Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

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

England, 1890 – Barely 5 feet tall on his tiptoes, 30 year-old Jimmy was a pen pal of 40 year-old Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous author of Treasure Island, during the final years of Stevenson’s life when he lived on the island of Samoa. The two never met, but if they had, they would doubtless have played cricket together in the little village of Stanway in Gloucestershire.In September, 1921, one of the most famous men in the world, 33 year-old Charlie Chaplin, traveled to London in the hope of meeting Jimmy, now 61 years old. According to historian Lisa Chaney, “Upon his arrival, central London came almost to a standstill, as traffic was blocked all the way from Waterloo station to the Ritz on Picadilly, where he was staying. Everywhere Chaplin went, he was mobbed by adoring crowds.”Chaplin achieved his goal of meeting Jimmy by contacting Ed Lucas, one of the group of buddies with whom Jimmy played cricket. At the end of their evening together at the Garrick Club in London, Jimmy wrote to his friend, Cynthia Asquith, about his dinner with the great Charlie Chaplin.“He has a rather charming speaking voice, and a brain withal. A very forceful creature, and likeable. The police who are put on to guard him all produce their autograph books for him to sign.”When Jimmy visited Stanway to play cricket, he was the guest of Herbert and Cynthia Asquith. (Herbert was the son of the British Prime Minister and Cynthia would later become a famous author of ghost stories.) In return for their kindness to him and his cricketing buddies over the years, Jimmy built a pavilion on the cricket grounds of Stanway, where it has been in use for nearly 100 years.Who, exactly, were these cricketing buddies of Jimmy?They called themselves the Allah Akbar-ies under the mistaken belief that “Allah akbar” meant “Heaven help us” in Arabic.This was an odd mistake to make, considering that these men were known for their words.The Allah Akbar-ies included:Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle BookArthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock HolmesP. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and WoosterJerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a BoatA. A. Milne, Winnie the PoohG.K. Chesterton – Father BrownAnd then of course there wasE. V. (Ed) Lucas, the author of more than 150 books, including one of Indiana Beagle’s favorites, If Dogs Could Write: A Second Canine Miscellany (1929)The group also included 10 more writers of slightly lesser acclaim.Spectators at these cricket matches included Jimmy’s neighbor and lifelong friend, George Bernard Shaw, along with the ancient Thomas Hardy, (Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.)And five-foot Jimmy? He was of course J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.And now you know why New York publisher Charles Scribner traveled to England to sit on a bench and watch a cricket match in the tiny village of Stanway.Scribner never forgot that day.Wouldn’t it be fun to make a movie about all this? Can you imagine their conversations?You’ll be pleased to know the tradition of Stanway village lives on at Wizard Academy.We have Americanized it, of course, but I think Jimmy would approve.The Lost Boys are a group of entrepreneurs who gather once a year to play bocce ball at Wizard Academy. It is a secret society. Their names are never published and group photos are never taken.The House of the Lost Boys will be the third and final student mansion on the campus of Wizard Academy. Its six guest rooms will increase our on-site capacity to 24 students. And when we finally build Bilbo Baggins House in the hillside beneath the Spence Diamond Pavilion, we’ll have room for 25.Wizard Academy is a special place where busy people come to charge their batteries.Sometimes it feels a little like Neverland.Thanks for being part of it.Roy H. Williams

What do you value?Are there things for which you would be willing to suffer humiliation, rejection, and financial loss? These are your deep core values, your non-negotiables. It’s important that you know what they are.A person without non-negotiables is a person without passion.But it’s also important to know your negotiables.A person without negotiables is hard-headed, self-important, obstinate. But such people can be tolerated if they apply their non-negotiables only to themselves.A person who believes their non-negotiables should apply to everyone else is an oppressor. Give them a weapon and they are a terrorist.When Oscar Wilde was in prison, he wrote,“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”I’ve always liked Oscar Wilde.Allow me to list my assertions:Suffering is the price of passion.You cannot claim you are passionate about something if you would not be willing to endure hardship for it.Not every belief is worth suffering for.The opinions and beliefs for which you would not suffer are your “negotiable” opinions and beliefs.It is reasonable, and even good, to be willing to suffer for your beliefs.It is not reasonable, nor is it good, to expect others to suffer for your beliefs.Do you want to hear the funny part? Although I truly believe what I said today, it is not a belief about which I am passionate.It is negotiable. AFood for thought on a Monday morning.Roy H. Williams

