Nothing much great has ever been accomplished by cynical people

October 29th, 2008 by Kevin Flynn

I recently heard Garrsion Keilleor of “Prairie Home Companion” fame, talk about the people of St. Paul and he said they were not a cynical people. And he went on to say that, “Nothing great was ever accomplished by cynical people.” Now I don’t have any strong feelings about St. Paul, but I loved his quote. A lot of folks in advertising are self-described cynics. In fact, one colleague of mine, who I respect very much, almost pointed to his cynicism as a badge of honor.

We are quite possibly in the most difficult economic era in the past 50 years. And the advertising business will not emerge unscathed. Perhaps the cynics would say what’s the use? There’s nothing I can do to affect change. But I believe now is the time to bring optimism, passion and intelligence to our clients and their business problems. Now more than ever, we have to bring our clients ideas to help guide and grow their businesses through this economic quagmire.

If great people in history listened to the nay-sayers and cynics, nothing great would ever have been accomplished. I think of people like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs, Charles Lindbergh, Ed Hillary/Tenzing Norgay, Anne Mulcahy, and Tiger Woods to name a few

Cynics? Nay-sayers? Uh-uh. Dreamers and doers. My kind of people.

- Kevin Flynn

This entry was posted by Kevin Flynn on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 and is filed under Ad business, Business, Decision Making, Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.