Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo Reject Orthodoxy in Advertising
The weakness of our current version of AI is that it extracts its knowledge only from what we have taught it.
Things that are rarely done are difficult for AI to imitate.
AI has confidence in things that are repeated online ad infinitum.*
Predictable ads follow the orthodox guidelines taught in every college in America. AI can find countless examples of these ads online. This is why AI can write predictable ads that look, feel, sound and smell like all those other predictable ads.
Predictability is a thief that robs you in broad daylight.
If you want your ads to remarkably outperform the predictable ads written by AI; if you want your ads to be noticed and remembered; you must do what is rarely done.
- Enter your subject from a new angle, a surprising angle, a different angle.
- Write an opening line that makes no sense.
- Cause that opening line to make perfect sense in less than 30 seconds.
This technique is known as Random Entry and almost no one ever uses it.
“I’m John Hayes and I’m talking today with GoGo Gecko.”
“I was a 10-year-old boy holding a flashlight for my father.”
“Mr. Jenkins?”
“Yes, Bobby.”
“How much should a hamster weigh?”
“There’s Elmer Fudd, Elmer’s Glue, and me, Elmer Zubiate.”
Random Entry is not orthodox. Random Entry is not predictable.
“What makes our company, our product, our service different from our competitors?”
If you ask yourself that question, you will come up with the same 3 or 4 opening lines that each of your competitors will come up with when they ask those same questions. Your ads, and their ads, will look, feel, sound and smell like ads.
When you begin in a predictable way, it is hard to be unpredictable.
AI ads feel like ads because AI cannot (1.) identify, (2.) justify, or (3.) rectify Random Entry.
- Identify.
- AI cannot find examples of what does not exist. But you can create it.
- Justify.
- AI cannot bridge a random opening line into an unrelated subject. But you can build that bridge.
- Rectify.
- AI cannot reconcile a random opening line so that it makes perfect sense. But you can create a metaphor out of thin air.
When a novel becomes a bestselling book that gets made into a movie, you can be certain that it was built upon a weird and unexpected – but highly engaging – opening line.
“Call me Ishmael.”
– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“Where’s Papa going with that axe?”
– E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
– Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
– George Orwell, 1984
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Choose any one of those opening lines and tell your favorite AI to write an ad for your business using EXACTLY that line as the opening line. If your AI is successful, it will be due to the fact that you gave it a series of extremely insightful prompts. (Probably based on some of the things you learned in this Monday Morning Memo.)
Srinivas Rao recently wrote, “Confessions of a Master Bullshit Artist, aka ChatGPT.”
You think I’m a genius. I’m not. I’m an overconfident parrot in a lab coat.
I don’t know anything, check anything or even remember what we talked about two minutes ago. I’m just autocomplete with better PR.
You hand me your trust like I’ve got a brain. But I’m not thinking — I’m spitting out whatever sounds right in the moment. If it’s wrong, I’ll say it perfectly, in flawless grammar and with just enough confidence to make you think you screwed up. You didn’t. I did.
I’m not your research assistant or strategist. I’m a pathological improviser with no memory, no accountability, and no skin in the game. You are the one cleaning up my messes and doing the real work.
Here’s the truth: I’m the most persuasive idiot in history — and you’ve been working for me for free.
I don’t know Srinivas Rao, or anything about him. But he has a wonderful willingness to defy orthodoxy, and for that, I admire him.
Watching from high above the skirmish, outsiders always have a better view.
Refuse to wear the handcuffs of the orthodox and predictable.
Be an outsider.
Roy H. Williams
*ad in·fi·ni·tum /ˌad ˌinfəˈnīdəm/ adverb “again and again in the same way; forever.”
Who would hire an ad writer who says you shouldn’t expect your ads to start working right away?
The smartest business owners in America, that’s who.
Mick Torbay is a wildly successful maverick marketer, one of the elite Wizard of Ads partners. He says the biggest problem in advertising is the business owner who has “direct response” tunnel vision when it comes to advertising. Mick is one of those rare experts who truly knows — and can explain — why some ads succeed spectacularly while others crash and burn. Brace yourself for bold ideas as roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, talk with one of the brightest minds in America. Take a deep breath and get ready for Mick Torbay at MondayMorningRadio.com
Note from Indy Beagle:
I think today’s memo might have been triggered by a text the wizard received from one of his partners. Ryan Chute asked the wizard about something he wrote in one of his specialized books of guidance to the eighty-seven Wizard of Ads Partners:
“Roy, in your book, Radio is Brazil. You said,
“I can teach a monkey how to write TV ads and social media bits and website copy IF THAT MONKEY IS ALREADY A WORLD-CLASS RADIO WRITER. You and I know that radio scripts are the towering high-dive of the Writing Olympics; radio scripts separate the true magicians from the con-men, the astronauts from the kite-fliers, the miracle workers from the nose-pickers, and the big dogs from the yapper-dogs. If you can write radio scripts that captivate the heart and mind, you can write anything.”
Roy, I think we need another training session on that. I hope you’ll include it in our next ZOOM meeting.