Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Admiral Boulevard is the margin of the page in Tulsa.It is that place where a person can do well while doing no good. It is where discipline encounters temptation and good fortune meets bad luck. Admiral Boulevard is the margin Johnny Cash sings about in “I Walk the Line.”The Outsiders – both the book and the movie – take place along Admiral Boulevard. The book has sold more than 14 million copies making it the bestselling young adult novel of all time. Susie Hinton was a junior at Will Rogers High School just 5 blocks south of Admiral Boulevard when she wrote it. She was given a D in creative writing that year.Admiral Boulevard is bordered on the east by the Mingo traffic circle and on the west by the tragic Greenwood District. The six miles between those bookends is what I once described as “the neighborhood of Ponyboy Curtis, an unfiltered assortment of bent automobiles, broken houses and discarded people.”Susie encountered hostility when her book was released in 1967. She says, “I think the first hostile reaction was to the idea that not all teens were living in a ’50s sitcom. People know better nowadays.”Susie is just 9 years older than me, so we know some of the same people. We all grew up with one thing in common; those little teeth nipping at our heels wasn’t a puppy, it was poverty.The once-rich and influential Greenwood District of Tulsa was known as “Black Wall Street” in the years following the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, but on May 31, 1921, a white mob set fire to hundreds of black-owned businesses and homes, killing 300 Americans and leaving more than 10,000 homeless.Forty square blocks were smoldering when the sun came up the next morning.No one was prosecuted.Susie’s book is about life on the margin of that page in history forty-five years later. The Outsiders is about the tensions between country-club whites and those paycheck-to-paycheck whites like Susie and me.Francis Ford Coppola won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1970 for Patton, and two years later he won three more Oscars for The Godfather. Then he discovered Susie’s book, turned it into a screenplay, gathered up some no-name kids and gave them a chance to become superstars.Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, and C. Thomas Howell were barely more than children when they made The Outsiders in 1983.Two years later we saw The Breakfast Club, and the following year, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.The Outsiders served as a launchpad for a number of careers and a whole new genre of movies. The ripple effect of a well-told story is staggering.You have a story.Your business has a story.And your future is a story yet to be written.Very soon Daniel Whittington will announce The Ad Writers Masters Class on behalf of the American Small Business Institute. This will be be your chance to write an altogether different future for yourself and the people you love.My thoughts about Susie Hinton and The Outsiders were triggered by something written by Mike Dooley:“The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things.”Have a golden week.Roy H. Williams

Bart Giamatti was a professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. In less than 3 minutes, Giamatti caused me to understand “home” in a new way. I believe his thoughts on the subject are profoundly insightful.“There is no great, long poem about baseball. It may be that baseball is itself its own great, long poem. This had occurred to me in the course of my wondering why home plate wasn’t called fourth base. And then this came to me, ‘Why not? Meditate on the name, for a moment, ‘home.’’“Home is an English word virtually impossible to translate into other tongues. No translation catches the associations, the mixture of memory and longing, the sense of security and autonomy and accessibility, the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wariness that cling to the word ‘home’ and are absent from ‘house’ or even ‘my house.’ Home is a concept, not a place; it’s a state of mind where self-definition starts. It is origins, a mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original; perhaps like others, especially those one loves; but discreet, distinct, not to be copied. Home is where one first learned to be separate, and it remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it were ever to occur, would happen.”