Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Did anyone besides me grow up reading the King James Bible?Shakespeare was 40 years old when King James commissioned a new translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into English, and he was 47 when it was published in 1611.During those 7 years, Shakespeare wrote a dozen plays including Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. So if the cadence, rhythm and phrasing of the King James Bible reminds you of Shakespeare, well, it’s because that’s how people spoke back then.But only if they lived in England.In the year 1611, approximately 597,000,000 people lived and breathed and wandered the earth. Of these, only 5,600,000 spoke English. So the great-good-gift given by generous King James benefitted slightly less than 1 percent of the world.But still, I like the King James Bible.The book of Genesis opened my mind to the law of duality and to the power of words. The book of Ecclesiastes gives me perspective; few things are as important as they seem, and nothing is permanent. The Gospel of John fills me with wonder and gives me hope.The King James Bible tells me the English language is a constantly evolving, shapeshifting animal.It has been 410 years since King James translated the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into the English of Shakespeare, and during those years the words “spirit” and “ghost” have traded places.We think of “spirit” today as the ethos or essence of a thing, and we think of “ghost” as a frightening apparition from beyond the grave. But in the 1611 Bible, those definitions are transposed:In the 14th chapter of Matthew’s Good News we read,“And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.”Holy Ghost appears 89 times in the King James Bible. In the 14th chapter of John’s Good News we read the words Jesus spoke during the Last Supper to his remaining 11 disciples, just after Judas Iscariot walked out of the room to betray him to the religious leaders who despised him and the Romans who would crucify him:“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”No matter which translation you read, the Bible is a wonderful book. It takes you into an ancient Middle Earth populated by Pharaohs, Philistines, and Pharisees.Pharaohs: those imperious, mysterious rulers of mystical, magical Egypt.Philistines: pagan Greeks whose champion, a giant named Goliath, was defeated by a young shepherd boy named David who later became King of Israel.Pharisees: leaders of the faith into which Jesus was born. When he grew up, Jesus criticized the Pharisees harshly for their tendency to behave like today’s Taliban, focusing all their energy on the enforcement of the letter of the law but missing the spirit of God’s law entirely. When you read what Jesus said to them! Oh, my!Unlike Jesus, I was born into the Christian faith. Now that I have grown up, I continue to have faith in Christ.But I sometimes worry that a percentage of America’s Christians have embraced that same self-righteousness for which Jesus so stridently criticized the leaders of his own faith 2000 years ago.Roy H. Williams

A snapshot is a message in a bottle floating on the ocean of time.We had “picture day” at school when I was growing up. Is that still a thing?Our 8th grade yearbooks were delivered to Sequoyah Junior High the following summer, just before we started the 9th grade. There was no internet, no email back then, just letters in our mailboxes telling us to come to the school and pick up our yearbooks on a certain day between the hours of such-and-such.After I picked up my yearbook, I got on the telephone with Elaine, a girl my age who lived 4 houses away. Elaine and I were going through our yearbooks together, page by page over the telephone, making comments about every picture when lightning struck. I was looking at a snapshot of a girl I had never met. Although she and I had gone to the same school for 2 years, I had never once encountered her.I said to Elaine, “Pennie Compton.”Elaine answered, “She was in my math class. She’s really nice and super smart.”And then my ears were surprised to hear my mouth say, “I’m going to marry that girl.” I had never said such a thing in my life and I never did again. But deep down I knew it was true. Don’t ask me how, but I knew.A few days later my class schedule arrived with an invitation for all the parents to come to Sequoyah Junior High on Friday night at 7PM to meet their kid’s homeroom teacher and then classes would start on Monday.I didn’t show my Mom the invitation because my first-hour class was Oklahoma History taught by Coach Meeks, a man famous for lecturing kids on how he made his own sun-dried beef jerky and how every young man should drink protein shakes to build muscle mass.Yeah, no need for Mom to meet him. No need for me to go, either. I already knew my way around.But wait! Here was a list of the other 26 kids assigned to my homeroom class and one of them was Pennie Compton!I was the first person to arrive on Friday night. I took a seat at the back of the room and kept my eye on the door. After about 20 minutes, I saw a man and a woman walk in with the girl I had seen in the photo. I got up, strode to the front of the room, shook the man’s hand firmly and said with a smile, “I’m Roy Williams. You’re going to be seeing a lot of me in the future.”Pennie was embarrassed because she had no idea who I was, but it wasn’t long before we were friends.Oklahoma History was memorable. Coach Meeks liked to show off the heavy wooden