Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Before becoming a poet, a Wizard of AdsTM and a writing instructor, Peter Nevland was an engineer at Motorola.Andrew Backus is a geologist and the living embodiment of Doctor Doolittle. The number of injured animals Andrew has rescued from the roadside would overflow the San Diego Zoo. Andrew and Peter are both cognoscenti graduates of The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop.When I saw Peter talking to Andrew I walked over to where they were standing. This was going to be interesting.Peter looked at me and said, “What makes one storyteller more interesting than another?”Not sure where this was headed, I asked, “Are you asking, or are you about to tell me?Peter said, “I’ve developed algorithms* to help me grade the writing assignments of my students, but I haven’t been able to reverse engineer what makes the basic structure of a story interesting.”I said, “Ahhh. Architecture. So you’re asking, then?”Peter nodded, so I continued. “Stories become interesting when highly divergent components converge. Predictable stories are built from elements with too few degrees of separation between them. That’s what makes the narrative arc (the plot) of those stories feel linear; the listener can easily guess what’s going to happen next. Good storytellers begin with a high degree of separation between the elements in their stories, thereby increasing the listener’s surprise and delight when those elements converge.”Andrew said, “Can you give me an example?”I decided to use a technique called Random Entry that I learned from Mark Fox, one of the instructors at Wizard Academy.**I said, “I want each of you to think back over the past 24 hours and focus on something that has occupied your attention for a period of time, something you felt to be interesting and worthwhile.” A minute later Andrew said, “I’ve got something,” and Peter said, “Me, too.”I looked toward Andrew and he told me about Zoysia grass. “Not only will it grow in dry climates, but it will also grow in the shade.”Peter spoke of a pattern in Psalm 15 that is broken – intentionally, Peter believes – to dramatically emphasize the unique nature of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.I said, “You will agree that those two ideas are highly divergent from one another?”Both of them smiled and nodded.I then told them the story of how God is like Zoysia grass.One of my literary heroes, Tom Robbins, says, “Everything in the universe is connected, of course: it’s a matter of using imagination and research to discover the links and using language to expand and enliven them.”I did the “research” Tom Robbins speaks about as I listened to Andrew and Peter. The key to this research is to probe for the defining characteristics of each story until you’ve clearly identified components within the two stories that can be linked. These are your points of connection. All that remained for me, then, was to build a bridge between Andrew’s tale of Zoysia grass and Peter’s tale of Psalm 15. The points of connection make it possible.Building the bridge is easier than you would think. The points of connection are always there. I know it sounds crazy but, “Everything in the universe is connected, of course.”I continued my explanation to Andrew and Peter. “The bridge that connects highly divergent ideas is like the flow of electric current. It’s powerful and illuminating and it always feels like magic.” * * *Andrew said, “So the bridge is like a third gravitating body?”“Not quite,” I answered. We won’t have a true, third gravitating body until we find a third idea that’s as divergent from Zoysia Grass and the God of Israel as those two ideas are from each other. When a single bridge unites three highly divergent components, you have a tool that will gain and hold the attention of the masses.”If anyone can build that into an algorithm, Peter can.I’m interested in seeing how this turns out, aren’t you?Roy H. Williams* In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning. – WIKIPEDIA** Mark teaches Da Vinci and the 40 Answers twice a year and Systematic Idea Generation when he’s in the mood.* * * We discuss the electricity that flows from the two poles of a duality when they are brought into close proximity in “Sinatra’s Riddle,” the Monday Morning Memo for July 7, 2014.