“All literary romance, all romance epic, derives from The Odyssey and it is about going home. It’s about rejoining; rejoining a beloved, rejoining parent to child, rejoining a land to its rightful owner or rule. Romance is about putting things aright after some tragedy has put them asunder. It is about restoration of the right relations among things. And ‘going home’ is where that restoration occurs, because that’s where it matters most. Baseball is, of course, entirely about going home. And to that extent – and because it’s the only game you ever heard of – where you want to get back to where you started. All the other games are territorial; you want to get his or her territory. But not baseball. Baseball simply wants to get you from here… back around to here.”Bart Giamatti was 20 years older than me.For most of my life, I thought of wisdom as always coming from people older than me. But these days, there aren’t that many people older than me. AIn recent years, I’ve been learning from younger men.I believe my young friend, Shawn Craig Smith, may understand romance epic as well as did Bart Giamatti. In class at Wizard Academy, Shawn wrote, “Prometheus gave man fire, but the power every one of us carries each day, heartbeat by heartbeat, is his story. Come to the circle, bring your spark. We can live as men without fire, but without story, without art, we freeze alone in the cold white waste.”Jonathan Berman travels a lot. He taught me, “Home is not a place, but a feeling of wholeness and contentment you can take with you wherever you go.”Jeff Sexton taught me that not every ad writer gathers all the information and then figures out what parts of it to use and how to organize those parts. Jeff made me understand that lots of great ad writers have a template in mind, and then they search for the information that will satisfy that template.My son Rex taught me that “discovery content” brings new people into contact with your YouTube channel, your blog or other online body of work, and “community content” keeps them coming back again and again after they have discovered you.My son Jacob showed me that people will like and respect you when it becomes obvious that your hard work and attention-to-detail is for their benefit, not yours.Tucker Max taught me that a person can benefit from your experience when you tell them (1.) what happened, (2.) how it made you feel, and (3.) what you learned from it.Tim Miles took the time to tell my son Jacob what a great job he was doing. When I felt ashamed for not having already done it myself, I learned, “No matter how busy you are, when you notice that someone is doing a great job, always take the time to tell them so.”Daniel Whittington, the chancellor of Wizard Academy, taught me how to be funny at the expense of no other person.Joe Davis showed me how to take everything in stride and maintain my composure when troubles are stacking up like firewood.Zac Smith, vice-chancellor of Wizard Academy, showed me the power of passing good things forward so that our students know that we see them, we hear them, and we miss them when they are gone.Ryan Deiss taught me how to trim sprawling ideas onto a manageable template, “then when the student masters the template, they can throw it away and venture beyond its boundaries.”Chris Maddock showed me how the most powerful teaching is to give students personalized feedback about each of their attempts to do what you previously explained.Manley Miller taught me how to turn a small circle of followers into a team, and then turn that team into a tribe, and then make that tribe into a force that can change the world.Ray Seggern revealed to me the fascinating, interwoven relationships between the culture you create for your employees, the story you tell in your advertising, and the experience you deliver to your customers.JP Engelbrecht showed me how to lead without being in the spotlight, and how to make money without banging a drum.Brian Brushwood taught me how to act when you’re in the spotlight, and how to bang a drum so that it can be heard around the world.Jonathan Bancroft showed me how to listen to a person’s suggestions in full, even when you are certain they are wrong.Anthony Dina taught me how to turn my attention toward others instead of myself.And today I have tried my best to do that.Have a happy day, a great week, and a fruitful year.Roy H. Williams

A few years ago, Yvon Chouinard was asked, “How do you know if you’re making the right move?He said, “It’s a lot of gut instinct. If you study something to death, if you wait for the customer to tell you what he wants, you’re going to be too late, especially for an entrepreneurial company. That comes from Henry Ford: Customers didn’t want a Model T, they wanted a faster horse.”The last time I checked, Yvon Chouinard’s Patagonia was debt-free and selling $575m per year. I like his track record.I bring up this question of “making the right move” because it’s exactly what every business owner wants to do right now. But how can we know what “the right move” is if we don’t have enough information?In the absence of a crystal ball, let’s begin with the assumption that this virus and the social upheaval that came with it aren’t going to go away all at once.Now let’s speculate about what things might look like in 7 months.It is Thanksgiving Day, 2020. People are still worried about a “second wave” of infections and the unemployment problem hasn’t entirely disappeared, either.Seven months from now when you