“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss!

Writer, illustrator, educator,….marketer? Dr. Seuss – a.k.a. Theodor Seuss Geisel, actually started his career as an advertising illustrator. Check out some of his work below. Look familiar?

Geisel’s story is an interesting one. He was a lifetime proponent of reading, and the positive effects it could have on children. In fact, his most famous book, The Cat in the Hat, was the result of a challenge to give children something interesting to read.

Writer and journalist John Hersey published an essay in Life magazine in 1954 lamenting the method schools were using to teach children to read. The article said the school primers of the day featured “insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children,” and called for primers that would interest children with “drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, such as….Theodor S. Geisel.”

Geisel took the challenge, and created The Cat in the Hat from a list of 400 vocabulary words educators believed children should know. To date, it has sold more than 11 million copies around the world.

What can Dr. Seuss teach us about marketing?

• Passion is key. Dr. Seuss created his worlds and characters out of a passion to connect children to books, and his passion helped make his stories beloved around the world. What’s your passion?
• If it ain’t broke… Dr. Seuss developed an illustration style at the beginning of his career that carried him through political cartoons, advertisements and children’s books. The Dr. Seuss brand is now easily recognizable around the world.
• Challenge yourself. Work on a subject you have never worked on before. Write from a different perspective. Read books that have intimidated you in the past. Dr. Seuss challenged himself by writing a story from a vocabulary list, and it resulted in one of the most popular books of all time.

Dr. Seuss is a brainwoo favorite because of his lifelong curiosity, and the thirst for knowledge he inspired in others. It’s estimated that for 1 in 4 American children, their first book is written by Dr. Seuss. What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book, and what will the man or his stories inspire you to do today?

Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than you."