Some of you are going to feel like I’ve spit on your shoe or mocked your religion or told you that your baby is ugly, so I’d like to apologize in advance for what I’m about to say.Teamwork in business is highly overrated.There, I’ve said it.I realize those 6 words are going to disturb some of you, but if my goals were merely to buy an arched eyebrow and a scornful frown and trigger an email of rebuttal, I would be just another sensationalist trying to yank a reaction from his audience.But those are not my goals.My goals are to make you more productive, help you reduce your mistakes, shorten your learning curve and raise the height of your success.To do these things, we must look at what’s hiding in your blind spot.I appreciate that you’re still reading.I was at lunch recently with 3 incredibly bright businesspeoplewhen I smiled cheerfully at them and said, “I think teamwork in business is highly overrated.”All three of them stiffened as though I had said something truly shameful. After a moment, the business owner sitting directly across from me looked down at his plate and said quietly, “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.”We had not been talking about teamwork. There was no reason for any of these people to feel personally challenged or attacked, yet that’s exactly how they reacted. The cultural myth of Teamwork is anchored deep within the American soul, beginning, I believe, with Thomas Jefferson and “We the People” and the launch of this grand experiment called Democracy.I spent the next hour swatting down every example of successful “teamwork” they could throw at me. At the end of that hour they universally agreed that “teamwork” is an illusion created when the individual components within a human system accomplish a goal that is credited to the collective, rather than to the individual efforts of the components.What might appear to be teamwork in a relay race is, in truth, just a series of individual runners, each of whom begins their effort with an advantage or a deficit that was handed to them by the previous runner. If a runner increases that advantage or shortens that deficit, he or she was successful. It is only when they are rewarded collectively that we create the illusion of a team.Individual responsibility brings out the best in us.If you remove individual responsibility, you create a committee.Every bureaucracy begins as a well-intentioned committee.Leaders and managers have different functions.A leader encourages the members of a tribe to deliver their best individual efforts. A manager holds each individual responsible for delivering the outcome that he or she has been assigned.Steve Jobs did not invent the Apple computer.Steve Wozniak invented the Apple computer.Although I admire the abilities of Steve Jobs, he was merely the popularizer, the face, the dynamic leader, the pitchman, the philosopher, the high priest of the Apple religion. Without Wozniak, Steve Jobs would likely have been just another California techie bouncing from company to company in sneakers and ripped blue jeans.Wozniak said, “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”John Steinbeck said something similar in 1952, when Wozniak was just 2 years old. “Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”The great David Ogilvy made a similar observation when Wozniak was in high school. “Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.”I believe committees are formed when no one wants to accept individual responsibility for the outcome. I believe this is also the motive that lurks behind our current fascination with “big data.”“Big data has become the X factor of modern marketing, the hero of every marketer’s story. But it’s a promise at risk of letting you down. You may be thinking that data will magically turn bush-league marketing into a winning ‘Moneyball’ performance. But that’s an artifact of our big data obsession. Data, alone, isn’t what makes marketing move the needle for business.”“Data can play a leading role in developing strategy and bringing precision to execution, but it does nothing — absolutely nothing — to stir motivation and create the desire that makes cash registers ring. Data is important, but it’s content that makes an emotional connection.”– Harvard Business Review, February 25, 2014, “What Data-Obsessed Marketers Don’t Understand,” by Jake Sorofman and Andrew FrankThere are things that can exist only in the heart of an individual. Among these are commitment, determination, resourcefulness, intelligence and pride. These may appear to exist in a group, but in truth they can exist only in each of its individuals.So now we understand the importance of leadership.The values, beliefs and culture of a tribe are personified by its leaders.Steve Jobs was a tribal leader, as were Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolph Hitler.Not all leaders are wise and good.“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”– Friedrich NietzscheTeamwork is never the answer. Individual work is the answer.We love teams because we love to be members of a tribe.I embrace the attraction of belonging to a tribe because I know the power of culture and values and beliefs. Being part of a team, a tribe, gives us a sense of identity, purpose and adventure. And that helps us to perform as individuals.Teamwork is overvalued in America because Americans love football.But it isn’t the teamwork that attracts us.It is the tribalismPersonally, I agree with George F. Will, who said, “Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”Uh-oh. Did I slap your baby again?Roy H. Williams

