Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

You hear a lot of talk these days about how no one listens to the radio anymore.Interestingly, the people who make these claims offer no evidence beyond the fact that commercial free music can be obtained through online streaming. This reminds me of that famous malaprop by Yogi Berra, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”If you want to see raw numbers, look at the Nielsen Audio Ratings. But I submit to you, as a supplement to those happy numbers, a few observations fueled by my investment of tens of millions of dollars in advertising expenditures each year for more than 25 years.Radio advertising is more cost-effective today than it has ever been, mainly because rates have been suppressed by the myth that “no one listens anymore.”This is great for media buyers. Bad for station owners.Four of my friends own large, online companies, and each of them tells me the exact same thing. “To do real volume online, you’ve got to have a big enough markup to let you spend 30 to 35 percent of gross sales on marketing.” The first time I heard this, I couldn’t believe my ears. Most of the advertisers I’ve known spend 5 to 6 percent of gross sales on advertising. The really aggressive ones spend 10 to 12 percent. “You’ve got to be selling products with a 10 to 20x markup or you’re not going to make any money using pay-per-click,” one of them told me while the other three nodded in agreement. The smallest of their online companies does almost $40,000,000 a year. The largest did $85,000,000 last year and one-third of that was spent in online marketing.Fortunes are being made online. This isn’t a secret.But any brick-and-mortar business that abandons broadcast media – and I include television in that definition – and tries to replace broadcast with pay-per-click or social media or content marketing is going to lose a fortune online.I’ve seen it happen again and again.Ryan Deiss is the principal of digitalmarketer.com, a highly regarded educational site for persons who need to know how to make online advertising work. When Ryan spoke to a roomful of long-term radio advertisers recently, he showed them the 8 sequential things that online marketing can accomplish. The first of these 8 was awareness. “No one in this room should be spending a penny online for awareness,” he said. “The cost of creating awareness online is incredibly expensive compared to radio. You just need to maximize the online traffic that radio can easily drive to your website.”He spent the rest of that day telling those advertisers how to generate more online leads and increase their online closing ratios while cutting their online ad budgets by half.Ryan got a thunderous applause at the end of his session. People love the advice of honest, straightforward experts.One of the business owners in the room that day was Ken Goodrich, the owner of Goettl (rhymes with kettle) Air Conditioning in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Tucson. When Ryan’s session was over, Ken raised his hand to say, “My cost of lead generation for A/C system replacement was about $441 per lead, roughly the national average for my category, until I cut my online budget by half and moved all that money into 52-week radio. Two years later, the sales volume of my 78 year-old company had more than doubled, and my cost per online lead these days bounces around between $39 and $47.”Ken Goodrich went on to make it clear that his customers are still going online before they call him. Some of them are reading reviews and some are just looking for his phone number, but most are typing the name of their city and “air conditioning” into the Google search string. Goettl Air Conditioning pops up, of course, alongside all its competitors. But unlike the other companies listed in those search results, Goettl leaps off the screen. “Hey! I know those guys!” says the prospective customer. Goettl gets the click, the call, and the sale.Consistent radio advertising creates echoic retention, a powerful recall cue.But the credit that belongs to radio is often given to SEO consultants and other digital marketing weasels who pretend that broadcast is dead. Remember what Goodrich told us? His customers are still going online before they call and they’re still seeing his name pop up. But it was only after he became a household word through radio that a much higher percentage of them began clicking “Goettl.”My only goal today was to open your eyes a little wider to seven fundamental truths you’ve always known:Fifty percent of the population in your city spends enough time listening to broadcast radio each week to make them easily and cheaply reachable through that medium.   The best way to use radio is to become a household word before the customer needs what you sell, then wait for them to need you. This requires a 52-week schedule.   