Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Have you ever seen a photographer look through a rectangle of forefingers and thumbs to “frame” a potential shot?Framing is even more important when using words to capture images.Advertising, like every other kind of storytelling, should always begin with a framing sequence.From what angle will you approach your subject?What will be revealed?What will be excluded?Most importantly, what will be only partially revealed, requiring your reader to supply the parts that are missing?In the prologue of John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, a character explains the attraction of the partial reveal: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.”“Mr. Jenkins?”“Yes, Bobby.”“How much should a hamster weigh?”We know from this framing sequence that Bobby respects the wisdom of Mr. Jenkins and feels comfortable enough around him to ask whatever is on his mind. And because Bobby feels comfortable, we feel comfortable, too. We find out later that Mr. Jenkins owns an air conditioning company.Another ad opens like this:“Mr. Jenkins told me…”“Mr. Jenkins told me…”“Mr. Jenkins told me to work on every system like it was for my mom.”These 3 employee voices frame Mr. Jenkins as a person who loves his mother and who hires people who love their mothers. We also know that Mr. Jenkins believes his customers deserve care, concern, and commitment. But the ad doesn’t make these claims; we come to these conclusions on our own because of the partial reveal.“I think I know why Ken Goodrich hired me to run his plumbing company.”The famous owner of an air conditioning company is now in the plumbing business, too. And the person who runs that company for him is straightforward, plainspoken, and willing to tell us what he thinks. We arrive at these conclusions after just 14 words of framing. This is how the public was introduced to Zach Hunt.The next ad begins:“Zach, have you ever heard of the 7-year itch?”This 10-word frame skyrockets our curiosity. We want to hear Zach’s answer and learn where Ken Goodrich is headed with this question.“Five years before Teddy Roosevelt led the Rough Riders, Simon Schiffman stepped off the train to stretch his legs.”Two heroic icons of American history 125 years ago… An unknown man steps off a train… Framing has set the stage. Now captivate your customer’s attention by surprising them with what happens next.Roy H. Williams

Have you found your identity?Do you know your purpose?Are you ready for your adventure?Identity: Who am I?Purpose: Why am I here?Adventure: What must I overcome?Identity is your self-image; a composite of your beliefs, your preferences, and your relationships. Bits and pieces of your identity will evolve with your experiences, but other bits are carved into your bones, unseeable and unchangeable.Advertising moves you when it connects with your identity.Purpose is like a strobe light, revealing an ever-changing series of tableaus that demand your attention. But that intermittent, guiding light comes from a single place. And that place is your identity.Who are the people inside your circle of light?In one instance, your purpose is to lend a listening ear, to make sure a person knows they have been heard. In another instance, your purpose is to defend someone who is unable to defend themselves. In a third instance, your purpose is to give guidance to someone who needs it.If you don’t know why you are here – or if you have no clue what to do – it’s because you don’t know who you are.“Finding your passion” is you focused on you.“Finding your purpose” is you focused on others.Quit looking for your passion. Step up to your purpose and let your passion find you. All it takes is commitment.When we’re having an adventure, we wish we were safe at home. But when we’re safe at home, we wish we were having an adventure.Adventure is just a fancy word for trouble.Dewey Jenkins told me that trouble presents itself as a problem to be solved and our adventure lies in finding a way to overcome it. If you ignore the problem, hide from it, rage against it, or cower in fear before it, it will just return again and again until you have finally learned how to defeat it.Mr. Jenkins told me that’s when it’s time to celebrate, celebrate, celebrate! Now that you’ve learned how to defeat it, you’ll never have that problem again. But don’t worry, a new and different problem is coming up the trail to meet you and it’s wearing an evil grin.The defeated person sees life as a series of difficulties, disappointments, and dilemmas. The victorious person sees life as an adventure consisting of puzzles to be solved, battles to be fought, and problems to be overcome.Do you think this is all just a mind game; that all we’re really doing is giving our problems a new name and looking at them from a new perspective?How very perceptive of you! That’s exactly what we’re doing.But which of those two people do you think is happiest?Roy H. Williams

