Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“Don’t need a Buddha head.” What are those 5 words telling us?Are we being warned that “need” is the antithesis of Zen? Are we being told that a desire to think like Buddha is the opposite of thinking like Buddha? “Don’t need a Buddha head?”Or are those 5 words a repudiation of Buddhist beliefs? Are we being told of someone’s inspection and rejection of Buddhism? “Don’t need a Buddha head.”We often seek meaning where there is no meaning.This is the foundation of all fine art and the fundamental premise of Gestalt Theory.The real truth is that Pennie and I were scrolling through an auction catalog on our computers when she said, “Look at 296.” So I did. It was an antique piece of garden statuary, a carved sandstone Buddha head.I said, “Don’t need a Buddha head.”Hearing the rhythm of those syllables and the obstruent d and t of “Don’t,” the d of “need,” the b and d of “Buddha” and the d of “head,” I smiled and said it again. “Don’t need a Buddha head.”A moment later it became a chant. “Don’t need a Buddha head. Don’t need a Buddha head. Don’t need a Buddha head. Don’t need a Buddha head.”Pennie just smiled and kept scrolling through the catalog.We see a face in the shadows on the moon.We equate a minor key with sadness.We want to dance to songs with 120 beats per minute.And we find deep symbolic meanings in phrases that, on the surface, are nonsense.If only one of us did that, he or she would be crazy. But since a majority of us do it, we call it art. We call it beautiful. We call it subtle. We call it deep.Song writers, Ad writers and Poets depend on this.Wichita Lineman, Galveston, and By the Time I Get to Phoenix made Glen Campbell rich and famous.But all 3 of those songs were written by Jimmy Webb.Up, Up and Away is the song that made The Fifth Dimension rich and famous.But it was written by Jimmy Webb.Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park lifted an actor named Richard Harris to the top of the Billboard music charts. Ten years later Donna Summer sang it to the top of the charts again. It has been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Waylon Jennings, Andy Williams, The Four Tops, Glen Campbell and Maynard Ferguson. It’s been played countless thousands of times and heard by hundreds of millions of people.The lyrics of MacArthur Park are often called stupid and ridiculous, “the worst song lyrics ever written.” And I have no argument with that.“Spring was never waiting for us, girl. It ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance between the parted pages and were pressed in love’s hot, fevered iron like a striped pair of pants. MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet, green icing flowing down. Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don’t think that I can take it, ’cause it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again. Oh no! I recall the yellow cotton dress foaming like a wave on the ground around your knees, the birds, like tender babies in your hands, and the old men playing checkers by the trees…”In an October 2014 interview with Newsday, Jimmy Webb explained, “The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw… Back then I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.”His wife, Savini, a Public Television host, says, “When people see he’s my husband, that’s always the first question I get: ‘What’s MacArthur Park mean?’ And I always say it’s an abstract painting, an impressionist painting. It’s art, but in a musical form. You make it what you want it to be. Jimmy plays it down, but it’s a heartbreaking song when you listen to just him sing it and you hear all the words without all the orchestrations. It blows your mind — oh, my God, all the pain in that song.”The clear-eyed mind sees silly nonsense,but the tear-filled eyes of the heart seebeauty and majesty,pain and remorse,love and lossin MacArthur Park.Do you want to become a highly paid ad writer?This is all you need to know:Win the heart and the mind will follow.The mind can easily create logic to justifywhat the heart has already decided.Thanks, Jimmy.Roy H. WilliamsPS – When I read what Savini said about hearing Jimmy sing the song without all the orchestration, I asked Daniel Whittington if he would do that for us. Just click Indy Beagle and he’ll take you to where you can hear it on PAGE ONE of today’s rabbit hole. Prepare to be amazed. – RHW

I was in the middle of a storm at sea last week when my lover, wife and partner of 40 years spoke some wisdom into my life. She said, “Tell me what happened, step-by-step, play-by-play.”So I did.She said, “Honey sometimes when you’re talking with someone face-to-face, you think you’re being clear when you’re really not.”And then she gave me some examples.And then she asked the questions that my adversary should have asked. She said, “Roy, you slammed the door on that relationship pretty hard. So what are the odds of this being worked out? Is there any chance at all? Give me some numbers.”I said, “His odds are about 50/50.”She said, “That’s what you need to tell him, immediately, the next time you talk.”And then she asked me several more questions and demanded detailed, specific answers. And in every case, she said, “He deserves to have that