On the day he died, long ago, a man said, “In this world you will have trouble.”I’ve never had reason to doubt him.Money troubleWork troubleRelationship troubleLegal troubleHealth troubleFamily troubleTax troubleYou don’t get to choose whether or not you will have trouble.But you do get to choose whether or not you will let it dominate your thoughts and control your mood.I find it interesting that immediately after he said, “In this world you will have trouble,” the man went on to say, “but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”What? Overcome the world?How?According to the story, the man was able to deal with all the trouble that came his way because of “the joy that was set before him.” In other words, he had an immovable North Star, a guiding light his thoughts were fixed upon.Troubles seem smaller when your mind is focused on something more interesting than the trouble, more important than the trouble, bigger than the trouble, happier than the trouble.The way to keep your troubles from filling your mind is to fill your mind with something else.Do you follow a North Star? Are you trying to make a difference? Do you have a purpose?You do? Excellent!Purpose is the primary ingredient of Adventure!The other two ingredients are stress and trouble.“It does not do you good to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” ­– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”– G.K. Chesterton (1909)In a 1961 letter to Frank and Jo Loesser, John Steinbeck said,“In the dark the other night I wrote in my head a whole dialogue between St. George and the Dragon. Very close relatives those two. Neither could exist without the other. They are eternally tied together – actually two parts of one whole… So St. George must always kill the dragon and it must be repeated, because if the dragon were ever finally killed, there would be no St. George – only a lonely man looking for something to do.”The adventure of St. George was made possible by the dragon.“It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.”– Thornton WilderAre you fortunate enough to be facing a dragon? Are you in the middle of an adventure?Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine in the end.If things aren’t fine, it’s not the end.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I don’t know who first spoke those last two lines, but I would like to have known that person. Some say it was John Lennon (The Beatles,) Some say it was Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist,) and some say it was someone else (Someone Else.) The only thing that’s certain is that it wasn’t me. – RHW

Our nation is changing, of course.Things aren’t like they used to be.Famous clothing brands are at historic lows and major retailers are closing hundreds of stores. In 2016, 2,056 stores closed their doors. The worst year on record is 2008, when 6,163 stores shut down.Brokerage firm Credit Suisse says in a just-released research report,“Barely a quarter into 2017, year-to-date retail store closings have already surpassed those of 2008… it’s possible more than 8,600 brick-and-mortar stores will close their doors in 2017.”But we’re not in a recession.According to an April 10 article by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic,“America’s GDP has been growing for 8 straight years, gas prices are low, unemployment is under 5 percent, and the last 18 months have been quietly excellent years for wage growth, particularly for middle- and lower-income Americans.”Yes, Amazon.com and the other online players are partially responsible for the decline of retail in America, but not nearly to the degree you might think.In 2016, only 6% of retail purchases were made online.But retailers are down by a lot more than 6%.Want to know what categories are doing better than ever?“Travel is booming. Hotel occupancy is booming. Domestic airlines have flown more passengers each year since 2010, and last year U.S. airlines set a record, with 823 million passengers. The rise of restaurants is even more dramatic. In 2016, for the first time ever, Americans spent more money in restaurants and bars than at grocery stores. Sales in this category have grown twice as fast as all other retail spending.”In other words, we’re buying fewer things, but more experiences.Materialism is on the decline.In retail stores and online, we’re spending a lot less money on clothing. Its share of total consumer spending has declined by 20 percent in barely more than a decade. Houses, cars and furniture seem to be less important to us as well.But we’re spending more than ever on togetherness, entertainment, and fitness.We hunger less for prestige, more for experiences and relationships.Relationships…If you’re going to get in step with this trend, you’re going to need to invest in customer bonding.Use mass media to win their hearts before they need what you sell.Don’t let your company be just another name on a list of search results.Roy H. Williams