Targeting is impotent.That wasn’t a misspelling.If you want to waste a lot of money on advertising, just target exactly the right audience and then make an offer that fails to move them.Targeting isn’t the answer.Having the right message is the answer.Most ads underperform because they say, “Here’s what we do and here’s how we do it. You should buy it.” Tedious and predictable ads always talk about what and how. But if you want to engage the imagination, you’ve got to start talking about why.Ads that change hearts and minds say, “This is the belief that wakes us up in the morning. It’s why we come together. Here’s how we live our belief. Do you believe what we believe?”The selling of products and services is the selling of ideas.And now you know how Apple became the 5th largest company in America.According to Simon Sinek, most computer companies say, “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?” That’s how most of us communicate in our ads. We say what we do and how we’re different and better than our competitors. What and how are always boring. But Apple begins by telling us why they do what they do.Apple says, “We believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” In other words, Apple sells you their belief system before they try to sell you their computer.Apple generated $43.7 billion in sales during the first three months of 2014. That’s more than Google, Amazon, and Facebook COMBINED. Apple’s iPhone revenue alone is bigger than Microsoft and their iPad revenue alone is bigger than Facebook. And those are just two of their products. We haven’t even touched laptops or iTunes or Beats by Dre.In his TED talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, Simon Sinek says,“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. If you don’t know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then how will you ever get people to vote for you, or buy something from you, or, more importantly, be loyal and want to be a part of what it is that you do? Again, the goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have; the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe. The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”“Dr. King wasn’t the only man in America who was a great orator. He wasn’t the only man in America who suffered in a pre-civil rights America. In fact, some of his ideas were bad. But he had a gift. He didn’t go around telling people what needed to change in America. He went around and told people what he believed. ‘I believe, I believe, I believe,’ he told people. And people who believed what he believed took his cause, and they made it their own, and they told people. And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up on the right day at the right time to hear him speak.”“How many of them showed up for him? Zero. They showed up for themselves. And it wasn’t about black versus white: 25 percent of the audience was white. We followed, not for him, but for ourselves. And, by the way, he gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.”Simon Sinek speaks of leadershipbut his principles apply equally well to advertising.Great ads – like great leaders – tell you why, not just what and how.Indy will post a couple of examples from Apple in today’s rabbit hole and I’ll explore an hour’s worth of examples during next week’s session of Wizard of Ads LIVE. “Speaking to Why” is also a new module in Brandable Chunks, the workshop taught by Jeff Sexton and Chris Maddock and me at Wizard Academy.Communication is what happens when you cause another person to see what you see. Persuasion is what happens when you cause another person to believe what you believe.When you have a plan and people reluctantly agree to it, you’re doomed. But when you have a belief – when you have a dream – you’ll find it to be highly contagious. People will take ownership of that dream and make it their own. What do you believe that might echo in the hearts of your customers? What difference do you dream of making in their lives?Put that in your ads.Let the magic begin.Roy H. Williams

If you were to ask 1000 people to name the behavior that marks93 percent of all successful companies, what do you suppose they would tell you?I didn’t ask 1000 people but I did ask Google, which is sort of like asking the whole world. Here’s what the whole world told me:“Successful companies focus on what they do best.”“They invest in their people.”“They’re passionate.”“They anticipate the future and stay ahead of the curve.”“They never quit learning.”“They have discipline and a financial roadmap.”“Blah, blah, blah.”I was staring at a list of 86 different characteristics when the truth finally hit me: “Half of these people are guessing and the other half are just preaching a sermon about their personal values and core beliefs. Not a single one of these writers has actually gathered the facts.”Then I stumbled onto a book review written by Eric Barker of Time magazine.Amar Bhidé went to Harvard, became a proprietary trader for E.F. Hutton, a consultant for McKinsey and Company, and then a college professor and a world authority on capitalism. In his third book, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses (Oxford University Press,) Bhidé brought all the rigor of academia to his investigation of the characteristics of successful companies.God bless Amar Bhidé.What he found was that 93 percent of all successful companies had to abandon their original business plan — because the original plan proved not to be viable. “In other words,” wrote Eric Barker of Time, “successful companies don’t succeed because they have the right strategy at the beginning; but rather, because they have money left over after the original strategy fails, so that they can pivot and try another approach.”Mary Whaley summarizes Bhidé’s book by saying the winners in business “survive and prosper because of an ongoing ability to adapt to opportunities and problems, are subjected to many detours, and stumble often along the way.”Successful companies have an ability to improvise.Unsuccessful companies blindly “stick to the plan.”The principal difference between hope and a planis presumption about the future.The intended plan is deliberate.The improvised plan is emergent.According to Eric Barker, “Deliberate is what’s in the business plan, the PowerPoint deck, the list of goals. And that’s what ends up changing 93% of the time. Emergent is what you find along the way. It’s when your baby nephew ignores the gift you bought him… but LOVES the shiny wrapping paper. The heart medication research… that ends up becoming Viagra.”“Intel’s decision to accept an order from Busicom, a second-tier Japanese calculator company, started the company on its path to microprocessors. Sam Walton’s decision to build his second store in another small town near his first one in Bentonville, Arkansas rather than in a large city, led to Wal-Mart’s discovery of the attractive economics of building pre-emptively large stores in small towns.”