paddle he made for disciplining unruly boys by beating them on the backside. According to him, those rows of half-inch holes drilled in the paddle were there “to reduce the wind resistance,” but those of us who experienced his beatings knew those holes were there to leave white polka dots on your bright red ass.I got my first butt-tattoo for spontaneously laughing when I shouldn’t have. Coach Meeks was talking about the glory and wonder of the O.U. Sooners Football Team when he decided to steer us onto the straight and narrow path by shouting, “If you succeed in footbaaaaall you will succeed in liiiiife.”Three years went by. Pennie had boyfriends and I had girlfriends but I always knew I would marry her one day. We went a thousand places together on the nights when neither of us had a date, but we never once held hands and I never tried to kiss her. But we told each other everything.The only secret I ever kept from Pennie was that I was deeply in love with her.I got a full ride to Oklahoma State University. She got a big scholarship to an exclusive private school. I attended classes at O.S.U. for a day and a half, then called Pennie and said, “I’m dropping out. Let’s get married and figure out the future together.”She said, “But we’re both so young and poor. Why don’t we wait a couple of years?”I said, “In a couple of years, we’ll still be young and poor.”She thought that was funny and laughed. I said, “I’m completely serious. I think we should get married. We can be young and poor together and we’ll figure out what to do with our lives.”Why did that thought not terrify her? Why did it not terrify me? It should have, shouldn’t it? It certainly terrified everyone else in our lives, but it didn’t scare us at all.Sometimes you know a thing is right, even when it makes no sense.I made that call to Pennie on September 7th, 1976. We were married on December 28th, 112 days later. We have never for a moment regretted it and we have never once looked back.I can hear you thinking, “But you went back and got your education, right?”No, we didn’t. I read a lot of books and took a lot of chances and cheerfully did whatever I had to do to find the money to keep us afloat and somehow it all worked out.A few days ago Jeffrey Eisenberg texted us, “We just finished Here Today on Amazon Prime. Highly recommended.”Obviously, we watched it.There is a scene halfway through that movie when an aging Billy Crystal gets a text from a young friend asking him how he met his wife.I have no idea how that movie ends because I spent the rest of that evening happily remembering that moment I saw a snapshot of Pennie Compton, the girl who would soon become my best friend, and later my bride, my business partner and the inspiration for a thousand good things.Wizard Academy was her idea, but Chapel Dulcinea was mine.Chapel Dulcinea is the free wedding chapel where more than 1,000 lifelong partnerships are launched each year and Wizard Academy is a summer camp for grown-ups, a place where you can escape your day-to-day routine and be surrounded by interesting people who will encourage and empower the dream of your heart until it shines so brightly that it becomes a guiding light, your own personal star beckoning you to follow.And now I will tell you a secret.Each of the 1,000 wedding parties who happily walk to Chapel Dulcinea each year are greeted by a stylized statue of a woman in the Garden of Joy with her hands raised high and her face to the sky.That chapel garden is called The Garden of Joy because Joy is, quite literally, Pennie’s middle name. I’ve never told anyone the reason for that garden’s name before, not even Pennie.And of course I didn’t let her read this memo before I sent it out.Life can be fun if you’ll let it.Let it.Roy H. Williams

You are too young to remember when there were no search engines.Sit. Relax. I’ll tell you about it.In the days before the dawning of the internet and the Age of Aquarius, every household was given a fat telephone book, and in the White Pages of that book, the names of companies and individuals were listed alphabetically. To find a company’s contact info, all you needed to know was their name.Branded Keywords are the new White Pages. If you want to contact a specific company, just type that company’s name into Google and badda-bing, badda-bang, badda-boom, “Here is how you can reach them.”In the back of that same fat phone book were The Yellow Pages®, a directory for customers who were currently, consciously ready to buy, but who had no preferred provider in mind.Unbranded keywords are the new yellow pages. When you are currently, consciously ready to buy, but have no preferred provider in mind, simply type the name of the category into Google and a bunch of ads will appear. These ads will be listed, of course, according to which companies were willing to pay the highest price.Funny thing: that’s exactly how the yellow pages worked. Business categories were listed alphabetically in The Yellow Pages®, but within each category, the businesses that spent the most money were listed first. Full-page ads, then half page ads, then quarter-page ads…Have you ever heard the story of The Tortoise and The Hare?Aesop was a Greek storyteller whose 158 little parables about life were considered to be so wise that he was quoted by Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch more than 2,000 years ago.In one of these stories a tortoise and a hare – a sort of rabbit – ran a race. The tortoise began running immediately but the rabbit decided