look back at this moment, what will you be thankful you decided to do TODAY?I’m trying to say… No, what I’m shouting is, “Now is the time for you to tweak your business model.”You and I and everyone else (except maybe Chick-fil-A) is effectively out-of-business because the underlying assumptions that sustained our business models are no longer true. This isn’t just “a moment” that will soon pass, it is a season that will be with us for a number of months, at least.You didn’t want to hear that, and I didn’t want to say it. But it is precisely what you need to hear right now if you’re going to look back in 7 months and be glad of the decisions you made.We are in the early stages of a once-in-a-lifetime change of fortune, and fortunes. This is when the big fish quit eating the small fish. This is when the fast fish eat the slow.If your plan is to “wait it out until everything gets back to normal,” you are in danger of being the slow fish.You’ve got to make it easier for your customer to do business with you. Think big but start small. Start with something you can do TODAY.I have a friend who owns a jewelry store in a town of about 115,000 people. When his state went into lockdown mode, the other 8 jewelry stores sent their people home to “wait it out.” But my friend decided to answer the phone each day, just in case a customer had a need that couldn’t wait until things were “back to normal.” He was laughing when he called me a couple of days ago. “Roy, I’ve sold 4 engagement rings in the past 5 days because of this new, high-tech thing I’m doing called ‘answering the phone.’”WOW 1 DAY PAINTING is one of the new international franchises of Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the largest privately-owned junk removal service on earth. Prior to the public becoming concerned about Covid-19, WOW 1-DAY PAINTING was doing more interior painting than exterior. It took Brian less than 48 hours to create and distribute a new radio ad for all his franchise partners.James:  WOW 1 DAY PAINTINGBrian: can paint the exterior of your houseJames:  in just [pause] 1 [pause] DAY.  [SFX Magic Sparkle]Brian:  Your next-door-neighbor will drive to the grocery store,James:  and when they get back, [SFX Magic Sparkle]Brian:  your house will be a whole different color!James: Seriously, we are THAT good.Brian:  We can give you a price during a live video chat.James:  You can even PAY over the phone!Brian:  WOW! [SFX Magic Sparkle]James:  1 DAY PAINTINGBrian:  is a precision teamJames:  of professional paintersBrian:  who planJames:  and prepareBrian:  Perfection.James:  Happy painters wearing uniforms!Brian:  Go to WOW 1 DAY dot comNext, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING is going to post all the thousands of available paint colors on their website. But that takes time. Offering to quote a price during a live video chat and allowing customers to pay over the phone are things they could do TODAY.When reinventing your business model, the most important thing to keep in mind is this:“If the Wizard of Ads was wrong, and this virus goes away all at once, and everything goes back to exactly how it used to be, will I still be glad I made the changes I made? Will I have moved my company forward by making it easier for customers to do business with us?”How can you tweak your business model to make it easier for your customer to do business with you? How much of it can you do TODAY? And be sure to do only those things that you should have already done. Take only those actions for which there is no downside in the future.The hardest thing you will ever do is trust yourself.But it is also the most important.Roy H. Williams

Meats and vegetables are ordinary, but put them on a stick and it’s Shish Kabob.Frozen Kool-Aid is frozen Kool-Aid; put it on a stick and it’s a popsicle.A marshmallow is one thing, but a marshmallow on a stick means a campfire.A frankfurter is a weenie, but a frankfurter on a stick is a weenie roast.And what are hors d’oeuvres but little pieces of something-on-a-stick?And what is fondue?Put food on a stick and it becomes special. But that only works for food.How does a person become special?You become special by that which holds you captive.You become special when you fall into a gravitational pull.You become special when you orbit something important.A meteor is a rock on fire as it falls to the earth.We call it a shooting star.I have met a number of these.A comet is a slightly larger rock that comes within sight of our planet.Think of it as a meteor on tour.Comets are the definition of fly-by-night.A moon is a planet that orbits a larger one.Moons are important and have names of their own.We write stories about moons and give them great respect.A planet orbits a star.A star is a celestial fire with powerful gravity.Planets and moons and comets orbit celestial fires.God is a fire.Science is a fire.Entertainment is a fire,including all the arts and every form of sport.On a much smaller scale, we