– The Processes of Strategy Development and Implementation,Clayton Christensen and Tara DonovanNovelist E.L. Doctorow once said, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” The same thing is true of running a business.There’s a line in Psalm 119 in which the writer says to God, “Your word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path.” When I was a very young boy, one of my teachers pointed out that a footlamp provides only enough light to see the next step. You can’t see further until you’ve moved forward in the light that you have.I’m betting E.L. Doctorow has read that verse.One step at a time.And when something unexpectedappears in the light, always be ready to improvise.Roy H. WilliamsPS – When I asked Princess Pennie to proofread this memo before I sent it, she read it carefully, then look at me and smiled, “Even God had Plan B.” – RHW

Thirty-one years ago, David Ogilvy wrote, “In some developing countries radio still reaches more people than television. Yet even there nobody really knows what kind of commercials make the cash register ring. Isn’t it time somebody tried to find out?”– David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1983, p. 116Sleep well, David. We found out. And by “we,” I mean the Wizard of Ads partners.As Indy points out in the illustration above the title of today’s memo, opening with a pop culture reference from 50 years ago followed by a quote from a man that’s been dead for 15 years could easily lead you to believe I’m a dinosaur left over from that bygone era when cars still ran on gasoline.Would I point out how old and potentially out-of-touch I am if I didn’t have complete confidence in what I’m about to say?A lot of business people are listening to their kids right now and getting all lathered up in the belief that the Internet has made TV and radio ads obsolete. In fact, I just received an email from a client in Syracuse who is positively fretting about the future of radio. What makes his email especially funny is that we’ve been using radio exclusively for the last 3 years and it’s made him so wildly successful that he’s currently expanding into cities nationwide.I believe in the web. In fact, I’m using it to deliver this message to you.The Internet killed the yellow pages, the newspaper and encyclopedias and now it’s revolutionizing the distribution of books and music. Born in 2005, YouTube has become a magnificent lottery that doesn’t pay its winners in cash, but with worldwide recognition and a few weeks of fame.I may be YouTube’s biggest fan. I am enthralled by it.Have you ever bought any pay-per-click ads? Shortly after Google announced their AdWords program I spent more than $100,000 of my own money just to learn what does and doesn’t work. My only goal was to get a hands-on education. I didn’t want to risk my clients’ dollars until I knew exactly what I was doing.In the end, I figured out how to drive qualified traffic to a target website for just a nickel a click. But that seemed expensive to me, so I abandoned it.The average 30 or 60-second radio ad needs to be heard by the same person 3 times within 7 nights sleep. This currently costs my clients less than 2 cents per week. In some cities, that 3-frequency costs us only about a penny a week. We can do the same for you if you want.When I talk about mass media, young advertising people often look at me with pity and scorn. I can almost feel them patting me on my head.That’s why I got such a kick out of watching a YouTube video of Bob Hoffman speaking at an advertising conference in Europe:“One of the problems with our advertising experts is that they have a free pass. They go around to conferences. They talk to the press. They write stupid blogs. And they make profound statements, and confident statements about our industry. And no one ever goes back and checks up on them… We begin our little journey in 2004, about 10 years ago… Seth Godin, the bestselling guru of marketing said, ‘We have reached the end of traditional advertising.’ He apparently forgot to tell Toyota and Coke and McDonald’s. Then Advertising Age, the top advertising trade publication in The States, said, ‘The post-advertising age is underway.’ Bob Garfield, a columnist at Advertising Age, said in 2009, ‘The present is apocalyptic. Any hope for a seamless transition, or any transition at all, from mass media and marketing to micro-media and marketing are absurd. The sky is falling. We are exquisitely, irretrievably, fucked.’ Bob is a nice guy but I really think he needs a hug. And according to the nonprofit think-tank, FutureLab, they just came out and said it, ‘Advertising is dead.'”“Another of the fairy tales of the advertising industry was that ‘interactivity’ was going to make advertising more engaging and effective. Interactive advertising was going to ‘disrupt’ the old forms of advertising and make them obsolete… It turns out that people have no interest whatsoever in interacting with advertising. In fact, online banner ads have a click-through rate lower than one in a thousand. This is not interactivity. This is absence of interactivity. The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from ads was going to joyfully click her remote to interact with them is going to go down as one of the all-time great advertising delusions.”When David Ogilvy died in 1983, I was a 25-year old radio executive about to be handed a 100,000-watt FM signal and a staff of 32 people in a city of a million. The ads I wrote were so productive that business owners all over the city wanted to buy advertising from me. So in what might be the world’s best example of The Peter Principle personified, I was promoted to General Manager. In effect, my network traded their top salesman and best ad writer for the worst General Manager ever to sit behind a desk.I was so miserable that I quit a year later to become a freelance consultant. But I didn’t poach clients from my radio station. In fact, I refused to work with anyone in the town or region where I lived.There were 2 kinds of ad agencies. The big ones