The customer is still going to go online before they call. (Ryan Deiss told us that 94% of all retail products and services were sold by brick-and-mortar stores in 2016, but that 97% of those purchases were made by customers who went online before they bought from those brick and mortar stores.) Your online presence definitely matters.The cost of generating awareness through radio is a tiny fraction of the cost of generating similar awareness online. In 2016, my cost of generating a 3-frequency each week (reaching the same listener with the same message 3 times,) 52 weeks a year, ranged between 14 cents and 72 cents per person/per year, depending on the city. Fifty-two week radio is the best way to achieve involuntary, automatic recall, and effectively own the hearts and minds of up to half the people in your community.The biggest mistake made by radio advertisers is that they too often try to create a sense of urgency. This works okay for products with a short purchase cycle, like food and entertainment, but it’s a lousy way to build a relationship with the customer.Businesses don’t fail because they were reaching the wrong customer. Businesses fail because they were saying the wrong thing.Nothing matters so much as your ad copy. When you’re saying the right thing, people remember it and repeat it. Your customer is surrounded by influencers. Quit trying to target the perfect customer. Just win the hearts of whoever happens to be listening.Roy H. Williams

Exactly three hundred and thirty years ago – roughly ten generations of parents and children ago – the French explorer La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered by his own men.We were experiencing dysfunction among supposed team members.In Virginia, a panicked Nicholas Spencer of Westmoreland County provides Virginia Governor Francis Howard with, “Intelligence of the Discovery of a Negro Plott for the Distroying and killing of his Majesty’s Subjects, with a designe of Carrying it through the whole Collony of Virginia…”White people feared that people of another other race might overcome them.Back home in England, King James II orders that his declaration of indulgence be read in English churches, a first step toward securing religious freedom in the British Isles. Then he disbands English parliament.The person in charge of the mightiest nation on earth decided he didn’t need any help.And the Royal Society is rocked by the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.According to author Edward Dolnick,* the Royal Society of 1687 was:“a grab-bag collection of geniuses, misfits and eccentrics who lived precariously between two worlds, the medieval one they had grown up in and a new one they had only glimpsed. These were brilliant, ambitious, confused, conflicted men. They believed in angels and alchemy and the devil, and they believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws. In time they would fling open the gates to the modern world.”I am intrigued by Dolnick’s description of the Royal Society because I can think of no better description of the cognoscenti of Wizard Academy than, “a grab-bag collection of geniuses, misfits and eccentrics.”But then Dolnick rings the wrong bell. He contrasts a belief “in angels and alchemy and the devil,” with the belief that “the universe follows precise, mathematical laws,” as if those two beliefs are mutually exclusive.I don’t believe in alchemy but I do believe in angels.And I believe the universe follows precise, mathematical laws.And I believe in miracles.Let’s say that you and I are playing pool. Anyone with a knowledge of physics knows that a pool ball cleanly struck by the cue ball will continue to roll toward the hole where it’s headed: because the universe follows precise, mathematical laws. But what if, just as the ball is about to drop into the hole, an unnoticed bystander reaches down and lifts the ball off the table? Have the laws of physics been destroyed? Of course not.We simply failed to take into consideration the intervention of the unnoticed bystander; that unseen stranger who occasionally works a miracle.Roy H. Williams

Every successful person has a blind spot.Here’s what often happens:You have a unique approach, a particular process, or a special emphasis.It separates you from your competitors.Your commitment to it makes you successful.So far, so good. You found a way to be different and it made you a success!But now your hockey-stick growth has begun to flatten out and level off.You’ve obviously reached a plateau.How do you get to the next level?Most people double-down on the thing that brought them success.That’s when it happens: Blind Spot Blowback.The thing that made you a success will rarely take you to the next level.I’m not suggesting you abandon it. That would be stupid. You’ve got to maintain what you’ve begun.But that’s easy. You like doing it. It comes to you naturally. That’s why you feel good about pressing the accelerator even further.But your business did not quit accelerating because you failed to press the gas pedal hard enough.Your business quit accelerating because it’s time to shift into second gear.Your first innovation shot you like a rocket off the starting line. You were shoved back into your seat by the g-force of your acceleration. The crowd went wild.And then things began to level off.Second gear, idiot! Second gear!But few people ever find second gear.They believe in first gear. First gear works for them. First gear is where they feel comfortable. Second gear seems counter-intuitive. They’re not sure second gear would be the right thing for them.They want someone to help them get more speed out of first gear.Your business doesn’t have an automatic transmission.You’ve got to press the clutch and move the lever.Only then can you press the pedal again.And someday, if you’re lucky,you’ll get to do thisall over againat a muchhigherlevel.Are you lucky?Roy H. Williams