Michael Jordan wasn’t a perfectionist; he was an improvisationist. That’s why he was hard to stop.A perfectionist knows exactly what he’s going to do. He plans his work and works his plan. The only problem is that because he knows, the defender knows, too.It’s easy to anticipate what a perfectionist is going to do. He’s predictable.But no one knew what Michael was going to do, because he didn’t know himself.Does it surprise you that nearly all the superstar basketball players and top-scoring running backs test as improvisationists?So do all the best ad writers.Predictability is the curse of the perfectionist,and the silent assassin of advertising.When you say what people expect you to say, no matter how perfectly you say it, you bore them.Improvisation puts the bubbles in champagne.Improvisation puts a wiggle in your walk.Improvisation puts money in your bank account, bread in your basket, glitter on your cheek, and a smile on your face.Unexpected is interesting.Unpredictable is enlightening.Improvised is exciting.Random Entry is a technique that guarantees improvisation in advertising.The magic of random entry begins when the ad writer doesn’t choose the opening line of the ad. Rather, it is chosen for him by someone who has no idea what they are doing.Want to try it? Ask a stranger to think of a colorful sentence. Tell them to make it “vivid, unexpected, larger than life.” Tell them, “The sentence doesn’t have to be about anything in particular; it just has to cause people to be curious about where this story is headed.”The best way to create Random Entry without the help of an unwitting accomplice is to flip open a book and place your finger on a page with your eyes closed. The sentence on which your finger lands will be the opening line of your ad.“Wiggins was Harvey’s pet hamster.”That’s your opening line for the 30-second radio ad you’re about to write for the company that provides your primary income. If your ad makes sense, elevates attention, and successfully sells a product or service, congratulations! You are an improvisationist.Indiana Beagle plans to celebrate the winning scripts in the rabbit hole next Monday.Be sure to time your ad while reading it out loud. Thirty seconds is all you’ve got.There will be prizes, but I’m not sure how many.That will be up to Indy. Some of the prizes will be ridiculous, some will be worthwhile, a few will be sentimental, but at least one will be a scholarship to any Wizard Academy class you choose.Send your 30-second radio script to indy@wizardofads.com before midnight, Saturday, April 22, 2017.Dunk the ball.I know you can fly.Don’t pretend you can’t.Roy H. Williams

Ask a businessperson or a marketing professional, “What is branding?”Go ahead. Go do it. I’ll wait…Did they mention the importance of a having a logo? Did they talk about the consistent use of a chosen group of “brand” colors and a particular font and layout and look and feel? Have you done what they told you? Congratulations! You now have a visual style guide.And so does every other business on earth.The reason I avoid using the word “branding” is because most people think they’re already doing it.Here’s a far more important question: What are you doing to create an emotional bond with customers you’ve not yet met? This is the real goal of branding. But since too many people think they’re “branding” when all they’re doing is following a visual style guide, let’s you and I call this process “customer bonding,” okay?If your visual style guide is successful, people will recognize you when they see you.If your customer bonding program is successful, people will think of you and feel good about you when they finally need what you sell.Now let’s take this discussion to the street:You sell a product or service that people buy less often than once a year.There’s no way to know exactly who is going to need you, or when.This is why you’re investing in Search Engine Optimization and all those keywords. Am I right?So far, so good: now when the prospective customer finally needs what you sell, you’re going to show up…along with everyone else in your category.Let’s see what happens next:Your customer is scanning the results of their search.Do you want to know which company is going to get the click, the call and the sale?Surprise! It’s the company that’s been bonding with customers through mass media.One of the first signs your customer bonding program is working is that your online cost for lead generation will sharply decline and your conversion rate will rise.The SEO weasels will try to take credit for this, of course, by claiming they made some refinements to your keywords or found some efficient new way to target or blah, blah, blah. This is one of my favorite moments.Because I told the business owner this would happen.So when it does, they always laugh.I want you to laugh, too.It’s never too late to start bonding.Lower costs, higher conversion rates, and laughter.These are just the byproducts and side effects.Roy H. Williams