information. Trust me. You’re much harder to read than you think you are.”Forty years is a long time. You’re sort of required to listen to a person who has shared the majority of your waking moments with you since Richard Nixon was President. Pennie and I have been together through Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And 4 of those guys served 8 years each.In the end, I had a follow-up conversation with my friend and everything is fine now. But we agreed to use a code language as a form of insurance.When both people know the code, all a person has to do is ask, “How strong are your feelings about that?”People deserve to know when they’re walking into a minefield.The code was taught to me 36 years ago by my friend Richard Exley. I should use it more often than I do. Would you like me to teach it to you?It all comes down to assigning a number to the strength of your feelings.ONE: “No emotional attachment.”TWO: “I have an opinion.”THREE: “I have feelings on this subject that cannot be changed, so be very, very careful.”When two people know the code, at any point in a conversation a person might say, “I’m at about a 1.5 on this. Where are you?”The other party might then say, “I’m at like 1.0.”In that exchange, the first person said, “I don’t really have an opinion that I’m willing to defend. In fact, this whole subject doesn’t really matter much to me at all. I’m just sharing some things that are popping into my head.”And the second party – the one who had a 1.0 – basically said, “I’m just trying to hold up my end of the conversation. In reality, I have no feelings on this subject whatsoever, so I’m fully prepared to let someone else make the decision.” In this instance, the code helped both parties understand they were discussing something that neither of them cared about.If both parties tell the truth, the system saves a lot of time and it helps to reduce misunderstandings.When you say you have a “number one,” you are saying, “You can ignore this completely. You can laugh at it, mock it or kick it to the curb, just please don’t judge me by it because I haven’t put any thought into it whatsoever. In fact, it may actually be a really stupid idea.”When you say, “This is a number two,” you’re saying, “I need you to take this seriously and not just blow it off. I have an opinion and I have some feelings attached to it, but I’m open to hearing your thoughts. I believe this needs to be discussed.”I’ve never heard anyone say, “That’s a number three with me,” because to have a true number three is to say, “I have a loaded pistol aimed at your head with the hammer cocked. If you so much as blink, this relationship is over. So if you care at all about remaining my friend, you won’t say another word.”I’ve had people tell me they were at a 2.8 or a 2.9, but no one has ever said, “Number Three.” And I’ve always appreciated knowing that I had stumbled into an area where there was essentially no room for discussion.My friend and I very nearly parted ways forever because he stumbled blindly into an area where my feelings run deep. So I shared a couple of stories with him, thinking that he would understand what I was telling him. When he didn’t respond correctly, he crossed a line.My life-partner helped me understand that my friend hadn’t even known the line was there.Does any of this sound familiar to you?Is there a chance that a person who wounded you, offended you, or made you furious had no clue they had walked into a minefield?Or maybe you’re a person who was blown to bits because you had no idea you were walking on someone else’s holy ground.You canSave time,Avoid misunderstandings, andArrive at conclusions more quicklyif you know the code.And now you do.Share it with people you care about.Roy H. Williams

Bad ads are about you, your company, your product, your service.Good ads are about the customer and how their sun will shine brighter, the air around them will glitter with magic, and the stars in their darkness will twinkle more richly if they choose to bring you into their world.I’m going to hire an assistant.Hundreds of Millennials have applied for this job and sent me an ad.But not one of them realized that was what they were sending me.They thought it was a cover letter attached to their resume.Hey, Millennial. Here are some examples of the kinds of ads your competitors are sending to employers. (This is extremely GOOD NEWS for you!)“I’m looking for a position where I can grow and continue to learn. My ideal job is somewhere I enjoy working, and enjoying my surroundings.”– Briana“I want to attain a position at your company to enhance my experiencein the medical industry while working towards my degree, andprovide your company with positive energy and improve productivity.”– Leanna“I am a hardworking and self-driven individual looking for full-time employment.”– Jose“I was a cheerleader for basically my whole life so yes! I’m cheerful and a happy person. I love talking and meeting new people.”– Alexis“Working in multiple places of customer service, I have gained key communication skills. Through achieving my bachelors degree I have also develyoped excellent writing, research and organizational skills that are necessary to be successful in this position.”