I’m in a strange mood. I hope you’ll forgive me.I’ve been contemplating things unsaid. Deeds undone. Symphonies unfinished.The reality of mortality has shown up as a hole in the light, a silhouette on the horizon. And its whispering voice has led me to compile a list of unfiltered thoughts that seem to me, remarkable. Thoughts that should not be lost.Perhaps I overreact. I get this way when I’ve been traveling too much, speaking too much, alone too little.I think of all the things I’ve learned that deserve to be remembered. These are the first five that pop into my misty mind as I sit on this airplane in the sky.Don’t follow your passion. Let your passion follow you.Passion does not produce commitment.Commitment produces passion.Passion does not lead to success.Commitment leads to success.Recreation is not a vocation.Rest, Shabbat, is necessary. So set aside your labor – often – and inhale the stuff of life. But recreation is not your goal; it is your fuel. The perpetual pursuit of pleasure leaves a person hollow inside. A life filled with money and no work is a fantasy for fools. Do you see the boredom that hides behind the smiles of the idle rich? Look beneath that boredom and you will see the walking dead.Everyone needs the same three things: Identity, Purpose, and Adventure.Identity: Who am I? Where is my tribe? Who are my people? Abraham Maslow said the greatest unmet need of 65% of us was our need to belong. I’ve never doubted it for a moment.Purpose: What should I do with the rest of my life? What should I stand for? What should I stand against? How can I make a difference, leave a mark, be remembered?Adventure: How will I overcome the obstacles that will stand in my way, the challenges that will confront me, the enemies that will make themselves known?When it’s time to make something from nothing, you must first decide:How to End: begin with the end in mind.Where to begin: approach from an unusual angle.What to leave out: shorter hits harder.And the most important thing to remember is this:Marry your best friend. Your mate will be your partner in every aspect of your life. Don’t marry beauty. Don’t marry wealth. Marry the person who will guard your back in the darkness when dragons are about and things get tricky wicked.Marry your best friend.Roy H. Williams

A world of absolutes is a tidy world, but narrow.The wider world must make room for things that are not.“Make room for things that are not.” I wrote about that last week, didn’t I?We cling to absolutes, I think, because they give us the illusion of stability in a world of constant change.We see rivers on maps, but in the strictest reality, you cannot step into the same river twice. The ripples, the creatures, the floating debris, even the shorelines change with each flickering moment.I wrote to you in October of 2015 about The Color that Doesn’t Exist.What we’re talking about today is like that, but different.The people you meet and the moments you experience in advertising and movies and literature and art exist only in the mind. They are symbols of possible pasts and futures.Symbols are the signposts of imagination.When we think ahead to the possible outcomes of our efforts, we see realities that could happen, but these are never the river we step into when we get there.We’re talking about companies and brands.We are attracted to brands that believe in the things we believe in, brands that show us a reflection of ourselves.Every successful brand has a personality. A strong brand is an entity that lives in the imagination, just as real and full of hope and promise as any character in a television show, novel, or movie.Much of what we buy is purchased to remind ourselves –and announce to the world around us –who we are.The idea of a brand is lot like the idea of home.Bart Giamatti was the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, a Professor of Comparative Literature, and the President of Yale University. These are his thoughts about “home.”“There is no great long poem about baseball. It may be that baseball is itself it’s 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 it came to me: Why not? Meditate on the name, for a moment, ‘home.’ Home is an English word that is 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 the accessibility and the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wariness. They cling to the word ‘home’ and are absent from ‘house’ or even ‘my house.’ Home is a concept, not a place. It is a state of mind where self-definition starts. It is origins: the 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’s about going home. It’s about rejoining – rejoining a beloved, rejoining a 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. 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 – not baseball. Baseball simply wants to get you from here back around to here.”We remember home, not so much as a place, but as a state of mind.Likewise, the power of a brand is a state of mind.The creation of a good product is easy.The delivery of a delightful service is difficult.The telling of a good story; that’s where the money is.Roy H. Williams