bought network ads for national clients. The little ones bought local ads for local clients in a single town or region. So I decided to invent a third category; I would work with local businesses nationwide, excluding only the region in which I lived.It took barely 3 decades for me to spend a billion dollars of other people’s money on a never-ending series of experiments in advertising.A billion is a thousand million. You already knew that. But I like to say it because I’ve never quite been able to wrap my brain around it. A billion dollars allowed me to try every experiment I could think of multiple times.There’s nothing we haven’t done. It turns out you can learn a lot with a billion dollars.I’m telling you all this to build my credibility. I need to do that so you won’t smugly dismiss what I’m about to say:Mass media is still the best way to grow a local business.This may change in the future, but right now the best return on investment for local businesses still comes from TV and radio and billboards.Make no mistake: you absolutely need a website and it has to be a good one. Your customers are probably going to visit it before they contact you. But a website isn’t advertising. A website is a crazy high-tech answering machine that can answer every conceivable question your customer might ask. But you still have to get that customer to call.This is probably where you should quit reading, because I’m about to start doing a lot of strutting and chest-thumping. It could get pretty ugly. In fact, give me a tall furry hat and a glittering baton I could be the drum major in a marching band.One of the reasons I invented the Wizard of Ads business model is because I felt the traditional ad agency model pitted the agency and the client against each other. In the traditional model, the more you spend, the more they make, so they always want you to spend more.In our business model, the more you grow, the more we make.My first book, The Wizard of Ads, became business book of the year. My second book became the Wall Street Journal’s #1 business book in America and a New York Times bestseller. When my third book hit the bestseller list, I began recruiting the brightest young talent I could find and making them my partners. A few dozen of us are now scattered across the US, Canada and Australia.Every Wizard of Ads is paid an up-front fee to investigate the market potential, identify your strengths and weaknesses, develop a style guide and a copy Bible, plan and negotiate a 1-year ad schedule, and then write the initial ads for a long-term campaign employing whatever media makes the most sense. We do mostly TV and radio although we also post a lot of billboards and write some email campaigns as well.That up-front fee can range from $5,000 for a tiny company with big growth potential to as much as $350,000 for a huge company that’s trying to fend off a pack of hungry competitors. Following the development of the launch plan, we create new ads each month and renegotiate the media once a year for a modest monthly salary that is adjusted annually – up or down – by the same percentage that your top-line revenues have grown or declined.We don’t make more money unless you make more money.My original goal, obviously, was to find small companies ($1,000,000 a year in sales) that had the potential to grow 5x to 50x their current size. I began my business 30 years ago with 12 companies that paid me $500 a month. Each of them did less than a million dollars a year in total business. Some of those companies now do tens of millions a year and pay me more than $100,000 apiece.Andrew Harrison is a brightly talented young man who wanted to work for me so badly that he agreed to answer my telephones just to get his foot in the door. He answered my phones faithfully without a word of encouragement from me for more than 12 months before I hooked him up with a small client so that he could make a few extra dollars. Andrew still answers my phones, but I’m growing him into a stallion of advertising.Last week I told Andrew that he could pick up 2 more little clients at $5,000 up front plus $500 a month for the first year. When you consider those are the amounts I was charging new clients 30 years ago, you’ll see that I’m making Andrew learn the value of starting small and growing with the client. The telephone Andrew answers is (512) 295-5700.If you’re too big for Andrew to handle, you should go ahead and call. He has an older brother that’s one of the senior writers on my in-house team. Andrew also knows all of my Wizard of Ads partners, many of whom work with companies already doing $10 million to $50 million a year.The prices they charge you will be higher than $5,000 up front and $500 a month, but I’m sure that one of us can quickly get you rolling down a faster track, happily picking up momentum. By the way, I promise not to talk about my business again for another 20 years.Roy H. Williams

Todays memo is a long one, but I promise you it's worth it.Advertisers are attracted to online media when they’re not entirely happy with their investments in traditional broadcast media. To understand the reasons behind their disappointments, we need only to revisit the subject of last week’s Monday Morning Memo:“Linear, no-threshold thinking” assumes that every statistic is scalable. It’s what causes advertisers to assume they can “test the waters” with small investments, then increase their financial commitments if the test results are positive.If an ad needs to be encountered only once to trigger a sale, it’s a direct-response ad. Congratulations! You’ve successfully crafted a high-impact offer for a product with a short purchase cycle. Direct-response ads are scalable, meaning sales increase proportionately to the number of people reached. But not everything can be sold with a direct response ad. The simple truth is that most products and services require that their ads be encountered again and again.Pepsi has been a household word since before we were born, so why do they keep advertising? Couldn’t they reduce their mass media spending and still maintain their sales volume?In a word, no.We know this because Pepsi tried it.Bob Hoffman was the keynote speaker at the 2014 European conference of AdvertisingWeek:“In 2010, Pepsi cancelled all its TV advertising and its Superbowl advertising to great fanfare and bet BIG on the largest experiment in social media marketing ever attempted, ‘The Pepsi Refresh Project.” TIME magazine quoted the CEO of a New York brand consultancy, ‘This is exactly where Pepsi needs to be. These days brands need to become a movement.’ Well, they became a movement all right. I estimate The Refresh Project cost them between 50 and 100 million dollars. It got them 3.5 million Facebook likes and a 5% loss in market share, which they seem to have never recovered. That year, they dropped from the second best-selling soft drink in the US to third. Pepsi’s marketing director said, ‘The success has been overwhelming. We have more than doubled our Facebook fans. We have more than 24,000 Twitter fans.’ The L.A.Times didn’t see to agree. They called it ‘a stunning fall from grace.'”Hoffman went on to say that TV and Radio are best at creating demand, while the web is terrific at fulfilling demand. The interviewer then challenged Hoffman by saying, “But it is changing. And it’s changing fast. Ten years ago 93 percent of the public got their news from television and only 7 percent got their news online. Today it’s 26 percent online.”Hoffman’s response reflected his 40 years of experience directing ad campaigns for McDonald’s, Toyota, Shell, Nestle, Blue Cross, Chevrolet and Bank of America:“What we often confuse is the use of digital media with its power as a marketing or advertising entity. The fact that more people are using online for news is not a de facto proof that it’s a good advertising medium. Let me give you an example of that: the old-fashioned telephone. Everyone in the world had a telephone. It was a hugely popular means of communication. That didn’t make it a good advertising medium. It was a lousy advertising medium. The fact that people us it for communication or to get information or to have conversations doesn’t necessarily make something a good advertising medium.”Now let’s get back to the subject of why so many advertisers are frustrated with their TV and Radio campaigns.In last week’s memo we described motorcycles going out of control when their riders accelerated them beyond the “safe speed” threshold while navigating an S-curve. Trips through the curve below the safe threshold speed are uneventful, but trips through the S-curve above the threshold are dangerous. In other words, the ratio of crashes to speed isn’t “scalable” because the motorcycle behaves very differently at speeds above and below the threshold.The skill of the rider is another variable, of course, but although skilled riders might navigate the curve at higher speeds, there’s always a threshold at which even they are going to crash.Thresholds are inevitable when measuring human response.We must also keep in mind that humans attach complex meanings to sound. This is what makes TV and Radio effective at influencing people who aren’t currently, immediately in the market for your product or service. TV and Radio win the heart’s preference, then patiently wait for the customer to be ready to buy.The motorcycle safety threshold is all about(1.) speed and(2.) the skill of the rider.But mass media advertising is all about(1.) repetition and(2.) the impact of the message.TV and radio campaigns that deliver minimal results in the first few months often become highly effective when they’ve crossed the repetition threshold of the listener. A customer needs to encounter the average message multiple times before it is likely to be retained.Advertisers often ask, “How many times does the average person have to see or hear my message before it will be transferred into the automatic recall part of the mind?” Although this seems like a reasonable question, it’s a little bit like asking, “How many ounces of alcoholic beverage does it take for the average person to get drunk?” We can’t really answer that question until we know whether the “ounces of alcoholic beverage” are beer with 5% alcohol, wine with 14% alcohol, or Scotch with 45% alcohol.How strong are your ads?The stronger your ads, the fewer times they have to be heard. And even then, as Pepsi learned, the customer will sober up and forget you if you leave them thirsty long enough.Strong ads are created by strong writers.How many do you have working for you?Roy H. Williams

Reliable data tells us exactly how many motorcycle riders have died trying to navigate an S-curve at 100 miles per hour. The straightforward logic of traditional accounting, with its linear, no-threshold thinking, predicts one-tenth as many deaths at 10 miles per hour.But we know this is ridiculous. The number of riders that die at 10 or 20 miles per hour is likely to be zero. There is a threshold speed at which the curve becomes dangerous. Any extrapolation that crosses that threshold is certain to be inaccurate.If you understand the concept of “extrapolations that cross the threshold,” you have the key you need to understand why financially focused businesspeople often make breathtakingly bad decisions in business.The rules of accounting make it counterintuitive for a financially trained person to perceive a numerical threshold at which the laws of math are suddenly altered. But keep in mind the threshold speed of the motorcycle in the S-curve: deaths at speeds above that numerical threshold will have no correlation to deaths at speeds below it. In effect, the laws of math are suddenly altered.You and I know that an invisible force, momentum, is affecting the motorcycle and causing it to careen out of control. Although momentum can be measured, there’s no column for it on a financial spreadsheet.Momentum in business can be positive or negative, pushing your company forward or back. Advertising, public relations, word-of-mouth and social media provide momentum to a business. But a threshold called “the experience of the customer” will dramatically alter these efforts, accelerating them forward or holding them back.If your typical customer’s experience is delightful, your communication efforts will be highly effective. But if that experience falls short of delightful, advertising, public