to wait until the race was nearly over and then dash across the finish line ahead of the slow, patient, relentless tortoise. The tortoise won that race, of course, because the rabbit was unable to overtake his enormous head start.The rabbit lost the race when he chose to wait until the last minute – the Zero Moment of Truth – to begin running.In the world of advertising, the rabbits win the customer only when there are no turtles in the race.Turtles use mass media – TV, Radio, and Outdoor – to win the hearts of customers while the rabbits are still asleep. These customers become familiar with the turtle; they like the turtle, so they type his name into the search block when they are ready to buy what the turtle sells.The advertising rabbit failed to wake up because there was no starting gun, no unbranded keyword. The turtle wins the customer, gets the click, makes the sale.The times may change, but the hearts of humans do not. Given the chance, they will always buy from a familiar face instead of a stranger.Become a familiar face – or a familiar voice – who tells wonderful stories.It only takes 158 of them to be remembered forever.Roy H. Williams

A branded keyword is one in which the name of your company appears. When a customer types the name of your company into a search string, they are looking for you, they believe in you. A friend might have recommended you, but usually it was your advertising that won them over.Either way, you have done well.Unbranded keywords include phrases like “air conditioning repair” and “diamond engagement rings.” When a shopper types an unbranded keyword into a search engine, it is a clear signal that they have no preferred provider in your category. No one has won them over.The best online marketers track their branded and unbranded keywords separately because they know that when you follow unbranded keywords all the way from the search string to the gross profit made on those sales, you will often find you spent more money on unbranded keywords than you made on the sales they brought in.That’s when you should drop them like a hot rock.Look at the case study at the top of this page. I have removed the name of the company, the category, and the cities, but the data is real, it is recent, and it is accurate.We spent $37,398 in unbranded keywords in City 1 so that we might have the privilege of losing $8,299.We spent $30,008 in unbranded keywords in City 2 so that we might have the privilege of losing $17,238.We spent $6,273 in unbranded keywords in City 3 so that we might have the privilege of losing $6,409.After losing $31,946 we grew tired of feeling privileged.Meanwhile, in City 1 our investment of just $7,452 in branded keywords made us a gross profit of $49,480 after deducting the cost of our branded keywords.In City 2 our investment of just $14,648 in branded keywords made us a gross profit of $62,976.In City 3 our investment of just $2,998 in branded keywords made us a gross profit of $9,042.But all the young digital weasels tell me I’m not looking at it correctly. They scold me for tracking branded and unbranded keywords separately, and smugly point out, “When you combine them into one big package, the return on investment is perfectly acceptable.”Some of my closest friends are world-famous online marketing experts who know how to create campaigns that allow you to monetize all the customer enthusiasm that has been generated through your radio and TV and outdoor advertising.None of my friends is young enough or smug enough to be a digital weasel.Digital weasels always fail to deliver what they proudly promised. Back when I was a 14-year-old boy on the wrong side of a little Oklahoma town, I would have pulled these weasels aside, put my arm around their shoulders and whispered in their ears, “Be careful not to let your alligator mouth overload your mockingbird butt.”But I have mellowed and matured.Or at least I pretend I have.Les Binet and Peter Field did what data scientists do; they monitored the advertising of more than 1,000 businesses for more than 15 years, then published the data.Binet and Field are not digital weasels. I smile every time I listen to them.ALes Binet says, “If you build your business, or try to build your business, using short-term efficiency measures – cost per response, click-through rates, that kind of thing – you’re on a hiding to nothing. You’re going to run your business into the ground, we believe, because those are not the things that grow the business, long-term.”Les Binet goes on to say, “You need to talk to people, not just who are in the market right now, but people who might come to market over the next two to three years. You need to engage them with things that are more humanly relevant, more general, more universal, and crucially, you need to engage them at the emotional level… So if you want really disproportionately large marketing effects, if you want big sales and big profits, aim for fame.”Is it fame you want? I can give it to you with 3 simple bits of advice:Make your radio and TV ads unpredictable and entertaining. Entertainment is the only currency with which you can purchase the time and attention of a too-busy public.Work a tiny bit of information into your ads, but not so much that it makes your ads feel like ads.Close at least half your ads with something new, surprising, and different; something that gives the customer a tiny, inward smile.I’m really glad you came out to play but I’ve got to go now. My mom is calling.Roy H. Williams