We live in a universe of paired opposites.Proton and electron. Inhale and exhale. Extend and contract. Rise and fall. Male and female. Day and night.What you embrace does not define you nearly so much as what you exclude.I’m speaking of self-definition.EXAMPLE: One person says they love cars made by Ford. Another person says they love Ford “because it is the oldest American brand; I refuse to drive anything foreign.” Which of these persons gives us more insight into who they are?Any description of what the purchase price includes “at no extra charge” is made more credible by describing what is not included.I’m speaking of products and services.EXAMPLE: One air conditioning company says their A/C Tune-up includes cleaning the coils. Their competitor adds, “…and we clean the coils the right way, not the easy way.” Which of these companies gives you more confidence?Any promise of benefit a customer will gain from your product or service is sharpened and accelerated by contrasting that benefit with what it is not.I’m speaking of advertising and marketing.EXAMPLE: The executive team of Jigsaw Health recently spent 3 days in private classes at Wizard Academy. When they explained to us that their magnesium supplement would make a person feel calm and relaxed while it simultaneously boosted their energy, I said, “That sounds like ad-speak. Your ads will be more believable when you describe what the product is not, and what its benefits are not.”These people understood.These people got to work.They wrote, “Our cravings for artificial stimulants and relaxants increase when we don’t get enough magnesium.” They wrote, “Magnesium is a mineral, not a vitamin. And it has been stripped out of the foods we eat.” And, “Magnesium delivers optimistic energy, not caffeine energy,” and, “It makes you feel yoga-relaxed, not alcohol-relaxed.”Have you ever noticed how every mission statement sounds like every other?This is because we all believe in the same things; fairness, honesty, integrity, and treating people right. And as our mission statements progress, we begin to double-dip into the same values we’ve already mentioned. “We desire only to make a fair and honest profit,” and, “We believe in treating our employees right,” blah, blah, blah. Predictable ad-speak.Differentiation is the goal of communication in business.But you won’t differentiate yourself by explaining what you believe in, or what you include. Differentiation is razor sharpened and rocket accelerated by explaining what you don’t believe in, and what you leave out.EXAMPLE: One company says, “We believe in gathering all the data.” Their competitor says, “We give you step-by-step solutions, NOT data without interpretation.” Which of those statements is more convincing?Most people hesitate to define themselves by what they reject, for fear of being perceived as negative.But is it negative to say, “the right way, not the easy way?” Is it negative to say, “a mineral, not a vitamin?” “Optimistic energy, not caffeine energy?” “Yoga-relaxed, not alcohol-relaxed?” And when you say, “step-by-step solutions, NOT data without interpretation,” you’re excluding an idea, not a person.Give some thought to what you are not. Tell people what you don’t believe in.It won’t change who you are, but it will definitely change how people see you.Roy H. Williams

Others judge you by the outcomes you achieve, but you judge yourself by your intentions. You judge yourself as God does. This is why I like you.You have no power over the vagaries of your circumstances; to be in the right place at the right time is not a matter of skill, but of chance. But you try to do the right thing in the right way for the right reason. This is why I like you.You have failed, but you are not a failure. You have succeeded, but you are not a success. You have tried and cried and laughed and struggled like a chick breaking out of its shell. This is why I like you.You are wounded and broken and have ugly scars because you run to help those you love. When you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you do not quickly give up. This is why I like you.You allow yourself to like people for the most ridiculous of reasons. You take your inspiration from wherever you find it. You have a strange sense of humor and you can laugh at yourself. This is why I like you.You fall but you get up again. You are at your best when no one is watching. And you know how to keep a secret. This is why I like you.One can love a person one does not like.But what I hold for you is something else.I see you as you are.I see you real.And I like you.– Roy H. Williams