see people as comets, moons, planets, and stars.In Wolf Hall, Hillary Mantel’s extraordinary book about the Renaissance, we witness the Tudor saga through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, an ordinary man who chooses to orbit Cardinal Wolsey and soon becomes an important moon to that planet.Throughout the book, Cromwell’s advice to those he loves is “Arrange your face,” and “Choose your prince.”Cromwell’s advice could be phrased as two questions;“Who will you be?” and “Who will you follow?”An asteroid is a rock that has failed to choose a passion,so it wanders aimlessly in a cold, airless vacuum.A meteor is a rock on fire as it falls to the earth.We call it a shooting star.I have met a number of theseand seen them fall.Every meteor I have ever metthought it was a star.Roy H. Williams

Before we examine the blind spot, let’s stare into the face of the truth for a moment:People don’t bond with a company. People bond with a personality.Apple didn’t wait until they were category-dominant to develop a personality. They had personality in 1984 when they aired their famous SuperBowl ad. They had personality in 1997 when cultural icons in black-and-white photos encouraged us to “Think Different.” They had personality in 2003 when they sold iPods using only dancing silhouettes. And they had personality in 2006 when Justin Long and John Hodgman said, “I’m a Mac,” “And I’m a PC.”Steve Jobs died in 2011.The blind spot in most B2B companies is that they think it isn’t “corporate-ish” to have a personality. This is why B2B marketing is tedious, predictable, and boring.When amateur presenters are onstage, they look polished, professional, poised and plastic, don’t they?Experienced presenters feel spontaneous, extemporaneous, unfiltered and unguarded.Anyone who says, “But B2B is different,” is an amateur presenter.B2B marketers know that people are required to use different criteria when making choices at work than the criteria they use when making choices at home. At work, they’re not free to follow their instincts and “go with their gut.”I do not dispute this.B2B marketers know that when a business sells to a business, the buyer must gather information and make comparisons to defend their decision.I do not dispute this. But that doesn’t mean your advertising has to be plastic, pretentious, and predictable.The purpose of a photograph, illustration, or video thumbnail is to get the customer to read the subject line, headline, or listen to the opening line.The purpose of the opening line is to entice the customer to read the first line of body copy.The job of the first line of body copy is to cause the reader to keep reading, the listener to keep listening, and the viewer to keep viewing.The details the buyer will need to defend their purchase are contained in the body copy.Please don’t tell me you are required to use boring and predictable photographs, illustrations, and video thumbnails simply because your category is B2B.Please don’t tell me you are required to write plastic and pretentious headlines, subject lines and opening lines simply because your category is B2B.The details the buyer will need to defend their purchase are contained in the body copy.Job One is to gain attention and win the heart. This requires personality.Job Two is to deliver the details so that your customer can defend their decision to purchase from you.Job Three is to deposit your profits before they pile so high that you need a tractor to shift them.Now please, for the sake of your future, go write some B2B headlines, subject lines, and opening lines that have some personality.And once you have selected a personality, stick with it. Because this will become the defining characteristic that distinguishes you from your competitors.I’ve been needing to get that off my chest for 25 years.Thanks for listening.Roy H. Williams

The content of your heart is what your heart contains.Are you content? Same spelling, different meaning.We distinguish these words only by the syllable we stress.Words are amazing, don’t you think?If you are content, (satisfied, happy, at peace,) it is because of the content of your heart. If the content of your heart is anxiety, fear, envy and anger, it is difficult to be content.Who determines the content of your heart? Is it you?We can assume, I think, that the content of your heart will be whatever you have chosen to put in it.What have you put in it? Is there anything in there you might want to take out?Sadly, our success-driven culture considers a person who is content to be somehow deficient. We are supposed to be driven, never satisfied, always fighting for more, for better, for higher, am I right?But the golden carrot that is dangled before our donkey eyes is that we might someday be content.Oh, what a cruel master is that bastard with his carrot and his stick!Wait, the bastard is me.Roy H. Williams