– TreverI promise I didn’t make any of those up. In fact, I gave Trevor ­– the young man who develyoped excellent writing skills – a second chance. Did I mention that he also misspelled his own damn name? (I checked.)Those examples are 5 of the first 10 applications I randomly pulled up from a field of several hundred. Obviously, I’m offering a desirable job. Every person who has served in this position for at least 4 years is now making more than $150,000 a year.So, my Millennial friend, the bar you need to jump is very low indeed. You should be wiggling like a puppy!“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” is a saying you may have heard before.Here’s all you need to do to stand apart from your competitors.This is how to become King in the land of the blind:TIP 1: Send out fewer resumes. Getting a job is not a numbers game. Select a small number of companies and send each of them a cover letter crafted exclusively for that company.TIP 2: There is no such thing as an attention span. The applicant that wins more of the employer’s time than his or her competitors is the one most likely to win the job. So write an interesting cover letter. Long isn’t dangerous. Boring is dangerous. Predictable is dangerous. Orthodox is dangerous. Stand apart.TIP 3: Take a chance. Dustin Hoffman is considered to be one of the most versatile actors of his generation. According to the Goog, he’s made about $50,000,000 since the day in 1967 when he played Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. The problem is that his performance as a button-down college graduate and track star was so convincing that most critics and directors assumed that Dustin had not, in fact, been acting. The prevailing opinion was that his acting range was limited to only that single type of character. And John Schlesinger, the director of Midnight Cowboy, knew the lead character in his film – Ratso Rizzo – was to be precisely the opposite kind of character.This was Dustin Hoffman’s pivotal moment – the big decision – that launched him as one of the great acting talents of the 20th century: Dressed as a homeless person, wearing a dirty raincoat, his hair slicked back and with an unshaven face, Hoffman approached Schlesinger in Central Park.At the end of the encounter, Schlesinger was sold.Dustin Hoffman didn’t assume his career would forever be bright simply because his first movie was a runaway success. He knew the world was full of one-hit wonders. Dustin was worried about being typecast. It happens to all but a select few actors.It seems to me that Millennials want to be understood.Being understood feels good, doesn’t it? But to get a job, to win a promotion, to gain authority and rise to the top, it is better to understand than to be understood.What are the attributes your employer is anxious to find in you?Who do they need you to be?When your attention is focused on your own needs and wants, you’re probably not going to get the job, or the promotion, or ever rise to your full potential.I promise I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you.Focus on the employer’s hopes and needs and you’re likely to get the job. Then be the person you promised to be. It may take a year or two, but people are definitely going to notice you’re exceptional.And then you’re on your way.So do the hard thing; quit thinking about yourself.Start thinking about your employer.I really am just trying to help you.Roy H. Williams

People would rather be angry than bored.Anger is a form of excitement.That explains a lot of behavior, doesn’t it?But if you can choose, choose laughter.“Man is the laughing animal…” 1Anger is dangerous and crying is much less fun.I’m talking about storytelling and communication.I’m talking about books and movies.I’m talking about television and music.I’m talking about romantic attraction.I’m talking about successful ads.If you hope to move people, you must make them laugh, cry or get angry.You ask, “What about fear?”Fear is never the end-game.Fear is merely a fuel that will move you to submission (crying) or defiance (anger.)There is a fourth state of elevated awareness, however, more seductive even than laughter: wonder, mystery, that magical glimpse of a thing too big for us.Wonder is the fabric of religious devotion and romantic attraction.It is the highest goal of any communicator.“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.”– Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies (1931)You stood in wonder at the cliff’s edge of 2016, looking forward into a vast unknown.“The gift of flight is reserved only for those who leap.”So you did.Happy New Year.May you walk in fields of gold.Roy H. Williams