People are being caught off guard by the quirky tale of Sunshine and Poobah.Evidently, reading it cover-to-cover is a much different experience than reading it one chapter at a time. This funny little book is rapidly gaining a life of its own.This is the backstory of how – like Frosty the Snowman – it came to life.Jeffrey Eisenberg gave you the beginning of the backstory on the final pages of the just-released hardback, Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It.“A few months ago we sought the advice of our good friend and mentor Roy H. Williams. We spent an entire day with him presenting the content we wanted to include in the book. We wanted to avoid the complexity of our earlier books, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? and the textbook feel of Call to Action. While these books were both New York Times bestsellers they weren’t a fun or easy read. By the end of the day it was obvious to Roy that despite our best attempts to simplify and prune our content we were writing another textbook…. Roy reassured us that we had the right elements. He asked us if we trusted him to write the book for us. We did… By telling the story of Poobah and Sunshine’s road trip, he avoided getting bogged down in the details a nonfiction book drowns in. He didn’t do it with a simple parable. He did it by creating an entertaining story with realistic dialogue and character development that Bryan and I are incapable of.”Here are a few tidbits Jeffrey failed to mention:1. The original title was Brand Like Amazon. When our friend Ray Bard sent an email arguing strongly in favor of the name Be Like Amazon, I forwarded Ray’s email to Jeffrey and immediately bought the domain name.2. I said, “We need to mention a Norman Rockwell ‘All-American’ business to give the title a visual anchor.” Jeffrey said “lemonade stand” and the title began to sparkle.3. The Brothers Eisenberg presented a Powerpoint and we wore microphones so our conversation could be recorded and transcribed. That transcript is 40,324 words. The book is 22,961.4. Jeffrey and Bryan provided all the Amazon research, the four pillars, and the principles that needed to be taught. I simply added the stories.5. The cognoscenti will recognize the writing style of the book as “Robert Frank.” There is no omniscient narrator to tell you why a person said what he said or how it made the other person feel. Instead, simple nouns and verbs give the reader the raw material of an experience. Like an eavesdropper, the reader must figure out for themselves what is happening and why.When writing “Robert Frank” you must choose:How to End    (Begin with the end clearly in mind and carefully select the details to be covered.)Where to Begin(Choose an interesting angle of approach.)What to Leave Out(Never say what people already know or can easily figure out for themselves. Your story accelerates when you say things in the fewest possible words.)6. I knew I was going to have to fight for the story in chapter 3 about Moses ben Maimon, a Rabbi who lived about a thousand years ago. Knowing the brothers would be hesitant to spotlight the basic humanity and wisdom of Jewish business principles, I sent them this email before I let them read that chapter:When you read Chapter 3, you’ll notice the old man talks briefly about Maimonides. He’s speaking from the perspective of a non-Jewish person who has Jewish friends and business associates. It fills an important hole in the narrative, so I’m going to veto your veto in advance, okay? A7. I give a nod to Cervantes in the closing scene when Poobah describes the book he has just finished reading – the same book that you, the reader have just finished reading – and buys a copy for Sunshine on Amazon. Cervantes invented this technique of self-referential metafiction in Part II Chapter 62 in which the knight and his squire visit a printer’s shop to read an unauthorized sequel to Don Quixote de la Mancha. Yes, Don Quixote reads Don Quixote in Don Quixote. How cool is that!Good News: I’ve already begun the sequel to Be Like Amazon. It will be called Poobah Talks Marketing. Next week I’m going to send a link to the opening chapter of that book to everyone who posts a review of the first book, Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It, on Amazon.com.The third book in The Sunshine Trilogy will be called Sunshine On His Own. Books 2 and 3 are being written concurrently and will probably be published simultaneously.)Indy Beagle says to tell you “Aroo” and that he’ll see you in the indigo rabbit hole.Click his poem at the top of this page and you’re in.Roy H. Williams

