A selection of pull quotes taken from, 'The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy'. Written by Simon Pont. Published by Kogan Page (2012). Available in store and online.

1. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)
rands have not suddenly become fish with feet.
As ever, they look to seduce and captivate and intoxicate us,
to draw us in, draw us close, never let us go.
But like Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, the world of brands is one
of riddles and contradictions.
Welcome to the rabbit hole.
B“

2. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)
I take ‘the better mousetrap’ to be a
compact metaphor for consumerism and the ‘creation
of want’, that bad-wrap discipline called ‘advertising’.
“
Ro-Cat: The 1934 Twin Rocket Flying Suit, Jeff deBoer (1997).

3. It’s such a lovely, thorny, gnarly, ever-so-twisty,
I-double-dare-you-to-try-and-answer kind of question.
“Just what the hell is a ‘brand’?
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)
”

4. A brand is a bundle of meanings and values, but as seen
and perceived in the eye and the mind of a consumer.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap
(Kogan Page, 2012)

5. My strong point is not
rhetoric, it isn’t showmanship,
it isn’t big promises –
those things that create
the glamour and the
excitement that people
call charisma and
warmth.
Richard Milhous Nixon
37th President of the United States
Watergate aside, there’s a
very good reason why
Richard Nixon remains the
least-loved president in the
history of American politics.
“
“
Simon Pont
The Better Mousetrap (2012)

6. ‘Straight advertising’ is the equivalent of ignoring your
girlfriend over dinner. Branded content, and CRM, and
co-creation is the opposite. It’s telling her she’s hot.
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)

7. In the finest
semiotic tradition,
a brand’s logo is a signifier,
a Stargate through which we
may pass into the
emotional, rational,
Philosophical Universe
of that brand.
“
Simon Pont,
The Better Mousetrap
(Kogan Page, 2012)

8. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)
The running man.
I’ve always found
the running man
to be an incredibly
evocative image -
a motif with all manner of
potential meanings:
Running.
Running towards something.
Running away
from something.
Being chased.
Driven by fear,
the threat of
capture maybe.
Or more hopefully,
being driven by
one’s self,
to progress, succeed, to improve;
the thing that drives not being
a threat from behind but a goal in front, the horizon.
A burning want to improve, this being mankind’s perpetual
forward motion. Bannister breaking the four-minute mile (6 May
1954); Bolt devouring 100 metres in 9.58 seconds (16 August 2009).
Mankind. By brilliant example. Achieving. Always running.
And always getting faster.
“

9. We need to get better at digital.
Digital is too often talked about like
it’s someone’s tennis game,
or golf game;
like a handicap that
needs shaving.
‘Digital’ is not something to
get better at. Digital is
not something to improve at,
like your golf swing.
‘Digital’ is merely zeros
and ones. ‘Getting better’
starts with understanding
what to get better at.
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)
“

10. ‘The Past’ conjures all the magic and mystique of a travel
brochure destination, without a handy Time Machine to
disprove the allure and expose the truth.
For brands, ‘nostalgia’ can be one helluva compatible
and curvy bedfellow.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)

11. In the case of advertising, the headline holds firm.
Sex sells... so long as you do it well.
Life and advertising has many a parallel.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)

12. Men and women
don’t - of course -
respond to the
same universal set
of turn-ons.
As Billy Crystal put it:
‘Women need a reason
to have sex. Men just
need a place.’
Simon Pont
The Better Mousetrap (2012)
Kogan Page
“

13. Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a
horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction
cowboy detective novel.
You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.
Alan Moore, comic-book legend
“
As referenced in: The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy (Kogan Page, 2012)

14. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)
We divide life
into genres –
just pigeon holes
so that we can make
some sense of it all,
but that’s not how we
live life.
An alternative sense
comes through living it
and looking upon it
differently,
through which we may
mash
and bust it up.
“

15. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)
the consigliore
positioning.

16. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)

17. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)
There’s nothing very
voodoo about consumer
understanding.
I think insightful
consumer understanding
typically comes from
being un-clinical,
from being emotive.
Great agency planners
have to draw on raw
first-hand experiences,
on ‘feel’ and intuition,
of head, heart and gut.
“

18. An agency’s planning process, or
‘system’, or ‘tool’, may well be an acronym.
Big organizations (agency and corporate
alike) tend to be utterly adoring of
acronyms.
TCP (Total Comms Planning);
IBM (Integrated Brand Marketing);
IBC (Integrated Brand Communications);
ICP (Integrated Communications Planning).
All are absolutely harmless, so long as no
one goes confusing them with WMD’s.
And while there’s nothing wrong with a
good tool, there’s also a clear bottom line.
Use a tool, never be one.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)

19. Simon Pont
The Better Mousetrap (2013)
Kogan Page

20. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)
You get conventional brands. You get conventional advertising
sectors. Typically they sit within that world of risk-aversion, of
uncertainty and easy doubt, populated by journeymen and
dullards. Conventions are the play-it-safe default that steps in
the way of invention.
“

21. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)
It’s only once you
have everything
that a Hollywood
movie star has that
you then find
yourself wanting
an audience with
the Dalai Lama.
Existential angst
only tends to
follow once your
tummy doesn’t
grumble and you
potentially have a
star on Hollywood
Boulevard.
“

22. Language is a
beautiful
thing, and
fortunately robust
enough to take the
slings, arrows and
occasional atom
bombs of abuse
aimed at it.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)

23. To be a Category Hero, a brand needs to contrive
a worthy villain, a suitable counterpoint,
irrespective of how
same or
different
they truly are.
Every brand
needs
its Moriarty,
its Joker,
its Blofeld.
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)
“

24. Most grown men
on the planet wish
they knew the stuff
Jason Bourne knows.
Journeys of
self-discovery are just
great when you
end up in a place
where you’re
some kind of
kick-ass capable
James Bond, or wake up
one day to be told you’re
Superman.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)

25. More than ever, we
worship at our own
altars, plumping our own
egos, fuelling our own
delusions.
Our ‘icons’ are now our
means, a desktop quick-click
by which we chronicle and
curate and self-narrate.
Anyone can be a self-
idol, anyone can
craft, expand and share
their own mythology.
We’re becoming our own
gods and monsters.
“
Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)

26. Adland is no different to any
other industry badlands. There are
rednecks with shotguns, for
sure, just like anywhere, and
maybe some hungry tigers
too, but also like a Narnia, there
are friendly lions and new
frontiers forming all the
time, where you get to play
explorer, pioneer, and
cartographer. That can be
thrilling.
“
Simon Pont,
The Better Mousetrap (2012)

27. Happiness is our one
ultimate end. Boil it right
the way down, reduce
all those motivational
drivers, and sitting right
there at the centre of
our very human hearts,
is our yearning to
be happy.
“
Simon Pont
The Better Mousetrap (2013)
Kogan Page

28. The fundamentals will cause
Simon Pont
The Better Mousetrap (2012)
Kogan Page
us all to stand and stare; our want
“
for material possessions, our
possession and passing
on of heirlooms, our
want to leave a legacy;
our base sexual
drives, our wish to be
the superior versions of
ourselves; our desire to
be happy, as an emotion
and an idea, that
ultimate phantasm.

29. Material taken from ‘The Better Mousetrap’
(Kogan page, 2012).
“A fabulous new book. We recommend.”
Blackwell's Featured titles
“Sneaky in a good way.”
Judd Labarthe, Argonauten G2
“A scalpel-sharp examination of our
relationship with brands.”
Chris Maples, MD, Spotify
“Gloriously smart.”
Faris Yakob, CIO, MDC
“Shows cunning more akin to a wild cat than
a mousetrap.”
Greg Grimmer, Founder, HDMG
“Simon has achieved the near impossible. A
must read!”
Steve Hyde, CEO, 360 Search

30. ABOUT SIMON PONT
His agency career includes being part of
Saatchi & Saatchi and Naked
Communications, the pioneers of
Communications Planning. Hollywood movie
studios, Icelandic investment banks, British
chocolate bars and Middle Eastern airlines
figure amongst his time on the inside of
Adland. He is Chief Strategy Officer at agency
network Vizeum, and an EACA Effies judge.
Simon Pont is the author of non-fiction titles ‘The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media
Democracy’ and ‘Digital State’, and ‘Remember to Breathe’, a novel.
Say hello at: www.simonpont.com
SIMON PONT is a writer, commentator and brand-builder.