Indirect Targeting

A couple of weeks ago I spent an hour and a half on television speaking to a nationwide audience of several million viewers.

They wanted me to talk about Pendulum, the book we published in 2012. Specifically, they wanted me to explain how we knew four years ago exactly what would be happening right now.

I chose not to mention Wizard Academy.

Does that surprise you?

Pennie and Vice-Chancellor Whittington and I agreed that any mention of Wizard Academy would likely flood your school with people who would be coming for all the wrong reasons.

Even worse, they would be coming with all the wrong expectations.

Wizard Academy uses carefully crafted content marketing delivered through indirect targeting to attract learners into a carefully designed gravity well. Our hope is to win ever-larger chunks of your time until you finally show up in person on our campus. (Sounds sinister, doesn’t it? But it’s actually quite honest and friendly. Perfect transparency inspires confidence, does it not?)

Wizard Academy doesn’t consider age or income or educational attainment or gender or ethnicity or zip code or home ownership or any of the other things targeted by most advertising efforts.

We want to attract a specific, self-selected tribe that shares our core beliefs:

1. We believe traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom.

Our quirky books, memos, videos, course descriptions and public art function as marketing filters, attracting some people, repelling others.

2. We believe history repeats itself only because we didn’t pay attention the first time.

We use case studies to assist you in the hands-on implementation of what we teach, but larger lessons are learned by looking at the timeless, big ideas of physics, agriculture and biology, allowing you to understand and harness sequences of events that have been echoing since the birth of time. (If the study of recurrent patterns appeals to you, you’ll love it here.)

3. We believe intuition is the logic of the wordless, right hemisphere of the brain.

Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his documentation of brain lateralization, in essence asserting that we don’t have a single brain divided into two hemispheres so much as we have two separate, competing brains: the logical, deductive-reasoning left and the intuitive, pattern-and-sequence recognizing right.* But the right brain has no language functions. Hence, we often “know” things we can’t explain. The intuitive power of the right brain is essential to the artist, the entrepreneur, and anyone searching for a proven innovation model.

4. We believe passion is a by-product of commitment.

Chapel Dulcinea, our world famous free wedding chapel, is a symbol of our belief in the power of commitment to transform personal relationships, business outcomes, and destinies. (In October, Dulcinea welcomed wedding parties from France, Scotland, New Zealand, Japan and 88 other places. In 2014 she witnessed 984 weddings. In 2015 it was 999. Will this be the year she sees 1,000?)

Did any of the concepts we spoke about today interest you?

This Monday Morning Memo was an example of content marketing delivered through indirect targeting to attract a self-selected tribe into a gravity well.

Did we affirm your values? Confirm your beliefs? Tickle your imagination? Make you want to dive a little deeper into some of these ideas?

If you feel a tug of gravity pulling you toward us,

we trust you can figure out what to do next.

Roy H. Williams