Henri Poincaré did not discover Chaos Theory but he clearly heard its footsteps in 1887 when he published The Three Body Problem.His math is still used by NASA today.In astrophysics, stars and planets are “gravitating bodies” because they attract and hold mass and alter the orbits of one another.Gravity is a useful innovation model for professional ad writers since our goal is to attract and hold the attention of potential customers and perhaps, even, to alter their orbits.A Gravitating Body is anything that tugs at your attention.Two gravitating bodies with a high degree of divergence are known as Paired Opposites. Employ them and you’ll get attention.But when you add a third gravitating body – something highly divergent from each of the first two – and it fits – you are about to see things get exponential.Its degree of divergence is determined by how unexpected the thing is.Its power of convergence is determined by how well it fits.First Gravitating Body:A musical about the Founding FathersSecond Gravitating Body:George Washington is black and most of the other “white” characters are played by minorities.Third Gravitating Body:The dialogue is delivered in rap music, with each character having their own cadence and style.A third gravitating body with a high degree of divergence and powerful convergence is the ever-present secret of widespread, mass appeal success. Hit songs, blockbuster movies, bestselling novels and the signature dishes of gourmet chefs always have them.A successful third gravitating body doesn’t belong… but it fits.Three gravitating bodies are also the secret of successful ad campaigns. This is a formula is known to every Cognoscenti of Magical Worlds.We can easily imagine a play about the Founding Fathers. But a musical?Be honest. If you were told that a play was to feature ethnic minorities as the Founding Fathers of the United States, you would assume the play to be:(A) a satire(B) a comedy(C) an alternate history about the America we “might have been.”But Hamilton is none of these.The play’s dialogue in rap is divergent because rap didn’t exist during the time of the Founding Fathers. And it’s not the style of speech we associate with venerated historical figures. Rap is associated with passionate, creative people who are downtrodden, overlooked, abused and angry.Wait a minute. The Founding Fathers were all those things. Hamilton’s rap is divergent – highly unexpected – but convergent as well – it makes perfect sense as it brings together all the other divergent elements.Third gravitating bodies seem out of sequence to the brain’s linear, sequential, deductive-reasoning left hemisphere but they feel perfectly elegant to the pattern-recognizing, big-picture right.We are rarely conscious of third gravitating bodies because they always make sense. This is why we don’t realize how much they don’t belong.If you want your business to go exponential, you have to do something unexpected; something that doesn’t belong, but fits.Do you want to make 2017 a bigger year than 2016?The first step is to visit the rabbit hole where Indiana Beagle will tell you a secret.Just click the image at the top of the page and Indy will greet you on the other side.Tell him I said hello.Roy H. Williams

I still call it Christmas.I’m told you’re not supposed to do that any more.You’re not supposed to do a lot of things.Forget the religion called Christianity for a moment.Ignore the historical blunders of Christians.I’m talking about Christmas.Those opening few sentences are going to land me in real trouble unless you judge me by my motives.1. I still call it Christmas because, according to Luke’s telling1, the angels didn’t appear to government officials or religious leaders. They chose instead to illuminate the darkness of lonely people working the night shift for minimum wage. They appeared to sack-lunch shepherds guarding defenseless sheep.I think that’s cool.The message of those angels was essentially this, “Good news! God likes you and he has a plan to rescue you – and everyone else on this planet – out of this crazy mess you’re in.”Even if you consider these stories to be fairy tales, they’re worth a look. Christmas is our biggest holiday.2. John’s Christmas story2 skips Bethlehem altogether, choosing instead to connect the birth of Jesus to that chapter in Genesis3 where God speaks our universe into existence:“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. The Word was in the beginning with God. All things were made by the Word; without Him was not any thing made that was made… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”Wow.3. Matthew4 doesn’t mention the shepherds of Luke or connect the pre-incarnate Jesus to the creation of the universe like John, but his is the only Christmas story that mentions the wise men, the magi. They didn’t see any angels and we’re not told why they chose to follow that star. We know only that they made an extremely difficult journey and never gave up hope. They were foreigners who believed in something the locals no longer believed in.I have an abiding fascination with these wise men, the magi. So did Chesterton.“The more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings.”– G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin, Ch.3 (1933)4. I believe magi still walk among us today.Following a bright star of hope, they continue to make difficult journeys.They’re not looking for someone to “make America great again.”They think America – for all its flaws – is pretty great already.They still believe in the American Dream.And if you are wise,you believe in it, too.One day,many years ago,a good person said to your ancestors,“Merry Christmas, immigrants.Welcome to America.”She was a statue on an island, a gift from France.And the poem at her feet whispers to all the earth,“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled massesyearning to breathe free. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”Roy H. Williams

