Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception of it. An example I love that is not mentioned in the book: for years, few people bought “death insurance.” Then some genius changed the name to life insurance and grew the industry by many billions of dollars. After all, life insurance sounds so much better than death insurance.
The most transformative companies rarely emerge from someone else's problem statement. They come from founders who see opportunities that others miss, often in areas that lack established categories.
Facebook didn't fulfill a request for "improved college social networking." It emerged from Mark Zuckerberg's specific intuition about how Harvard... See more