Paul Compton and “Jackie” Floyd walked to grade school together in 1934. Their mothers, Clara and Ruby, rented rooms in the same boarding house in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.Paul Compton was Princess Pennie’s father.It was Pennie’s grandmother, Clara, that answered the boarding house telephone on October 22, the night the bad news came.Paul Compton’s friend, Jackie Dempsey Floyd, was interviewed on television twenty-eight years ago. Jackie was 68 years old at the time:“When I was born, I was born at my aunt’s house – my mother’s aunt – and it was during the wintertime, and my father went to the mirror with me and held me up to the side of his face and says, ‘Oh, look! He looks just like me!’ And you know how kids will do their hands? I was doing my hands like that and he said, ‘Oh look, he’s going be a fighter. We’re going to call him Jack Dempsey.’ But my mother wouldn’t go for it. She went for part of the name, but I thought that was kind of nice, that he did that.”Jackie’s father was born in 1904, three years before Oklahoma became a state, back when it was still called “Indian Territory.”“My father had a nice sense of humor. He’d always keep people laughing and everything. And in the short time I got to be with him, I got to know him pretty well. And he was always kidding around with my mother and everything, and keeping her laughing, and he’d cook for us. I remember one time he took me fishing. So we went up in the mountains somewhere to a lake, and we couldn’t get the fish to bite, but it was a very clear lake and we could see them, and he said, ‘You know what we ought to do? We ought to shoot those fish, if we can’t catch them.’ So he let me shoot the gun into the water like we were going to shoot a fish, but we didn’t get one, but he thought it was something I might like to do.”Jackie Floyd was born not many years and not many miles from where Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.“And my mother was always afraid that I was going to be kidnapped, for some reason or other, but anyhow, these larger boys had a pulley in one tree and it went down to another. And you could get up in this bucket and ride from one tree down to the other. Kind of like a carnival ride or something. It was fascinating fun and I stayed after dark. And I went home and my mother was scared to death. And she told my father, ‘You know, you’ve never given him a whipping. It’s your turn to discipline him.’ And it had been raining that day and I had a raincoat on, so he said, ‘Okay, I’ll whip him.’ So he took me in the bathroom and said, “You take that raincoat off and put it over the toilet stool, and every time I hit it with the belt, you yell.’ So he was beating the raincoat and I was yelling and my mother was trying to break the door down. She said, ‘I didn’t tell you to kill him, I just told you to give him a spanking!” But he didn’t hit me. Never in his life did he ever hit me.”When Paul Compton’s mother, Clara, answered that boarding house telephone on October 22, 1934, “the night the bad news came,” she was informed that Jackie’s father had been shot and killed by the FBI.“You’re constantly running and hiding and you don’t know when you’re going to get to see anybody. You might have to sleep in the woods. It’s just a miserable life. It might look exciting to somebody, but you look at the end, the way it came down and everything: he was constantly on the run. He might have had a lot of money at one time or other, but it never did him any good. And you’ve no place to go and really relax or have fun, like you should be able to.”But Jackie understood why his father did what he did.“This bank had taken his grandfather’s money – which he had in the bank – and his grandfather had asked the banker, the day before the bank went bad, if his money was safe. And he told him it was. And evidently the bank started up again. So my father went to his grandfather and told him, ‘Grandpa, I want you to sit across the street over there at the depot and watch as I’m going to rob the bank here today.’ So he robbed the bank and the next time he saw his grandpa, he said, ‘Grandpa, did you see me rob the bank?’ And he said, ‘No, it was nice and warm and I went to sleep and missed the whole thing.'”The stock market crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression. Small-town banks that had taken people’s money were closing their doors, but not before they also took their family farm.