A verb avalanche is a highly engaging description that causes you to see, hear, and feel action all around you. You dodge each tumbling word-boulder only to leap, jump, roll and scramble to dodge the mountainside of word-boulders that follow close behind it.causes, see, hear, feel, dodge, tumbling, leap, jump, roll, scramble, dodge, followThat example included 12 verbs among 43 total words. Roughly 1 in every 3 1/2 words was a verb.Verb Avalanches are built from verbs: action words.“Thorin stepped up and drew the key on its chain from round his neck. He put it to the hole. It fitted and it turned! Snap! The gleam went out, the sun sank, the moon was gone, and evening sprang into the sky.”– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, chapter 11stepped up, drew, put, fitted, turned, Snap! went out, sank, was gone, sprang10 verbs among 43 total words. Roughly 1 in 4 words was a verb.(Snap! is onomatopoeia, a word that imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. When constructing a word avalanche, onomatopoeia counts as a verb.)Here are some other examples of onomatopoeia:Machine noises — honk, beep, vroom, clang, zap, boing.Impact sounds — boom, crash, whack, thump, bang.Sounds of the voice — shush, giggle, growl, whine, murmur, blurt, whisper, hiss.“Jacob slipped into the shadows, ducked down a hallway, climbed a wall, and hid in the shadows above the throne room.”slipped, ducked, climbed, hid.4 verbs among 21 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.“Jacob was afraid for his friends. He slipped into the shadows, crept over a rooftop, slid down a tree, hurried away from the palace, and ran all the way to Bethlehem.”– Chris Auer, The Littlest Magi   was afraid, slipped, crept, slid, hurried, ran6 verbs among 31 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!'”– Jack Kerouaclive, talk, be saved, desirous of everything, yawn, say, burn, burn, burn, exploding, see, pop, goes, ‘Awww!’14 verbs among 69 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of wordsas they tangle with human emotions.”– James Michener love, writing, love, swirl, swing, tangle In this sequence, 2 verbs – writing and swirl – were used as nouns, but we are counting them anyway. Even when used as nouns, verbs have impact.6 verbs among 17 total words. Roughly 1 in 3 words was a verb.“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock – shock is a worn-out word – but astonish.”– Terry Southernwriting, astonish, shock, shock, astonish.5 verbs among 19 total words. Roughly 1 in 4 words was a verb.“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”– Shauna Niequistsizzles, pops, makes, laugh, want, get, realize, is, meetings (verb/noun), eat, sing, open, wear, stay up, laughing, paint, sleep hard, throw, eat, read, jump, want, make, belly laugh, gave, loves.26 verbs among 135 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.Did you notice the pattern? When at least 1 in 5 words is a verb, you have created a description that is sure to gain and hold the attention of the reader, the listener, the customer. You have created a verb avalanche.Don’t expect to Google this and learn more about it, because I just made it up.But that doesn’t make it untrue, does it?Roy H. Williams

Isaac Newton discovered that force – impact ­– is the result of mass x acceleration. This is why the impact of any statement you make = the size of the idea x the speed of successfully transferring it from your mind to the mind of your customer.Newton also discovered, “For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.” The faster an advertised offer produces big results, the less well it will work over time.EXAMPLE: When a direct-response offer generates big money quickly, you can be certain that the longer you do it, the less well it will work. To gain attention, a thing must be new, surprising, and different. When it becomes old, predictable, and the-same-as-before, we turn our attention elsewhere.You already know this.Advertising is, in at least some aspects, a science. But systems-focused business owners are demanding that advertising become a science in all its aspects. They say, “Give us fast-acting, reliable advertising that drives ever-increasing sales opportunities,” and the sellers of advertising are saying, “You got it, boss! Coming right up!”I am reminded of the quest for a perpetual motion machine.The first documented claim of perpetual motion was made by Bhaskara of India in the 12th century. It has been followed by countless others. But not one of them has ever worked, and science has proven that none of them ever will.In his book on the subject of Perpetual Motion, Henry Dircks wrote,“A more self-willed, self-satisfied, or self-deluded class of the community, making at the same time pretension to superior knowledge, it would be impossible to imagine. They hope against hope, scorning all opposition with ridiculous vehemence, although centuries have not advanced them one step in the way of progress… The history of perpetual motion is a history of the fool-hardiness of either half-learned, or totally ignorant persons.”When you spend all day, every day talking with enthusiastic young advertising professionals, you meet a lot of people who fit that description.But I promised you a lesson on the Physics of Advertising. Here it is.Newton’s first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of Conservation of Energy, which tells us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can only be transformed from one form to another.EXAMPLE: The chemical energy