We shall pass through this time of uncertainty and emerge as happier people.We will enjoy a renewed sense of the importance of relationships.Our priorities will be altered.Optimism is about staying focused on positive outcomes.I don’t know Andy Bounds but he’s a good friend of Doug Burdon and Doug is a friend of mine.According to Andy Bounds, Walt Disney stayed focused on positive outcomes. When asked if Disneyland could be built, everyone else said, “No, because…” but Walt would always answer, “Yes, if…”Yes, if we get someone else to pay for it.Yes, if we hire the world’s best experts to build it.Yes, if we locate it somewhere that’s hot all year.Yes, if we get transport links.Yes, if…How many questions could we be answering with “Yes, if…”?As I said, optimism is about staying focused on positive outcomes.But optimism isn’t the secret of happiness.The secret of happiness is learning to celebrate the ordinary.No one knew this better than Tom T. Hall.I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks, slow movin’ trains…And rain.I love little country streams, sleep without dreams, Sunday school in May…And hay.And I love you, too.I love leaves in the wind, pictures of my friends, birds of the world…And squirrels.I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups, Bourbon in a glass…And grass.And I love you, too.I love honest open smiles, kisses from a child, tomatoes on the vine…And onions.I love winners when they cry, losers when they try, music when it’s good…And life.And I love you, too.How many ordinary things do you love?Wouldn’t this be a great time to celebrate them?Send your list to indy@wizardofads.com along with a fun photo of yourself. The rabbit hole is a wonderful place to make your writing debut.I love lunch with my friends, wine without end, old travelogues…And dogs.I love castles in the sky, imagination when it flies, Pennie at the Prom…And Mom.And I love you, too.Roy H. Williams

NOTE FROM INDY BEAGLE – After the wizard recorded today’s MMMemo, he recorded a video called Advertising in a Time of Crisis. You should watch it. Now here is today’s memo…One of my heroes, John Steinbeck, twice followed in the footsteps of another of my heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson.Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes is a travelogue written by RLS in 1878.The Sea of Cortez is the travelogue of Steinbeck about an ocean journey embarked upon with his friend Ed Ricketts, on whose life he based the character of “Doc” in Cannery Row. Steinbeck’s other travelogue is Travels with Charley, the diary of his final journey across America in 1962, when he knew he was dying.Travelogues are books without a plot, books whose only purpose is to celebrate the art of great writing.Here are a few of my favorite passages from each of those 3 books.“A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long… I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle and habitable place; and night after night a man’s bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house.”– Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, p. 90 – 91“Ten minutes after, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely. I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy; but a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in someone’s debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had left enough for my night’s lodging. I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover.”– Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, p. 94“A still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were outlined sharply against the sky… and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In these high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same thing all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space… A few steps farther, and I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two peaks, a center of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system.”– Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, p. 132Inspired by Stevenson, Steinbeck picked up the pen 62 years later.“One thing impressed us deeply on this little voyage: the great world dropped away very quickly. We lost the fear and fierceness and contagion of war and economic uncertainty. The matters of great importance we had left were not important.”– Sea of Cortez, p. 210“Out in the bay the pelicans were fishing, flying along and then folding their wings and falling in their clumsy-appearing dives, which nevertheless must be effective, else there would be no more pelicans.”– Sea of Cortez, p. 193“The use of euphemism in national advertising is giving the hangover a bad name. ‘Over-indulgence’ it is called. There is a curious nastiness about over-indulgence. We would not consider over-indulging. The name is unpleasant, and the word ‘over’ indicates that one shouldn’t have done it. Our celebration had no such implication. We did not drink too much. We drank just enough, and we refuse to profane a good little time of mild inebriety with that slurring phrase ‘over-indulgence.’ There have been very few immortals who did not love wine; offhand we cannot think of any and we do not intend to try very hard.”– Sea of Cortez, p. 198“The Western Flyer hunched into the great waves toward Cedros Island, the wind blew off the tops of the whitecaps, and the big guy wire, from bow to mast, took up its vibration like the low pipe on a tremendous organ. It sang its deep note into the wind.”– The ending his travelogue, Sea of Cortez, p. 271Twenty-two years after, Steinbeck wrote his final travelogue.“As he sat in the seat beside me, his head was almost as high as mine. He put his nose close to my ear and said ‘Ftt.’ He is the only dog I ever knew that could pronounce the consonant F.”– Travels with Charley “My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance – and I wanted to go for the same reason.”– Travels With Charley “It rained endlessly and the forests wept. The darkness fell and the trees moved closer.”– Travels With Charley “Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”– Travels With Charley “The guardian of the lake was a lonely man, the more so because he had a wife. He showed me her picture in a plastic shield in his wallet, a prettyish blonde girl trying her best to live up to the pictures in magazines, a girl of products, home permanents, shampoos, rinses, skin conditioners. She hated being out in what she called the Sticks, longed for the great and gracious life in Toledo or South Bend.”– Travels With Charley“Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? … My own journey started long before I left, and was over before I returned. I know exactly when and where it was over. Near Abingdon, in the dog-leg of Virginia, at four o’clock of a windy afternoon, without warning or goodbye or kiss my foot, my journey went away and left me stranded far from home.”– the beginning of the final chapter of Travels with Charley, p. 243Other notable books of this genre are:Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome (1889)Trout Fishing in America, by Richard Brautigan (1967)Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)Horizon, by Barry Lopez (2020)It could also be argued that The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck’s epic tale of the dustbowl and the flight of the Okies to California, was a travelogue in the genre of historical fiction. For that matter, one could argue that Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea was a fictional travelogue of a 3-day boat trip off the coast of Cuba and The Lord of the Rings was a travelogue about Frodo and Sam trying to take the ring back to Mordor. But perhaps I am being silly.Whether you choose one of these strange and wonderful travelogues, or a book of a completely different genre, I believe you’ll be refreshed by the delightful vacation-of-the-mind you can take by looking into the pages of good literature.Great books were written for times like these.Roy H. Williams

Perhaps you’ve noticed that fewer couples are choosing to get married. This decline in the marriage rate has been slow, but it is a cultural shift that makes me uneasy.The first reason for my uneasiness is that I believe marriage is more than a piece of paper. Something wonderful happens when a couple embraces a legal alteration of their separate identities to become partners for life. Marriage is a serious commitment, not easily undone.Princess Pennie and I have been married for 43 years. “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” I believe everyone should marry their best friend and face life together as partners.Our belief in marriage is such that 15 years ago we gave the world a free wedding chapel that hangs off the edge of a cliff on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. As couples approach the chapel, they literally turn from the path they were walking to step off the edge together. Standing in the air, they become legally united.Chapel Dulcinea hosts more than 1,000 free weddings a year.The second reason for my uneasiness is that I have been writing ads to help jewelers sell engagement rings for 33 years. Any jeweler who does what I’m about to describe is going to make a blistering fortune. Believe me, I know the diamond business as well as anyone in the world. I have Martin Rapaport’s private cell phone number on speed dial.Jewelers no longer form a major part of my ad-writing business, but I love the work and feel a deep connection to it.2019 seems to have been an inflection point.I have spoken to more than 100 jewelers in the past 90 days and each has reported that their opportunities to sell engagement rings declined by about 9 percent in 2019. But they happily report that the size of the average purchase increased by enough to offset the declining sales opportunities, so their topline didn’t suffer. Fewer than 10 of these 100 engagement ring stores were my clients, but my clients are notable because they are among the largest and strongest in America.Reservations