I was 16 during the winter of 1974.Ted was 52.We worked together in a steel fabrication shop in Oklahoma.I was known as “Schoolboy.”Standing near the heat of the coffee pot waiting for the horn to signal the end of our break, Ted would tell stories about World War II. Those stories might as well have been about cave men and dinosaurs because Pearl Harbor had happened 35 years earlier and I was only 16.The story I’m about to tell you happened 42 years ago.It seems like yesterday.ADo you remember Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons? In 1974 his name was Harold and he was 32 years old. Muscular and angry, Harold got what he wanted through intimidation.One day I called his bluff. I told Harold “no.”But Harold wasn’t bluffing.I regained consciousness at the base of the storage racks where we kept the 6-foot aluminum fan blades. Ted told me Harold’s lightning blow lifted me off my feet and landed me 2 yards from where I had been standing. When I went home at the end of my shift my neck was so stiff I couldn’t turn my head.My mother knew immediately what had happened.When I got out of school the next day, Ted was waiting for me in the parking lot at work. He told me not to go inside. Two policemen had led Harold out in handcuffs earlier and his buddies were planning revenge.NOTE: Never hit a minor when he’s being raised by a single mother. Angry moms fight differently than men do.I worked in that steel shop for 2 more years.One day Ted said, “Schoolboy, every person you meet has something they can teach you. Your job is to figure out what their skill is and then get them to share it with you.”Ted, as usual, was right. When you assume that everyone you meet has a valuable skill, you begin to look at them differently.Harold was a different person when he came back to work. Crushing legal bills and the humiliation of jail gave him a beating far worse than he had given me. With Ted’s advice fresh in my mind, I asked Harold the secret of knocking a man off his feet.Harold’s answer surprised me because his technique had little to do with physical strength.A few years later I learned that success in business has little to do with intelligence and success in selling has little to do with being talkative and success in advertising has little to do with the product.Business isn’t about knowing, it’s about doing.Selling isn’t about talking, it’s about listening.Advertising isn’t about the product, it’s about the customer.And knocking a man down isn’t about your fists, it’s about your feet.The next time you’re at Wizard Academy I’ll show you.But only if you want to know.Roy

When Kermit Roosevelt was fifteen, he shared a book of poems he admired with his father, the President of the United States. As an encouragement to Kermit, his father sent a lengthy review of that book to The Outlook, an important publication of the time, saying, “There is an undoubted touch of genius in the poems collected in this volume…”Theodore Roosevelt had six children: Alice the mischievous, Ted Jr. the hero, Kermit the writer, Ethel the visionary, Archie the warrior and Quentin the colorful.Unexpectedly, it was Kermit, the writer, who always appeared at his father’s side when the old President needed a protector. When 51 year-old Theodore walked away from the White House and announced he was going to disappear into the jungles of Africa on a yearlong safari, Kermit dropped out of Harvard to accompany him.Four years later, when Theodore announced he was going to vanish into the jungles of South America to chart the unexplored River of Doubt, Kermit quit his job and left his fiancé to make sure his father remained safe.Had it not been for Kermit, Theodore Roosevelt would not have come home alive.This is not a speculation.Flowing from the mountains of Peru to where it joins the mighty Amazon deep in the jungles of Brazil, the River of Doubt was a mystery. Its length and course were not listed on any map. The only things known for certain were that its shores were lined with cannibals and its waters were full of man-eating piranha, fifteen-foot aquatic lizards and anaconda snakes as long as school busses.Frank Chapman, the curator for the American Museum of Natural History, said,“It may be said with confidence… that in all South America there is not a more difficult or dangerous journey than down the River of Doubt.”Natural History Museum director Henry Osborn wrote to Roosevelt several times pleading with him to abandon his plan.Roosevelt responded to Osborn in a letter to Frank Chapman:“Tell Osborn I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any nine other men I know; I have had my full share, and if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite prepared to do so.”Fortunately for Theodore, his son Kermit was not prepared that he should do so.After they arrived in South America, the expedition had to cross 400 miles of wilderness before they reached the River of Doubt. But then they plunged into the jungle.