contained in gasoline can be transformed into kinetic energy, light energy, heat energy, and the percussive energy that you and I call sound, but those energies were there in the gasoline all along.When it is expended, the energy stored in the gasoline is gone. You cannot burn the same gasoline twice.Goodwill, reputation, share-of-mind, and other forms of “buying energy” can be stored in the mind of the customer in 3 different ways.The Performance of your product or service.When you deliver or exceed what the customer expected, you store “buying energy” in the mind of your customer. If you fall short of their expectations, gasoline is burned.A Referral from a friend or an online review.Word-of-mouth is when the buying energy stored in the mind of one customer is shared with another customer. When that word-of-mouth is negative, more gasoline is burned.Stories told in Advertising and by salespeople.Relational energy is built in the mind of the customer when your beliefs are aligned with their beliefs. Some people call this “branding,” but I prefer to think of it as customer bonding. When you create urgency with a limited-time offer, you force your customer into acting “now or never” and gasoline is burned.“Big Money Quickly” happens as the result of urgency; usually a shortage of time, or product, or opportunity. But shout “wolf” too often and the villagers no longer come running. Your gasoline has all been burned.Do you now understand why the faster an advertised offer produces big results, the less well it will work over time? When you allow your short-term metrics to dictate your marketing decisions, you will soon be crying “wolf” with every breath you take.But there is a healthy and sustainable time to harvest.Advertising is like farming.You cannot harvest what was never planted.Planting a seed in the mind of the customer is where every good thing begins. The customer has to know you exist.Nurturing that seed through the growing cycle is essential.Stories told in advertising, by salespeople, and by customers are the water and sunshine that require time to work their magic.Harvest time is when it is.Every jeweler knows that Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day are predictable buying occasions, but no jeweler knows when a couple is about to get engaged or celebrate an important anniversary. And that’s where the big money is. Every air conditioning company knows more systems break down and need to be repaired during extreme weather conditions, but no one knows when a system is going to be replaced. And that’s where the big money is.The goal of the intelligent advertiser is to store enough “buying energy” in the mind of the customer to become the provider the customer thinks of first, and feels the best about, when their “harvest time” finally occurs.Quick-acting advertising works less and less well the longer you do it. But the continual storage of “buying energy” – (1.) performing what you promised, plus (2.) the stories told by your ads and your salespeople and your customers – are like eating right and exercising; they work better and better until you are finally operating at peak health and efficiency.This is when all your metrics go through the roof.Google is simply the new phone book. Online click-through and conversion rates measure your offline marketing and reputation-building as much as they measure your online efforts.Never let anyone tell you that their special method of “metrics measurement and optimization” is going to “hold your ad budget accountable” and allow you to “constantly improve the efficiency of your marketing.”They are trying to sell you a perpetual motion machine.Roy H. Williams

Edwin Twitmyer failed to close a loophole and it cost him the Nobel Prize.Twitmyer was working on his doctorate in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation was on The Effect of Emotions on the Patellar Reflex, or Knee Jerk.To make his research possible, Twitmyer built an elevated chair with a remote-controlled rubber hammer that would strike the person’s patellar tendon and trigger the predictable leg-kick. He didn’t tell his subjects when he was going to release the hammer, he simply let it fall and then measured how far the leg kicked. When his subjects complained that the hammer caught them by surprise, Twitmyer began sounding a bell just before he activated the hammer.One day he accidentally sounded the bell without dropping the hammer and the subject’s leg kicked, even though the tendon had not been stimulated.Twitmyer knew he had stumbled onto something important. He then began doing the same to his other subjects and found that they, too, would kick their legs forward upon the sound of the bell, even when they were trying not to. He published his findings in his doctoral dissertation in 1902, one year before Ivan Pavlov announced the results of his dog research at the 1903 International Medical Congress in Madrid.But when Twitmyer presented his work at a meeting of the American Psychological Association, his research drew little response from the crowd.Ivan Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904, not Edwin Twitmyer.Twitmeyer knew he had a loophole in his research, but he failed to close it. As a good scientist, he acknowledged in his paper that the leg-kicks of the subjects could – theoretically – have been caused by his subjects voluntarily moving their legs, even though he was certain this was not the case.That same possibility had occurred to the other scientists as well.Here’s