people’s perception of it, you too can change people’s perception of you through authentic storytelling.”

EntrepreneurMarketingBrandingExpertCoachConsultantAlan Philips
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“Most businesses have the goal of getting as big as possible. Supreme, on the other hand, strives to remain underground and boutique, growing only when they deem it will enhance the brand. As style writer Glenn O’Brien put it, “Supreme is a company that refuses to sell out.” But why? Well, first off, because it wouldn’t be authentic to who they are, what they do, and what they’re into. For instance, when asked why they wouldn’t expand into women’s wear, Jebbia simply replied, “It’s not what we know.” And that’s all they’ve done—manifest an authentic reflection of their core beliefs with unyielding discipline. Supreme is a reflection of Jebbia’s life experiences and pas- sions. It just happened that his passion for “cool and unusual things for young people” was in harmony with the global youth movement that his brand has come to represent. Supreme continues to succeed on a massive scale because they have the discipline to focus their resources on creating great products rather than over-expanding. Or, as Jebbia puts it, “Staying true to what you do best has played a major role in our longevity. I would like people to see that we’re a small, independent skate company that has done our own thing, in our own way, over many years, and will hopefully continue to do so.”

CreativityMarketingSupremeBrandingExpertAlan PhilipsJames Jebbia
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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“For years, celebrities have had armies of people helping them craft very particular visions of who they are, which has generated tre- mendous value. For example, female teen stars are told to embrace a sexier image and take edgier roles as they get older, so their fans will begin to perceive them as adult actors and follow them as they move to the next level of their careers. Tom Cruise’s team carefully crafted his image for decades, which made him wealthy and pow- erful. Then one day he decided to go off script on Oprah’s show, jump on her couch, and make some controversial comments, which dented his carefully curated image, and cost him millions in future earnings. As the Huffington Post put it, “Though Cruise’s name isstill a big box-office draw, these days, he is better known for being an outspoken advocate for Scientology and for his public antics. The couch jump marked the first shift in Tom Cruise’s image away from the heartthrob he’d been.” Over time Cruise regained some of his lost cultural capital, but the impact was significant, and it’s a vivid example of perception impacting value.”

PerceptionMarketingBrandingTom CruiseAriana Huffington
Book:The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
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