Boring, ineffective ad campaigns are almost always the result of data-worship.Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman famously said,“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”He was talking about using data to make predictions.Amos Tversky, one half of the Nobel Prize-winning duo* of Kahneman and Tversky, renowned for their discovery of systematic human cognitive bias (the tendency to fool oneself,) said,“Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic universe.”from Chapter 7: The Rules of Prediction,in The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis.To understand what Tversky meant, we’ll need to probe the terms “deterministic” and “probabilistic.” But before we do, I should warn you that exactly 54.2% of the people in America would be annoyed if they read what I’m about to say.I sincerely hope you’re not one of them.When Tversky said, “Man is a deterministic device…” he was referring to the deterministic belief system that underlies Newtonian physics:“It’s an organized universe.”“Everything happens for a reason.”“Everything can be known in advance, as long as we have enough data.”“If you don’t like the effect, just trace up the causal chain – change the cause – and you will consequently change the effect.”The deterministic belief system is logical, rational, sequential, deductive reasoning. It is an incontrovertible religion to the 54.2% of the population who believe in it. And there’s nothing wrong with that unless you’re in advertising. Sadly, the majority of advertising professionals cling to deterministic beliefs. I call these people the data worshippers. At the center of their faith is the belief that success is due to “reaching the right people.” Data worshippers make no room for whimsical wit or flights of fancy. They give no place to the mystery of curiosity or the magic of storytelling.I’ve never seen a business fail due to reaching the wrong people.I believe every person can be “the right person” or knows the right person and has influence over them.I believe in saying the right thing, engaging the imagination and winning the heart, knowing that the mind will follow. The mind creates logic to justify what the heart has already decided.I believe in (probabilistic) bonding with the masses.This causes deterministic marketers to say to me, “You’re hunting with a shotgun. We’re using a rifle with a scope.” And my reply never changes. “The goal is not to kill, but to capture. And you’re fishing with a hook. I’m using a net.”When Tversky said mankind had been, “thrown into a probabilistic universe,” he was referring to the probabilistic belief system that underlies quantum mechanics:“You can suspect what will probably happen, but you can’t know for sure, even when you have total information.”“You don’t really know until you get there.”Ninety years ago, at the Solvay conference of 1927, Albert Einstein (a determinist) objected to the theory of quantum mechanics, quipping, “God does not play dice.” Niels Bohr (a probabilist) told Einstein to “stop telling God what to do,” and won the day. (17 of the 29 attendees at that conference were or became Nobel Prize winners.) Niels Bohr had won the Nobel Prize in Physics 5 years earlier.Deterministic scientists – and marketers – defend their decisions by pointing to predictive data. They prefer learning from expert advice and example.Probabilistic scientists – and marketers – defend their decisions through outcomes. They prefer to learn from consequences.In all of science, the two things most known to be true are (deterministic) Newtonian physics and (probabilistic) quantum mechanics.The odds against Newtonian physics being incorrect are 1016 to 1.The odds against quantum mechanics being incorrect are 1019 to 1.But the pair are mutually exclusive. They cannot both be true.Have you ever heard of “the search for unified theory?”Now you know what scientists are trying to reconcile.In his 1996 book, The Nature of Space and Time, Stephen Hawking (a probabilist) referred to the 1927 Solvay conference when he said, “Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”Remember Richard Feynman? He’s the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who said to a group of physicists, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Immediately prior to making that statement, he said, “Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, ‘these are the conditions, now what happens next?'”Both men were obviously poking fun at deterministic beliefs. I, however, am not.In my 38 years of experience, I have noticed that a deterministic method of managing a business leads to operational excellence. A probabilistic method of managing a business creates a country club for employees. But this applies only to operations.In those same 38 years, I have noticed that every great success in advertising has sprung from probabilistic intuition. But middling mediocrities of mundane marketing are always staunchly defended by deterministic data-worshippers pointing to “predictive” demographics, psychographics, and gross rating points.Deterministic beliefs – cause and effect – are the right way to govern the operations of a business. Of this I am certain to a factor of 1016.Probabilistic beliefs – whimsical wit and flights of fancy, the mystery of curiosity and the magic of storytelling – are the right way to govern your advertising. Of this I am certain to a factor of 1019.Roy H. Williams

