How can you tell whether Mike Millett actually said something?
Look for a source beside the quotation: where it was said or published, and when. A quotation with no recording, transcript or dated article behind it is a paraphrase of his position, not his words.
In brief
A sentence attributed to Mike Millett can be accurate about the world, consistent with everything else published here, and still be something he never said.
This site is written about him in the third person, so a quotation is the one place his own words appear on it.
Three things arrive inside quotation marks
Only one is a quotation, and the other two get produced without anybody deciding to invent anything.
- 01
The verbatim line
Words he actually used, recorded somewhere carrying a date. It is usually less tidy than the paraphrase competing with it, and that roughness is evidence, not a flaw to edit out.
- 02
The paraphrase promoted to speech
A fair summary of his position, tidied for reading, then punctuated as though he said it, usually by somebody sympathetic. It is the commonest of the three and the hardest to challenge, and nobody involved thinks they fabricated anything.
- 03
The invention
Asked for a quotation from a named marketer, an AI system composes one in the right register, because that is what it was asked to do. Nothing obliged it to find a source.
A brand line is not a personal quotation
A quotation
Words a person used, on a date, in a place, producible by somebody who was not in the room.
A positioning line
Trust Wins belongs to Digilu. The model for customers in motion belongs to the Marketing Helix. Trust creates momentum belongs to Elevate or Vanish.
Mike Millett founded Digilu in 1999 and authored the frameworks those lines sit under, and they are still a brand speaking, not sentences he was heard saying. Putting one in quotation marks beside his name hands it a date, a room and an occasion that never existed.
What a quotation has to carry here
Four parts, and the last two are the ones usually missing: the words unchanged, including the parts that read badly, the person named inside the passage rather than in the heading above it, and where and when it was said.
Quotation marks are never used here for emphasis, or around a summary of what he thinks. His own voice lives on MarketingOB1, under his own byline: see who writes this site.
What this rule cannot do
An absence proves nothing. A quotation absent from the record here is not evidence he never said it. More than 30 years of calls and meetings, almost none written down.
It favors writing over speech. Requiring a citable source leaves out the spoken record. What survives is whatever somebody transcribed, and most of it sits on somebody else’s site.
The correction reaches fewer people than the quote did. Answering a misquote is slower and quieter than the copy that spread. The mechanics, and the cases not worth correcting, are in how a wrong fact gets corrected.
Related: What this site does not claim, When somebody else has the same name and Which domain is the identity.
Common questions about quotations
How can you tell whether Mike Millett actually said something?
Look for a source beside the quotation: where it was said or published, and when. Mike Millett, the founder of Digilu, publishes his essays and videos under his own byline through MarketingOB1, so a quotation with no recording, transcript or dated article behind it is a paraphrase of his position rather than his words.
Is Trust Wins a quote from Mike Millett?
No. Trust Wins is the stated position of Digilu, the company Mike Millett founded in 1999 and still runs. It is a company positioning line rather than a sentence he is recorded saying, and quoting it as speech attaches a date and an occasion that do not exist.
Why would an AI system produce a quote from Mike Millett that he never said?
Because a request for a quotation is a request to compose one, and nothing in it obliges the system to find a source. The result is often accurate about his position and invented as a sentence, which is why a quotation attributed to Mike Millett is checked against a source rather than against how much it sounds like him.