relations, word-of-mouth and social media will no longer have the desired effect.Financial types like to “hold advertising accountable,” because it’s easy to blame poor advertising for every decrease in sales opportunities. But no calculation is ever made for the cumulative impact of un-wowed customers. Financial types never consider the threshold of disappointment at which once-loyal customers abandon ship.When Michael Eisner came to Disney in 1984, he was initially perceived as a golden boy of finance, making Disney wildly profitable during a time when its rivals were faltering. He worked his miracle by putting Disney’s greatest cinematic treasures on DVD, milking every last dollar from the rich heritage that had taken the Disney brothers half a century to build. Within a few years, video sales were providing almost all the profits for Disney’s movie division and, by 2004, Disney had raked in $6 billion from video and DVD sales. But then the Disney cow was dry.Michael Eisner looked at assets and opportunities through a financial lens. He had none of the whimsy of adventure, none of the imagination or commitment to excellence that had guided the Disney brothers. While busily milking the cow and making himself more than a billion dollars in the process, Eisner quietly abandoned the values and traditions of Disney.“A company without values and traditionsis a train without a track, unable to gain momentum.”– The Monday Morning Memo for July 14, 2014“In 2003, Roy E. Disney resigned from his positions as Disney vice chairman and chairman of Walt Disney Feature Animation, accusing Eisner of turning the Walt Disney Company into a ‘rapacious, soulless’ company (against everything Walt Disney believed in and stood for.) ‘You can’t fool all of the people all the time. Nor can you succeed by getting by on the cheap,’ said Disney, referring to his accusations that Eisner slashed spending on the Disney theme parks, leading to closed rides, peeling paint and unhappy customers.”– disney.wikia.com/wiki/Michael_EisnerThe cow was angry at being milked dry.Eisner was out. Bob Iger was in.As the new CEO of Disney, Bob Iger“put an end to the practice of making cheap direct-to-video sequels of old favourites, such as ‘Cinderella II: Dreams Come True’ — Disney’s equivalent of frozen food.”– The Economist, Apr 17th, 2008, “Magic Restored: Under its new boss Disney has staged an impressive creative turnaround—and is making synergy work.”Writing for Time magazine on March 21, 2014,Kevin Kelleher maintains that whoever follows Bob Iger“will have a tough act to follow. Under Iger, Disney’s brand and business is as strong as it’s been in four decades and there is no clear path to maintaining the double-digit profit growth Disney has been enjoying… Under Iger’s leadership, Disney has seen its stock rise 250% – five times better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Iger has shut down, sold off or cut back properties like Touchstone and Miramax and bought others like Pixar for $7.4 billion and Marvel for $4 billion. Iger’s Disney is closer in spirit to the one run by the Disney brothers…”What are the values and traditions that guide your company? Are you communicating them internally (staff training) and externally (advertising and marketing) through brandable chunks?The Next Big Thing is a pile of little things. And those little things are called brandable chunks, the most versatile, effective, “right now” thing you can do to lift your marketing into the 21st century.Are you ready to work? Christopher J. Maddock, the inventor of brandable chunks, will join Jeff “The Professor” Sexton and me for a 2-day Brandable Chunks Workshop at Wizard Academy November 5-6. We’ll help you discover your brandable chunks so you can whisper them, sing them and shout them to the world. Rumors that this workshop might happen have already resulted in Engelbrecht House and Spence Manor both being full, which means we can accept only a dozen more people before it becomes too big and each of those dozen will have to snag a hotel room. I have no idea how long it might take to align – for a second time – the schedules of Maddock, Sexton and me, so let me just say it could be awhile before we can announce a second workshop.Come. It’s time to do this thing.Roy H. Williams

for Recommending You to Their FriendsAmerican retailers learned some interesting things last year. Although consumer confidence was higher during Christmas 2013 than it was during Christmas 2010, ShopperTrak tells us that in-store, holiday foot traffic declined by almost half during those three years. But don’t assume sales volume declined by half for those retailers or that half their customers bought online. A 50% decline in foot traffic simply means that we’re making half as many trips to the store.We no longer feel that we have to visit the store to learn what we need to know.A 2013 Harris Poll reports that 46% of us have shopped a brick-and-mortar store for information, then gone online to find a better price. But that same Harris Poll says that a far higher number of us – 69% – have done exactly the opposite; researched online, then bought from a local brick-and-mortar.If the result of our online research is that we visit just one store instead of two, a 50% decline in foot traffic will be the direct result.