“The banks were going under and taking people’s money and foreclosing on farms and everything, and I think the people felt that my father was just one of them, kind of striking back for all of them… and it was kind of like they were pulling for him to stay at large instead of being killed. He was probably the only criminal I ever heard of that people wanted for him to stay alive and at large, instead of being captured.”“But a lot of people started using his method of operation and dressing like him, and he got blamed for a lot of banks that he really didn’t rob. ‘Cause I know one time when I first started to school, we, for about six months my father hadn’t been anywhere – he stayed right there when I first started to school – and every week we’d hear where he robbed a bank in Kansas or in Arkansas or somewhere. And the other guys got pretty smart, y’know? They’d dress like him and do his thing and he got blamed for it. And a lot of banks, when banks were going broke and everything, they got robbed by their own people; a brother-in-law or somebody would come in and rob them and the bank would be off the hook.”I was working on today’s story about Pennie’s father and his friend Jackie, the son of a notorious-but-misunderstood bank robber, when a friend of mine said, “Don’t make excuses for horrible people. You can’t put a flower in an asshole and call it a vase.”I agreed with my friend, of course, but I also disagreed. Sure, Jackie’s dad was a blue-collar criminal, but aren’t white-collar criminals also assholes wearing flowers? Yet we call them “successful business men,” and excuse their crimes by saying, “Well, that’s just how it is in the business world.”You can put a flower in an asshole and call it a vase if you have enough money wrapped around it. Or at least that’s how it seems to me.John Steinbeck wrote about Jackie’s father in chapter 8 of his 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath. And in 1940, the immortal Woody Guthrie wrote a song about him.The next-to-last line of that song is piercingly insightful:Yes, as through this world I’ve wanderedI’ve seen lots of funny menSome will rob you with a six-gunAnd some with a fountain pen.“Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed by the FBI on October 22, 1934. According to History.com, “he used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station.”Based on everything else we know about Pretty Boy Floyd, I, for one, am inclined to believe him.Roy H. Williams

Talent is Unconscious Competence; a superpower you were born with. People born with a superpower usually have difficulty teaching it to you.Skills are Conscious Competence; acquired excellence, learned behavior. People who acquire their skills through study and practice usually make excellent instructors.Talented people are tricky to manage. If you tell them what to do, they will do it to the best of their ability, but the outcome won’t be nearly so wonderful as it might have been had you simply inspired them instead.To inspire a talented person, describe – in abstract terms – the impact you desire. Fill your description with similes and metaphors, such as, “I want people to feel springtime and butterflies and the first kiss of puppy love. I want them to feel new beginnings, forgiveness, fresh hope, and a clean slate.”Your talented person will then surprise you with something you never imagined.I stumbled onto this technique by happy accident in 1980 when a start-up needed a logo. Pennie and I had recently met a graphic artist at a church event, so I contacted him for guidance. When it came to shapes and colors and symbols and signals, Jim Collum lived in a world of his own.He was tentative, reclusive, and moody. But I can speak those languages.Have you heard of Portals and the Twelve Languages of the Mind, the class on multidisciplinary communications at Wizard Academy? I can trace the beginnings of that class back to the 5 or 6 conversations I had with Jim Collum 39 years ago.He agreed to design my logo for $500, exactly the amount I had budgeted. My new problem was that I had to tell a professional artist who was twice my age what I wanted, and I had no idea what I was doing.I was swimming in waters too deep for me, so I did the only thing I knew how to do; I gave Jim a list of metaphors and asked him to design a logo that communicated their common denominator.“Jim, have you ever played Monopoly?”“Sure.”“You know the guy on the cards with the top hat and the monocle?”“The Monopoly Man doesn’t have a monocle. You’ve got him confused with Mr. Peanut.”“Okay, imagine the Monopoly Man wearing the monocle of Mr. Peanut. To me, a top hat and a monocle say, ‘generations-old money’. A dark grey Mercedes sedan. A diamond tie tack. An ivy-covered country club. Safe. Established. Zero-risk. Exclusive. Like a Swiss bank account.”