“Most of the men were veteran outdoorsmen, and many of them considered themselves masters of nature. They were stealthy hunters, crack shots, and experienced survivalists, and given the right tools, they believed that they would never find themselves in a situation in the wild that they could not control. But as they struggled to make their way along the shores of the River of Doubt, any basis for such confidence was quickly slipping away. Compared with the creatures of the Amazon, including the Indians whose territory they were invading, they were all – from the lowliest camarada to the former president of the United States – clumsy, conspicuous prey.”–The River of Doubt by Candice MillardThe expedition avoided the whitewater rapids by guiding their canoes through them with ropes as they walked along the banks of the river. But when the jungle was heaviest upon them, two canoes broke loose and most of their supplies were lost. The men were forced to stop for several days to build new ones. In an effort to make up lost time they resorted to running the rapids in their canoes. When two canoes got jammed in the rocks in a section of wicked whitewater, Theodore Roosevelt jumped in to free them and slipped, opening a large gash in his thigh.An infection set in that night and for the next several days, he drifted in and out of consciousness, utterly unable to walk. In a moment of clear thinking, Theodore realized he had no chance and was risking the lives of the other men as well. Drawing the American naturalist George Cherrie to his side, he said,“Boys, I realize some of us are not going to finish this journey. Cherrie, I want you and Kermit to go on. You can get out. I will stop here.”Kermit calmly convinced his father that even if he chose to kill himself so that the rest of the men could go on, Kermit would never leave his body behind. Consequently, to kill himself would be to kill Kermit as well.Kermit Roosevelt spent the next several weeks carrying his father on a stretcher through the jungle. His father lost 60 pounds but Kermit brought him home alive.These are just a few of the things for which Kermit never really got credit.Do you remember “Richard Cory,” the poem featured in last week’s Monday Morning Memo? That poem was from the book Kermit shared with his father at the age of fifteen.Kermit Roosevelt sent a pale beam of light into the darkness of poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, but it was enough to lift him from despair, illuminate his talent, win him three Pulitzer Prizes and establish him as the foremost poet of his generation.God bless Kermit Roosevelt.On whomwill you shineyour lighttoday?Roy H. Williams

1. Use Words that have Specific Meanings.“The bug moved along the ground, deciding which way it should go.”“The ant crawled between the blades of grass, peeking left and right at every intersection.”Bug is nonspecific. Ant is specific.“…moved along the ground” is mildly specific, but not vivid.“…crawled between the blades of grass” is specific and vivid.2. Don’t Tell. Show.“…deciding which way it should go,” tells you what the ant was doing.“…peeking left and right at every intersection,” shows you the ant and leads you to conclude that the ant is deciding which way to go. You are, for a moment, seeing through the eyes of the ant. Giving human motives to inanimate objects is a powerful tool known as personification. “Your Rolex is waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up at Shreve and Company.”3. Write Tight and Clean.Short Sentences Hit Harder than Long Ones.Adjectives and adverbs don’t accelerate communication. They slow it down. Use them with restraint.What I’m doing now is giving you an example of a long sentence, (in essence, the kind of sentence often written by persons who are trying to sound educated, although in truth, sentences like this one just make you sound full of yourself,) for the purpose of demonstrating that complex sentences full of commas and parenthetic statements and verbose, multi-word, adjective-stacked descriptions have a much diminished impact and are not nearly so pleasant to read as short, clear statements like the 6-word sentence and the two 4-word sentences that preceded this horrific construction of 135 pompous, tedious and wearisome words that keep going on and on for so very long that by the time you get to the final point, you have forgotten several of the previous ones that were made.4. Let the Subject of the Sentence Take the Action.Passive Voice is a Bad Choice.You speak in passive voice when the subject of the sentence is acted upon: “Wizard Academy is attended by interesting people.”You speak in active voice when the subject of the sentence takes the action: “Interesting people attend Wizard Academy.”Passive voice is noncommittal: “It got lost.”Active voice is confident and clear. “I lost it.”5. Feed Your Pen Surprising Combinations of Interesting WordsIf you inform without persuading, you are hearing a newscast when you write. The goal of the journalist is to inform, not to persuade.If you entertain without persuading, you are hearing creative writing as you write. The goal of the creative writer is to entertain, not to persuade.The poet leads you to think and feel differently. The goal of the poet is to persuade. And the best ones do it in a brief, tight economy of words.I’m not talking about rhyming.I beg you not to rhyme.I’m talking about using surprising combinations of vivid words to trigger assumptions and conclusions in the minds of those who hear you.Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote Richard Cory in 1897. This was when “clean favored” meant good-looking, and how you were dressed is how you were “arrayed.”Richard CoryWhenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—And admirably schooled in every grace:In short, we thought that he was everythingTo make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head.Compare the images contained in that 124-word poem to those in the 135-word example in Point 3. – RHW6. If you would become a better communicator…if you would write better ads, persuade more people and make more money, read Good Poems, curated by Garrison Keillor. You can get the 3 books or visit the online archives.7. Read a poem a day, every day.It will take you about 60 seconds. Think of your daily poem as a vitamin. Don’t worry about understanding the poem. Just rub the salt of it on your mind. You will soon begin hearing a different voice when you write, and find yourself looking into sparkling eyes when you speak.Photos that have been black-and-white are about to become full-color.Roy H. Williams

Your life is a singular journey; a generation is a collective journey.We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.If this dirt-covered rock we occupy was the size of a standard schoolroom globe covered with a coat of varnish, the thickness of that varnish would represent the air we breathe.Like it or not, we’re all in this together.All seven and a half billion of us.When it gets dark tonight, look up at the stars. You’ll be looking out the window of our spaceship.If we could aim our 11,000-degree fireball at the nearest of its siblings – those things we call the stars – it would take us 63,000 years to get there even though we would be shooting through space at 52 times the speed of an 865 mph bullet.1Right now you think I’m going to talk to you about cultural tolerance or global warming or world peace or some other big idea.But you’re wrong.My goal today is to teach you how to use metaphors to make your data more interesting so that you can persuade more people.I borrowed the metaphor of the earth being a spaceship from Buckminster Fuller and the varnish on the globe came from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.A metaphor relates the unfamiliar to the familiar, the unknown to the known, effectively translating your data into a language your listener can understand.A good metaphor sharpens the point of your data.Once you’ve chosen your metaphor, your second challenge will be to select nouns and verbs that carry the voltage of mild surprise.I might have said, “The earth orbits the sun as it moves through space at 0.0004842454 au. (astronomical units).” But I chose instead to say, “We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.”“We’re circling” causes you to see yourself in the story. This is the first step toward reader engagement.“11,000-degree fireball” is more vivid than “the sun,”“shoots through a limitless vacuum” is more exciting than “moves through space,”and “52 times the speed of a rifle bullet” packs more of a wallop than “astronomical units.”Brilliant communication isn’t a product of wit or charm or even talent.Preparation is what it takes to click the brightness of your message up to high beam so that it pierces the darkness like a lighthouse at midnight. In the words of Alec Nevala-Lee, “A good surprise demands methodical work in advance. Like any form of sleight of hand, it hinges on making the result of careful preparation seem casual, even miraculous.”“Like a lighthouse at midnight” wasn’t technically a metaphor, by the way. It was a simile. Metaphor: The earth is a spaceship. Simile: The earth is like a spaceship. A simile feels like a metaphor and can be used to accomplish the same effect.Write down what you want to say. Don’t overthink it. Just get some words on paper.Find a metaphor that relates your information to an idea that your audience already understands.Now look at what you wrote and replace the weary, dull words with energetic, bright ones.Want to know a secret? There’s really no such thing as good writing. There’s only good rewriting.Ernest Hemingway won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Each time he came to a place where the words weren’t flowing, he would set his work aside and answer some correspondence so that he could take a break from, “the awful responsibility of writing” — or, as he sometimes called it, “the responsibility of awful writing.” 2  In a letter to 22 year-old Arnold Samuelson in 1934, Hemingway advised that after writing something you think is pretty good, you should, “leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. The next morning, when you’ve had a good sleep and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before.”Having the courage to write badly is the first step toward brilliant communication. The second step is to look at that first draft and say, “How can I make this better?”One final piece of advice: Read great writing, for “As you read, so will you write.” Gene Fowler said it this way, “The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.”Brilliant communicators develop stronger relationships, achieve higher goals and make more money.Why not become one?Roy H. Williams