The Hidden Persuader

The things they say ...

The things the've said in the past:
1) "The average American family hasn't time for television."
The New York Times, 1939

2) "It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?"
President Rutherford B. Hayes after a demonstration of Bell's telephone

3) "The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most."
IBM to the founders of Xerox, 1959

4) "There will never be a mass market for motor cars - about 1,000 in Europe - because that is the limit on the number of chauffeurs available!"
Spokesman for Daimler Benz

5) "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

The things tehy're saying now:
6) "I think if I was Procter & Gamble, I'd be buying billboard space. A lot of it."
Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994

7) "Supermarkets have replaced TV as the delivery channel for a mass audience. If I want to get my message across to 70% of British households it is obviously going to be more cost-effective to run display ends in major retailers than to purchase overpriced breaks in a soap."
Andrew Harrison, Marketing Director, Nestle Rowntree, UK, September 2002

8) "It [the Internet] is, beyond question, the fastest growth curve of a fundamental change in society. And almost everybody will have to get used to it."
Bill Gates, April 2000

9) "The web is a very socialistic, almost communistic force. It attacks traditional ways of doing things and elites, and this is very uncomfortable for traditional businesses to deal with."
Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP, UK, April 2000