“Got it. Come back in a week.”Somewhere in the detritus of my disorganized life I have a copy of that logo. I wish I could find it for you. It was a perfect square made of 4 smaller squares that were separated by a narrow, void margin: an intersection graph.Three of those quadrants were a darkish, silvery-grey, but the upper-left square was black. And the lower-right quadrant of that black square was 24-carat gold; the glint of light off a monocle. A diamond tie-tack.It was a purely abstract logo that communicated everything I had said to Jim. Everyone who looked at it saw, ‘old money… safe, established, zero-risk, exclusive, like a Swiss bank account.’That golden square was just one-sixteenth of the logo but it commanded all the attention. It was the upper-left quadrant of an invisible square you perceived at the center of the logo.It was the glint of light you see at the edge of the pupil in an eye.Jim never explained any of this to me, but I saw it immediately and so did everyone else.I believe everyone is a genius. Everyone has a superpower. Every person has a hidden talent.Your job is to uncover that talent and inspire it. We do this for our children and grandchildren.Perhaps we should also do it for our co-workers and our friends.Indy is waiting for you in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams

One hundred and seventy-four years ago, America’s 11th president sent John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico, authorizing him to pay the Mexican government up to $25 million for their territories in New Mexico and California. When Mexico refused to consider the offer of President James K. Polk, he sent 4,000 troops to occupy land near the Rio Grande—a region Mexico claimed as its own.Mexico responded by sending troops, and on April 25, 1846, an American patrol was attacked by Mexican cavalry. Polk loudly accused Mexico of shedding “American blood on American soil!” and congress immediately voted to declare war on Mexico.Freshman congressman Abraham Lincoln argued that President Polk had goaded the Mexicans into a fight on Mexican soil, and that the war was “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.” He labeled “Mr. Polk’s War” a shameless land grab, and introduced a series of resolutions demanding to know the location of the “spot of soil” where that first battle of the war took place.Lincoln’s furious “Spot Resolutions” made his reputation as a politician, but damaged him with his with pro-war constituents. One Illinois newspaper even branded him “the Benedict Arnold of our district,” and his own Whig party did not allow him to be renominated at the end of his congressional term.The Mexican–American War was the first American war to be covered by mass media, creating widespread public interest and support. Telegraphed reports of victory from the battlefield sparked wildfire excitement and kept Americans emotionally united when they read about those battles in the penny press.1.  New York City celebrated the double-victory at Veracruz and Buena Vista with fireworks and a grand procession of 400,000 people.The Mexican-American War had a higher rate of casualties than WWI or WWII. It was a nasty, brutal war, with diseases killing as many as did cannons, rifles, and swords.In late 1847, President Polk sent a State Department clerk, Nicholas P. Trist, south of the border to negotiate a peace treaty with the Mexicans. The talks proceeded slowly, so Polk ordered Trist to end the talks and return home. But Trist, believing he was on the verge of a breakthrough, disobeyed the president’s order and sent home a 65-page letter defending his decision to continue his efforts toward peace.Polk was furious. He said Trist was “destitute of honor or principle!” and tried to have him removed, but was unable to stop the negotiations in Mexico. Two months later, Trist finalized the miraculous Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. In that treaty, Mexico relinquished all claims to Texas and awarded Trist all or part of the future states of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Kansas.President Polk reluctantly accepted the deal, then fired Trist the moment he returned to the United States.I share these things to cheer you up.Did you think our current political climate meant that we had lost our way as a nation? Don’t worry even a little bit. A clear-eyed study of history reveals that no nation of people has ever lived up to its potential.We are no more – and no less – screwed up than we have always been.L’chaim.Roy H. Williams1. Beginning in 1830, inexpensive newspapers became possible following the shift from hand-crafted to steam-powered printing. Famous for costing one cent while other newspapers cost around 6 cents, penny press papers made the news accessible to the masses.