my point: When it comes to the purchases your customers make, each of them is occasionally a scientist. So when you speak to the customer’s intellect, you have to close all the loopholes. If you don’t, their doubts will remain and someone else, someone like Ivan Pavlov, is likely to make the sale.But when you speak to the emotions you are speaking to that part of the mind that is more interested in feelings rather than facts. Win the heart and the mind will follow. The intellect will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.When my partner Johnny Molson heard about Twitmyer and Pavlov, he said,“So the moral of the story is that if a fella named Twitmyer wrote about conditioned responses a year before Ivan Pavlov did, that means you and I have been conditioned to associate Pavlov with conditioned responses, which would make it literally a Pavlovian-Pavlovian response.”Here’s my second point: The discoverer of a new thing – the genesis agent – is rarely the one who gets the reward. The fame, the money, and all the credit goes to the popularizer who knows how to get people’s attention.You don’t need to be the first.You just need to be the one people see.Roy H. WilliamsA

My friend Brian Scudamore shared a story with me last week. Today I’m sharing it with you.Ted Leonsis was on a little commuter airplane that lost the ability to use its wing flaps and landing gear. Face-to-face with the possibility of imminent death, Ted wrote a list of 101 things that he promised himself he would do if he lived. Start to finish, that list took 20 minutes.By May 27, 2021, Ted had accomplished 81 of those things.What would be on your list of 101 things to do before you die?When Brian Scudamore met Ted Leonsis at MIT, Ted sat him down and gave him 20 minutes to write his 101 things.What Brian wrote on his list is unimportant.What Ted Leonsis wrote on his list is unimportant.What is important is what you write on your list.You can download and print these 2 sheets of paper with lines numbered 1 to 101, or you can create your list of 101 things on your own computer.When you are finished, if you’d like someone to read your list and believe that you will, in fact, do every one of the things listed on it, send your list to indy@wizardofads.comYou’ve got 20 minutes. Start a timer, then start your list.Don’t overthink it. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. If you live beyond the next 20 minutes, you can correct those things later.Your plane is falling from the sky. If you’re going to finish that list, you have to add something every 12 seconds.Start your timer.Go.Indy and I will continue this story in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams

Bad marketing is about you, your company, your product, your service. “I, me, my, we, our…”Good marketing is about the customer, and how your product or service can elevate their happiness. “You, you, you, you, your…”With every purchase we make, we shout to the world who we are.We are attracted to products and services and brands and celebrities and organizations and friends because we see a reflection of ourselves in them.Our purchases and alliances are identity reinforcement.I’ve built a career on this belief.Simon Sinek says the same thing, but differently. Four minutes into his famous TED-X talk in Puget Sound, Simon says,“Here’s how Apple actually communicates. ‘Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.’At 5 1/2 minutes,“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”At 7 1/2 minutes,“The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have; the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe. The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”As Simon approaches the 11-minute mark, he says,“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.At 13 minutes:“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe.And at 15 1/2 minutes, he starts talking about Martin Luther King:“He didn’t go around telling people what needed to change in America. He went around and told people what he believed. ‘I believe, I believe, I believe,‘ he told people. And people who believed what he believed took his cause, and they made it their own, and they told people. And some of those people created structures to get the word out to even more people. And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up on the right day at the right time to hear him speak. How many of them showed up for him? Zero. They showed up for themselves. It’s what they believed about America that got them to travel in a bus for eight hours to stand in the sun in Washington in the middle of August.”Most people call this the “Start with Why” talk, but Simon never did. Although he did use the word “why” 28 times, he used the word “believe” 32 times, and 28 of those were in his most high-impact statements.You gain the power of persuasion when you learn to see through the eyes of others. This allows you to talk to them about what they already care about instead of lecturing them on what they ought to care about.It sounds easy, but it’s not. To see through the eyes of others, you have to open your heart and mind to values and beliefs that are not your own.The only hard choices in life are the choices between 2 good things.You will agree, I’m sure, that Justice and Mercy are both good things. But when they come into conflict, which way do you lean? Your customer might lean the other way.How about Freedom and Responsibility? As one increases, the other decreases. Which one do you value a little