to book Chapel Dulcinea declined by 9 percent as well. And it’s free.A few weeks ago, I woke up with an astoundingly simple, big idea. My goal for 2020 is to see every jeweler in the world embrace this idea in a worldwide celebration of marriage. The best way to explain the idea is to let you read this short ad-segment I am giving to jewelers everywhere. This information can be inserted into an infinite number of ads. Just give this segment an opening and a closing and watch what will begin to happen in just a few short months.YOUNG:  You’ll find the diamond of your life at­­­­­­­­ [name of store.]OLDER: We have tremendous values on BIG Anniversary Diamonds.YOUNG: What’s an “Anniversary Diamond?”OLDER: An Anniversary Diamond is at least twice as big as the one in her engagement ring.YOUNG: Why twice as big?OLDER: [Calls the younger person by his/her first name,] every diamond makes a statement.YOUNG: Okay, what does an Anniversary Diamond say?OLDER: It says, “I love you twice as much today as the day you married me.”YOUNG: I like this!OLDER: [Location details]The limiting factor in the engagement ring diamond is that it is “one-and-done.” But a woman can have a whole collection of Anniversary Diamonds. Moreover, less than 2% of our population gets engaged each year. Now compare that to the percentage of America that is already married.The potential for anniversary diamonds is at least as big as the potential for engagement rings and probably a great deal bigger.The key to this idea is NOT to try to “merchandise” the anniversary diamond by mounting it in a specific piece of jewelry. This is the mistake that DeBeers has made for decades. “Anniversary Diamond” is a category, a concept, an idea, a blank to be filled in by the customer. How she decides to mount her anniversary diamond is up to her, or up to her partner if that is what the partner chooses. The thing to remember is that it is NOT up to the jeweler.Pennie and I were married with a 1/3 carat diamond. If I give her a 2-carat anniversary diamond, I get to say, “I love you 6 times as much as the day you married me.”Maybe she’ll put the 2-carat in her original engagement ring mounting. Maybe she’ll have a custom ring made for it. Maybe she’ll wear it as a pendant and choose a mounting and chain. Maybe she’ll attach it to a long needle and wear it as a hat pin. Maybe her two carats will be a matched pair of 1-carat diamond stud earrings. When people comment on those earrings, she can say, “These are my anniversary diamonds. Roy said they were 6 times as big as my engagement diamond because he loves me 6 times as much as the day he married me.”How she wears her anniversary diamond doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that she knows for certain how much I love her.Now that I think about it, Pennie’s anniversary diamond is going to have to be at least 5 carats.Yes, I love the Princess at least 15 times as much as the day I married her. And I was out-of-my-mind in love with her on our wedding day.This is an idea the world needs to embrace. There is nothing more important than letting your life-partner know you still love them and that you would happily marry them all over again.Do it.Roy H. Williams

A contrast of opposites is the foundation of effective communication.A thing cannot exist without its opposite.But opposites aren’t always easy to detect.As an example, the opposite of “freedom” isn’t really “slavery,” because slavery no longer exists in our society like it did 160 years ago. We need to contrast freedom with something experiential, something we have all felt.Responsibility is the opposite of freedom for most of us. As responsibility is increased, freedom is decreased. We’ve known this since the late Renaissance.“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” (1659)Today’s tug-of-war is not between freedom and slavery, but between freedom and responsibility. But what are the attractions at the ends of the rope? We could argue that freedom is its own reward, but what is the reward for responsibility?Purpose is the reward for responsibility.Life is a search for identity, purpose, and adventure.Identity: Who am I?Purpose: Why am I here?Adventure: What must I overcome?Are you familiar with the boredom of the idle rich? They spend extravagant amounts of money to create the illusion of adventure, but it never really pays off. They can sense the truth of the second half of that saying from 1659, even if they have never read it:“All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.”A lifetime of hollow, false adventures is the price paid by the idle rich for having accepted no responsibilities and having found no purpose.A loss of freedom is the price of responsibility, but purpose is its reward, whether that responsibility is entrusted to us by someone in authority, or we choose it for ourselves.When you embrace responsibility, you find purpose.And when you determine what you must overcome, you find adventure.Roy H. Williams