MANLEY: I’m making things more efficient.DAVE: How?MANLEY: Abbreviations.DAVE: Give me an example.MANLEY:  LOL. I text that to my plumbers to remind them to LOOK…OUT… for LEAKS.DAVE: You’re texting that?MANLEY: Yep. And sometimes the guys text back “D-K.” That means DRAIN… CLOGGED.DAVE: But clog is spelled with a C.MANLEY: Not in internet talk, Dave. Other times they text me that the WATER… TANK’s… FINE.DAVE: Do they ever text LMAO?MANLEY: Sure. That means LOOKIN’… MIGHTY… A-OHDAVE: A-OH?MANLEY: That’s short for “A-Okay.” Dave, you need to learn internet talk.© 2019, Roy H. WilliamsWe were only 18 words into that exchange when you realized one of the characters owns, or manages, a plumbing company. You figured that out even though the character never said it.You walk into the middle of conversations every day and quickly figure out what’s happening. When you’re writing banter in advertising, you must allow your audience to do the same.And did you notice that neither character said “WTF?” It was you that said WTF after the plumbing company owner said, “WATER… TANK’s… FINE.” That was the moment you participated in the ad. Marketers like to call this “engagement,” but a more accurate word is “participation.” You want your readers, listeners, and viewers to participate in your ads by filling in what you left out.Is the manager of the plumbing company really that dull-witted, or is he just having fun with his friend? You’ve got to figure that out for yourself.Are you beginning to see why well-written banter is difficult to ignore?Ad campaigns built around the banter of memorable characters never get old. Instead, they get stronger with each passing year.You won’t learn to write banter by studying advertising. Instead, you must study screenwriters and novelists.This passage from Sea Swept, by Nora Roberts, is a good example:CAM: You can’t buy decent socks for twenty these days.ETHAN: You can if you don’t have to have some fancy designer label on them. This ain’t Paris.CAM: You haven’t bought decent shoes in ten years. And if you don’t pull up that frigging seat, I’m going to –PHILLIP: Cut it out! Cut it out right now or I swear I’m going to pull over and knock your heads together… I’ll dump your bodies in the mall parking lot and drive to Mexico. I’ll learn how to weave mats and sell them on the beach in Cozumel… I’ll change my name to Raoul, and no one will know I was ever related to a bunch of fools.SETH: Does he always talk like that?CAM: Yeah, mostly. Sometimes he’s going to be Pierre and live in a garret in Paris, but it’s the same thing.The best advice I can give you about putting banter in ads is this: Don’t start writing until your characters have come fully alive in your mind. You’ll know this has happened when one of them says something unexpected.Write that down. And then listen to what the other character says in response.If you ever force an imaginary character to say what you wish they would say, that character will immediately die and your ad will sound like an ad.Worse than that, the rotting corpse of your dead character will make your ad smell like an ad. So trust your characters to know their jobs. Sooner or later one of them will say something unexpected about whatever it is you need them to help you sell.A boring, annoying person says exactly what you expected them to say.“Boring and annoying.” Describes most ads, doesn’t it? Please don’t let it describe yours.When your imaginary characters have come fully alive, you’ll enjoy spending time with them, and the audience will look forward to your next ad.I’ll see you when you get here.Roy H. Williams

When our oldest son was an infant, I would hold a spoonful of baby food in front of his mouth, smile my most radiant smile and say, “It’s a good one.”I learned this, of course, from watching Princess Pennie.Later that spring I was sitting across from him when he pulled a lollipop from his mouth, pressed it against my lips and said, “It’s a good one.” Pennie and I laughed until we had tears streaming down our cheeks.I don’t pretend my story is unusual. Every parent has a hundred like it. The weird part is that Pennie and I still use that phrase every day and have been doing so for more than a third of a century.When we’re headed out to something we’ve been looking forward to, “It’s a good one,” is an exclamation of anticipation. When we’re leaving an event we enjoyed, “It’s a good one,” is a declaration of satisfaction. When we’re having a great time, “It’s a good one,” is a reminder to capture that moment and tuck it safely away in the treasure chest of the heart so that we might relive it on a rainy day.The creation of private jargon is one of the benefits of marrying your best friend.Do you have a private jargon understood by only the people closest to you? If you don’t, I encourage you to capture a phrase the next time everyone is laughing. It will be there, dancing in the air for as long as the laughter continues. Just reach up and snatch it. The only permission you need is your own.Private phrases make wonderful pets.Another interesting thing that happened that spring – and I mention it only because today is April 1st – is that my friend Cheerful Charlie gave me a strange new Bible because he thought I’d find it