According to all the cognitive neuroscientists, the essential gift of the human race is our ability to attach complex meanings to sounds.Here’s a shocker for you: the written language was developed only to make the spoken language permanent. In fact, the written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents. This is why it takes the average reader 38 percent longer to understand the written word than to understand the same word when spoken.Think about it. Do babies learn to speak first, or to read first?You’re lying in bed, reading a book. It dawns on you that you’ve been scanning the same paragraph over and over but you have no idea what it says. This is because the part of your brain connected to your eyes is still receiving the visual symbols we call the written word, but you are no longer hearing those words in your mind.Stay with me. An understanding of this stuff will make your ads musical, memorable, and persuasive even when they’re being read silently off a computer screen or from a printed page.The English language is composed of only 43 sounds.*These sounds are called phonemes and they are the parts and pieces of words. Be careful not to think of them as letters of the alphabet.Not every letter of the alphabet has its own sound. The letter “c” usually indicates the “k” sound, but we give it the “s” sound when it is followed by an “i”.A single phoneme can be represented by different combinations of letters. The phoneme we hear as “sh” can be heard in the word fish, but we also hear it in fictitious, where it is created by a “t” followed by an “i.”Fictitious fish.Don’t focus on the spelling of the word in question; it is the sound of the word we’re after.Phonemes are important to ad writers because they carry unconscious, symbolic meanings of their own. The black-and-white definition of a word is softly colored by its sound. A great ad writer would never call a diamond “small.” Because small is dull. Small, at best, would glow, like a pearl.But Diamonds fling jagged shards of light.This is why we write, “tiny little diamonds twinkling, glitt’ring and sparkling in the sun.” The sharp-edged “t” and “k” sounds are what we’re after.In the musical fabric of language, every sound is important. What distinguishes large and small from big and little is the difference in their musics. Phonemes within a language are like the instruments in an orchestra. Just as the drums make a different kind of music than do the woodwinds, and the woodwinds make a different kind music than does the brass, so also do the drum-like stops – like p,b,t,d,k, and g – (don’t read that list as letters of the alphabet; make the sounds the letters represent,) make a different music than do the woodwind-like fricatives, the sounds that hiss or hush or buzz – like f, v, s, z, sh, th. And the fricatives make a different music than the brassy nasal velars, like the “ng” sound in song, tongue, string and bring.Phonemes are either obstruent or sonorant.Obstruents are perceived as harder and more masculine; sonorants as softer and more feminine. Big and little are obstruent, perfect for diamonds that fling jagged shards of light. Large and small are sonorant, just right for clothing made of soft fabric.Now are you ready for the really trippy part? Deborah Ross, Jonathan Choi, and Dale Purves at Duke University recently discovered that the musical scale of a culture is determined by the harmonic frequencies of the vowels they speak.Words, then, are literally music.Ed Yong, writing for National Geographic, says, “Have you ever looked at a piano keyboard and wondered why the notes of an octave were divided up into seven white keys and five black ones? After all, the sounds that lie between one C and another form a continuous range of frequencies. And yet, throughout history and across different cultures, we have consistently divided them into sets of twelve semi-tones. Now, Deborah Ross and colleagues from Duke University have found the answer. These musical intervals actually reflect the sounds of our own speech, and are hidden in the vowels we use. Musical scales just sound right because they match the frequency ratios that our brains are primed to detect.”This is a paragraph from the actual study at Duke:“Expressed as ratios, the frequency relationships of the first two formants in vowel phones represent all 12 intervals of the chromatic scale. Were the formants to fall outside the ranges found in the human voice, their relationships would generate either a less complete or a more dilute representation of these specific intervals. These results imply that human preference for the intervals of the chromatic scale arises from our experience with the way speech formants modulate laryngeal harmonics to create different phonemes.”Bottom line: You will no longer need a music bed beneath your TV and radio ads when you’ve learned to craft musical combinations of words.In addition: musical sentences are processed in the unsuspecting right hemisphere of the brain, whereas non-musical language is processed in the suspicious, doubt-filled left.Think of the implications for persuasion.Indy Beagle will give you the final ingredient for making words musical on the first 2 pages of the rabbit hole.This is worth a lot of money.Meet me there?Roy H. Williams