"A company that desires to go public must make marketing and communications a high priority no matter what stage of development the company is in. The term 'marketing' does not refer just to promoting the company's products and services; rather, it encompasses how the company communicates its overall message and vision."
                      - Robert Heim, corporate & securities lawyer, New York
                         Going Public in Good Times and Bad (ALM Publishing, 2002)

"What makes a quality company? ... At the top of everyone's list is management. Great management is especially important in entrepreneurial technology companies, where the chief asset for at least a decade is the technical team slaving away to create the first product."
                      - Cynthia Robbins-Roth, consultant to the biotech industry
                         From Alchemy to IPO (Perseus Publishing, 2000)

"Given two stocks of equal value, the more visible one - the stock of the company best known to, and understood by, the investing public - is the stock that gets the higher price-earnings ratio, and the greatest value in the marketplace."
                      - Bruce Marcus & Sherwood Wallace, IR consultants
                         Competing in the New Capital Markets
                         (HarperBusiness, 1991)

"Press relations don't create a company's image; they reflect a company's image."
                      - Regis McKenna, Silicon Valley marketer
                         Relationship Marketing (Addison-Wesley, 1991)

"The proper goal of investor relations professionals is credibility. Credibility is the single best way to enhance confidence in the company and the most important builder of the trust that leads to long-term support."
                      - Michael A. Rosenbaum, IR consultant
                         Selling Your Story to Wall Street (Probus, 1994)

"Contrary to myth, great promotions do not begin in smoke-filled rooms with corporate executives in animated conversation with copywriters, creative directors, and PR persons. Rather, they are conceived in the market place. They derive from a clear understanding of customer needs and emerge into the world as words. Initially, the words may be tortured, but with hours of long work they become great copy - copy that expresses, with eloquent simplicity, the focal point of the promotion; copy that inspires customers and employees to act; copy that provides leadership; and copy that captures people's hearts, minds, and imaginations."
                      - William H. Davidow, former Intel sales & marketing chief
                         Marketing High Technology (Free Press, 1986)

"The Value of Publicity:
   "There are six peaks in Europe higher than the Matterhorn.
   "Name one.
   "Get ink."
                      - Harry Beckwith, ad executive and marketer
                         Selling the Invisible (Warner Books, 1997)

"Every company has a greater or lesser amount of reputational capital. A company's reputation is a fragile, intangible asset that we must learn to exploit at least as well as we do the more tangible assets of financial capital or plant and equipment."
                      - Charles J. Fombrun, NYU management professor
                         Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image
                         (Harvard Business School Press, 1996)

"A company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the mind of the prospect. Not a complicated word. Not an invented one…. The most effective words are simple and benefit-oriented. "
                      - Al Ries and Jack Trout, marketing strategists
                         The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
                         (HarperBusiness, 1994)

"Of all the virtues that a good speaker brings to the party, none is more highly prized than brevity."
                      - Granville N. Toogood, corporate speaking coach
                         The Articulate Executive (McGraw-Hill, 1991)

"To survive and move ahead in business or in any other relationship, you must be able to get your point across swiftly and succinctly in 30 seconds or less. … The attention span of the average individual is 30 seconds."
                      - Milo A. Frank, veteran Hollywood exec and speaker
                         How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less
                         (Pocket Books, 1986)

"Marketing is civilized warfare. If you find that metaphor too brutal, or if you are not prepared to fight, you should not enlist.."
                      - William H. Davidow, former Intel sales & marketing chief
                         Marketing High Technology (Free Press, 1986)

"The Internet has changed communication forever. A lot of public relations professionals who started out as newspaper reporters and are firmly grounded in the principles of one-to-many, top-down communication don't want to hear it, but there's no hiding from it: The principles that have guided communication no longer work … In the information economy, the dialogue has to be two-way."
                      - Shel Holtz, Internet communications strategist
                         Public Relations on the Net (Amacom, 1999)

"Information, once rare and cherished like caviar, is now plentiful and taken for granted like potatoes. ... Just as fat has replaced starvation as this nation's number one dietary concern, information overload has replaced information scarcity as an important new emotional, social, and political problem."
       - David Shenk, media scholar and Internet enthusiast
          Data Smog (HarperCollins, 1998)

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