interesting. And I did.It was called The Reese Chronological Bible. It had all the same verses as every other Bible, but they were radically rearranged in what was purported to be chronological order. According to Reese, our universe was spoken into existence on an April 1st and Jesus was born in Bethlehem on another April 1st, many years later. Reese claimed that early Christians celebrated Jesus’ birth on April 1st and were consequently mocked by their detractors as “April Fools.”You heard what I said about it being “a strange new Bible,” right?There was no way to know whether Reese’s theories were true, and it didn’t really matter anyway, but Charlie knows that I’m always willing to lend an ear when someone challenges traditional wisdom.The part that fascinated me is that no one knows the origin of April Fool’s Day. History.com has this to say, “Although April Fools’ Day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.”Reese’s theories got so little traction that it’s almost impossible to find online references to him. But even if Reese was wrong, spring has sprung, birds are flirting, squirrels are chattering, and the flowers are strutting their stuff.But maybe, just maybe, Reese was right.And if so, “Merry Christmas.”Roy H. Williams

The advice I give to others, I rarely take myself.I admonish persons who possess detailed knowledge to “dumb it down” so the rest of us can understand because, frankly, we are rarely interested in the mystery and wonder of the unabbreviated truth.I tell them, “Say it so plainly that you worry you have stripped it of all its truth and beauty.”I tell them, “Simplify it to such a degree that any person who understands the subject as well as you do will think you’re an idiot.”That’s how you make things clear.Today I take my own advice.If you want to be bigger, advertise as though you were bigger. Don’t calculate your ad budget based on the volume you did last year. Base it on the volume you hope to do this year.They call it “mass media” for a reason: it reaches the masses. Consequently, you can’t really target using mass media. (TV, radio, billboards)But don’t worry about that. Use mass media anyway. Targeting is overrated and ridiculously overpriced.Choose Who to Lose. Correctly-written ad copy will filter out the customers you don’t want and attract the customers you do want.Filtering through ad copy is how you “target” when using mass media.Two ways to use mass media:(A.) Used consistently, mass media will cause your company to be the one customers think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they finally need what you sell.(B.) Used short-term, mass media will give urgency and importance to a special event when you purchase high repetition for a period of time, usually between 1 and 14 days.Google is the new phone book. Like the Yellow Pages of yesterday, it is the principal resource for buyers who are currently, consciously in the market for a product or service and have no preferred provider. Like the White Pages of yesterday, Google delivers your telephone number, street address, (and business hours) to customers who have already chosen you as their preferred provider.Customers who come to you through mass media will often be credited to your digital efforts due to the “White Pages” function of Google. They had already chosen you as their preferred provider, but were looking online for your street address, phone number, or business hours.Regardless of how you win them, it is costly to win a first-time customer. Getting that customer to come back a second, third, or fiftieth time is cheap and easy if they had a good experience the first time.Advertising is a tax we pay for not being remarkable. So be remarkable! This is what generates word-of-mouth. You’ve got to impress your customer. If you don’t, your competitor will.Companies that celebrate their victories have happy employees. So find things to celebrate. Happy employees create happy customers.Most customers are repeat customers or referral customers. Mass media is the most efficient way to maintain top-of-mind awareness among these groups. In addition, it will bring you new, first-time customers.Your plan to stay in touch with your customers through social media and email blasts is based on the assumption that your customer is willing to open, read, listen to, or watch what you have to say. Is this actually happening? And if not, why not? (HINT: The Subject Line gets people to open it. The content, itself, gets people to share it.)Thirty-six years ago (1983) David Ogilvy was speaking of newspaper and magazine ads when he wrote, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” Now look at your open rate. What percentage of your online budget has been spent when you’ve written your subject line?If you have nothing to say, don’t let anyone convince you to say it. Boring, predictable messages make you seem smaller and duller and waste your money. Companies don’t fail due to “reaching the wrong people.” Companies fail due to saying the wrong things.Predictable ads are about you, your company, your product, your service. Persuasive ads are about the customer, and the transformation your product or service will bring to your customer’s life.“I, me, my, we, and our” are self-centered words.