more than the other?Honesty and Loyalty? Those come into conflict almost daily.You believe what you believe. And you agree with people who believe as you do.When you write unthinkingly, you speak and write from within the constraints of your own belief system. And in so doing, you speak persuasively only to the members of your own tribe.But persuasive ad copy is about the customer. Can you open your heart and mind wide enough to speak to values and beliefs that are not your own?There will always be people who like to buy in the way you like to sell. These people are the low-hanging fruit on which you build the foundation of your business. These people are your tribe. But there will come a day when you have plucked all the low-hanging fruit – perhaps you already have – and you will find yourself trapped beneath a glass ceiling. You can see a lot more business out there, but it’s just not coming to you.You will pass through that glass ceiling when you learn how to sell people who like to buy in a way other than how you like to sell.You have to sell each customer their way.Persuasive ad writers use a technique called “inclusive communication by design.” There are 2 good ways to do it:1. Include something for everyone. Figure out how to include language that will appeal to each of the different perspectives a person might bring to their purchasing decision. The most sophisticated way to accomplish this is to use the “personas” technique developed by Jeffrey Eisenberg. To do this you will need to talk to the frontline sales people of the organization in question; the people who talk to real customers all day, every day. Based on these interviews with salespeople, you will probably identify three or four different customer “personas.” One or two of these will probably be a stretch for you to understand. But you must learn to speak to each of these different belief systems if you want your business to reach the next level, and the next. The downside of this technique is that it tends to require longer ad copy.2. Speak only to those values and perspectives that most customers agree upon. The downside of this is that these ads are often less persuasive because they tend to be less specific.But like I was saying, the only hard choices in life are the choices between 2 good things.Roy H. Williams

Peter Raible was born in 1929 and he died in 2004.Of all the interesting things he said, this is perhaps my favorite:“We build on foundations we did not lay. We warm ourselves by fires we did not light. We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. We drink from wells we did not dig. We profit from persons we did not know.This is as it should be.Together we are more than any one person could be. Together we can build across the generations. Together we can renew our hope and faith in the life that is yet to unfold. Together we can heed the call to a ministry of care and justice.We are ever bound in community.”My friend Brian Scudamore puts it this way, “We are bigger and better together.”About a dozen years ago, Wizard Academy board member Dr. Richard D. Grant held a Sunday morning chapel service in Tuscan Hall after an all-day-Saturday Wizard Academy reunion. He began that service by bowing his head and quietly speaking his thanks to all the unseen people who worked to create the clothes we were wearing.It was a surprisingly moving experience.Dr. Grant began with our socks, and spoke of his appreciation for the people who grew the cotton and tended the sheep for the wool from which our socks were made.And then he spoke of his appreciation of the people who worked the machines that knitted those fibers to become the socks we we had on our feet.And then he spoke of his appreciation of the people who created all the bits and pieces from which our shoes were made. And as he named those bits and pieces that come together to make a shoe, we saw each of those people hard at work, and we understood the benefit we took from their labor.By the time he got to the people who cut our hair, every person in that room was deep in contemplation of this wonderful, magical, interconnected world in which we live. And we loved the people who carried things across oceans for us, and the truck drivers who deliver things to warehouses for us, and the warehouse workers who load those things onto trucks for us so they can be delivered to the stores in which we shop, and to the restaurants in which we take such great delight.I hope to someday find the recording of that morning. I would like to share it with you.Indy Beagle tells me that 33 percent of the things we worry about never come to pass. The next 33 percent are so inconsequential that they are not worth our worry. The third 33 percent are things that might come to pass but cannot be changed, no matter how well we worry. This leaves only a tiny percent that are important, and could come to pass if we do not take action.I looked at him and said, “Is that your way of telling me to chill out?”Looking directly into my eyes, Indy just nodded his head.And then he quickly added, “Stop and smell the roses. Lie in a field and look at the clouds. Quit thinking so much about your reputation and your bank account and all the wonderful things you own. No one wins the rat race except for the rats.”Then his voice softened a little as he delivered his conclusion, “And in the end, the rats find out, after a lifetime of struggle, that there is no reward for the winner.”Thank you, Indy. It’s good to keep things in perspective.Roy H. Williams