“You and your” are customer-centered words.Entertainment is the only currency that will purchase the time and attention of a busy public. Are your ads entertaining?One of the most common mistakes in advertising is to spread your ad budget across several different media so that you “don’t leave anyone out.” But persuasion – in most instances – requires repetition and familiarity. Would you rather reach 100% of the people and convince them 10% of the way, or reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way? Don’t spread your money too thinly by chasing the unicorn of “media mix.”Expensive rent = cheap advertising. Intrusive visibility – a landmark location with signage that’s noticed even when people aren’t looking for it – is the cheapest advertising money can buy. This is true for service businesses, too, not just retail. The extra cost for this kind of location should be taken from the ad budget.These answers are not comprehensive. But to explain the nuances and exceptions to each of these 20 statements would require more of your time and attention than you probably wish to give me.But if you are one of that rare breed who would be willing to spend the time required to become a true Ad Master, I’ve got wonderful news for you.Soon.Roy H. Williams

Every form of communication is composed of 12 basic ideas and each of these ideas, held singularly, is a separate channel of communication in the mind.Like a jet lifting off the runway, these 12 concepts will accelerate and elevate your creative expression: speaking, writing, drawing, painting, persuading, acting, photography, sculpting, selling, singing, landscaping, interior decorating, inventing, filmmaking, engineering, and making music.If I left out your favorite form of expression, just add it to the bottom of the list as you point the nose of your jet toward the sky.Everything can be explained using these 12 languages of the mind, and each of the 12 can be expounded and expanded by the others.Let us begin by defining a couple of terms.Perception: a conscious awareness of a sensation and interpretation of sensations.Communication: a successful transfer of perceptions to another person.The impact of your communication is determined by your mastery of these 12 languages:1. Numbers are a language of the mind.Math is easier to learn when you think of it as a language. There are things that can be communicated in the language of numbers that can be said in no other language.2. Color is a language of the mind.Look at a color wheel. Pink and burgundy agree with red, but that entire family of color is contradicted by green. Add white to a color and you get a tint. Add black and you get a shade. Add grey and you get a tone. Colors, tints, shades, and tones communicate moods and attitudes. Color can be saturated to intensify – or desaturated to drain – a feeling.3. Phonemes are a language of the mind.Every spoken language is made of a specific number of sounds, and alphabets are constructed to represent those sounds. English is composed of 44 phonemes. The vowels of a language are its musical notes.1  The “stops” in English are the sounds represented by p, b, d, t, k, g. (Make those sounds in your mind; not the names of the letters, but the sounds the letters represent.) There are also labial, dental, fricative, and palatal phonemes. Obstruent phonemes give words a hard-edged, angular feel, like “taketa.” Sonorant phonemes give words a softer, feminine feel, like “naluma.”4. Radiance is a language of the mind.Outward radiance is energy expanding. Inward radiance is energy contracting. Hot and cold. Love and indifference. Dark and light. Dim light and shadows are sonorant. Bright light is obstruent. Likewise, pianissimo-soft is sonorant. Forte-loud is obstruent.5. Shape is a language of the mind.Angles are the obstruent phonemes of shape. Curves are sonorant.6. Proximity is a language of the mind.It speaks of the relationship of one thing to another. Large and small. Here and there. Left and right. Up and down. High and low. Near and far. Ahead or behind. Backward or forward. Absent or present. Complete or incomplete. Perspective, or angle of view, is another expression of proximity. Brother, sister, father, mother, cousin, co-worker and boss are words that describe relationship, a proximity measured in a “distance” that cannot be expressed in inches, feet, or miles.27. Motion is a language of the mind.Fast and slow. Curved or angular (shapes of motion). Coming or going (proximity of motion.)8. Taste is a language of the mind.As a biological tool for identifying chemicals dissolved in liquids, the perceptions of the tongue give us a vocabulary that can easily be assigned to non-chemical perceptions, allowing flavor to be used as a metaphor for a wondrous number of other things. “She is a sweet girl, but her father is a bitter old man.”9. Smell is a language of the mind.Smell is a tool for identifying chemicals dissolved in air, so the perceptions of the nose provide us with another vocabulary that can easily be assigned to non-chemical perceptions. “The judge’s ruling in that case stinks like 9 day-old fish.”10. Feel is a language of the mind.Rough and smooth. Dry and wet. Painful and pleasant. Relaxed and tense. Outstretched and cramped. Extended and contracted. The words that describe skin and muscular sensations – pain, pressure, position, movement, and temperature – can be used to describe emotional states as well. Or anything else you want to aim them at.11. Symbol is a language of the mind.Symbols have specific meanings. Facial expressions and body language are symbols. A stop sign is a symbol. An exclamation point is a symbol. A smiley face is a symbol. Each letter of the alphabet is a symbol for a phoneme. And every ritual – communion, baptism, the dubbing of a knight by the king – is a symbol combined with motion, another language of the mind.12. Music is a language of the mind.Music is any sound that carries meaning. The sound of a jet. A dog’s bark. A slither in the grass. A baby’s cry. What we typically think of as music is composed of 1. Pitch (proximity: high and low), 2. Key (shape of sound), 3. Tempo (speed of motion), 4. Rhythm (shape of motion), 5. Musical Interval (proximity: near and far, how wide are the gaps between notes?), and 6. Musical Contour (shape of the melody line). The volume of music is an expression of its radiance. This is an example of what I meant when I said, “each of the 12 can be expounded and expanded by the others.”Perception is deepened when two or more languages agree, creating concept reinforcement. (Such as dim light combined with slow music in a minor key.) But too much agreement creates a cliche.Attention is elevated when a language disagrees and contradicts another, creating an interesting anomaly. (Such as a spotted cow that is hot pink and lime green) But too much disagreement creates confusion. (By the way, did you notice how “pink” was modified by radiance – hot – and “green” was modified by the symbol of a lime?) 3Today’s introduction to the 12 languages of the mind was not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive. It was merely the cracking open of the door to a forgotten room, an invitation to explore an undiscovered country, a glimpse at the gleaming gold molars of a yawning dawn.Wasn’t that a colorful way to say, “the beginning of a brand new day?”Just playing.Roy H. Williams

“The deer have killed the oak tree! The deer have killed the oak tree!”Forty-year-old Todd – we’ll call him Todd – came running into my office with his second crisis of the day. I expected there would be at least one more.Todd felt it was his job to bring every problem to my attention so that I could tell him how to solve it. Todd was an idiot. His only value was that he gave me a sparkling example of what it means to be an identifier of problems rather than a creator of solutions.When you see a problem, should you bring it to the attention of your boss?Yes, but only if:1. You feel confident that your boss is not already aware of it.2. You have a solution in mind and are ready to suggest it.3. You are prepared to implement your solution if asked.You lower your value when you point out problems without offering to implement a solution.You elevate your value when you are willing to solve every problem you face.If you feel you have sufficient authority to implement your solution without having to get approval, then by all means do so.If you do not have sufficient authority, then articulate the problem along with your proposed solution in the fewest possible words. The less time and attention you require from your boss, the more highly your boss is going to think of you. Within a year or two, your boss will begin bringing you problems you didn’t even know about, along with a request that you solve them.When that day arrives, the only person that can get in your way is a family member of the boss, or some other person to whom the boss owes allegiance.Yes, nepotism is a real thing. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.This brings up another important point:The key to failure is to hang on to the belief that things have to be “the way they ought to be.” The key to success is to be able to deal with things as they really are.Learn to deal with things as they are. Quit expecting things to be the way they ought to be. Unless, of course, you’re willing to dedicate your life to being a reformer. It’s a high calling, but a difficult one to monetize.I was lucky enough to have a mother who taught me these things when I was in my early teens.Without a high school diploma, she took an entry-level job at 32 years old when she became the breadwinner for our family. I was 11 at the time. Mom retired when she was 54, having been the director of every department of the largest corporation on earth.She was a problem solver.When a department was in crisis, the director of that department would be fired and they would put my mother in charge. Within a year, it would become the top-performing department in the company. She would remain at the head of that department until another one was in crisis and another manager was fired.It didn’t take that company long to see her as a resourceful problem-solver. And it won’t take your company long to see the same in you.Recognition and wealth pursue the person who solves every problem they find.Are you willing to become that person?Poor Todd. Things could have been so much better in his life if he had only met my mom.Roy H. Williams