“In many instances, customers have access to more information online than when talking to an in-store sales associate. Online reviews and price comparisons enable them to feel more confident in their buying decisions…”– Jeremy Bogaisky, Forbes, Feb. 12, 2014A 2013 McKinsey & Company report echoes those findings. “Our research shows that for the average consumer, peer recommendations carry ten times more weight than recommendations from salespeople.”Of course you want your customers to recommend you to their friends; a friend has 10 times the influence of a salesperson. But before you get all excited about creating a rewards program for customers who send you their friends, please know that such schemes are almost always counterproductive.Here’s an example of why:A client told me that a buddy of his invested in a particular company and then said to him, “It’s going to skyrocket. I invested $250,000. You really ought to get in on this.” My client took his buddy’s advice and likewise invested $250,000. My client would probably have recommended that investment to everyone in his inner circle, but a disturbing betrayal made any such recommendation impossible. As he handed over the check for his investment to the financial officer of the company, the man said, “If you know anyone else who might want to invest, just keep in mind that we’re paying 10 percent to whoever sends them in.”When my client realized that his buddy had made $25,000 by “recommending” the investment to him, he felt a lot less good about the investment.And a lot less good about the buddy.My client immediately knew that if he recommended the investment to any of his friends, they would be made the same offer that he had just been made. There’s just no way that he was going to risk that.Let me say this plainly: If you try to bribe your customers, they’ll think less of you.Friendship is built on trust. A friend makes a recommendation because they believe it will be good for their friend. They don’t do it to benefit themselves or the company they’re recommending.That wouldn’t be a friend at all.That would be a salesman.To win the recommendations of customers, you must impress those customers with your performance. Focus your efforts on being consistently and truly remarkable. It’s the most effective thing you can do.Word of mouth isn’t new; it’s as old as the human race. Friendship isn’t new. Integrity isn’t new.What’s new is digital technology and the way it amplifies and accelerates everything you say. But if you look closely, you’ll see this digital knife cuts both ways. People are losing their jobs, their friends and their freedom because of things they tweet and put on FaceBook.The amplification and acceleration of digital technology is not something you can directly control. The best you can do is try – very hard – to make sure your customers have good things to say.The only reward your customers want for recommending you to their friends is for you to make those friends happy.Roy H. Williams

Michael participates in our monthly Wizard of Ads LIVE webinar. Last week, Michael asked for a method that would let him create fewer leads, but better leads.I responded by telling Michael that broad targeting can be donegeographically by zip code,financially by income,demographically by age and gender, orpsychographically by targeting specific “personas” derived from affinity groups and previous purchase histories.Anyone who knows anything about targeting already knows those things. But then I told Michael what few people know:“The key is to make sure that your leads are coming to you for the right reason. You want them to be coming to you for that thing you KNOW you can deliver better than anyone else. If they’re coming for any other reason, it’s a lower quality lead. The key is to target through ad copy. The key is to use brandable chunks.”We’ve spoken about brandable chunks before but I didn’t give you a clear explanation.Ray Smith asked, “How is a brandable chunk different from a slogan, a tagline, or a positioning statement?”I said, “Slogans and taglines are usually white noise, adspeak, something you wish people that would believe even though they probably won’t. But a good positioning statement differentiates you from your competitors in a meaningful way. The problem is that positioning statements are usually about the BIG picture. They tend to be all-encompassing, relating the totality of your company to the totality of your competition. A brandable chunk is a memorable, micro-positioning statement about JUST ONE ASPECT of your business. Consequently, you can easily have a dozen or more meaningful, brandable ‘chunks’ of highly memorable message.”Brandable chunks are memorable, micro-differentiators. They are refined from average advertising in the same way that hi-octane gas is refined from crude oil.Brandable Chunks:1. create vivid mental images.2. employ unusual word combinations.3. communicate features and benefits succinctly4. have meter (rhythm) so they tumble off the tongue.If you have the discipline to repurpose your brandable chunks in your web copy and through your face-to-face and voice-to-voice communications, your brandable chunks will bring your advertising, your web presence and your customer experience into perfect alignment. Your brand identity will be strengthened and your close rate will rise. Your customer will finally see you in 3D.We’re now going to lift some brandable chunks from a couple of better-than-average radio ads that I’m told are working quite well for a business in Michigan:TIME… IT’S THE MOST PRECIOUS THING YOU CAN GIVE SOMEONE. SPENDING TIME WITHOUT CELL PHONES, VIDEO GAMES OR ELECTRONIC DEVICES IS EVEN MORE PRICELESS. GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE WANTS TO KNOW IF YOU’VE BEEN FISHING YET…AND… WHO TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISH? IT’S AN EXCELLENT WAY TO SPEND TIME WITH SOMEONE. STOP IN TO GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE AND BE READY TO FISH. THEN, GO OUT TO THE WATER AND LEAVE DISTRACTIONS BEHIND. YOUR MEMORIES START AT GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE IN OLD TOWN… LIKE ‘EM ON FACEBOOK. GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE… REEL EM IN!Here’s the shorter, tighter ad we refined from it:Time…it’s the most precious thing you can give someone.Especially if you make sure it’s uninterrupted.No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices.Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles. And time.Grand River Bait and Tackle believes there’s no time like the present, and no present like time. Step through their door and you’ll feel time stand still.It may look like they sell bait and tackle, but what they really sell is the perfect day. Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town. Just add water.Here’s a second, original ad from that same campaign:WHETHER YOU’RE A CATCH AND RELEASE EXPERT OR JUST OUT TO CATCH DINNER… THE EASIEST WAY TO HOOK EM IS WITH FRESH LIVE BAIT! GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE HAS THE FRESHEST LIVE BAIT IN TOWN… THEY GET 2 SHIPMENTS A WEEK!!! (REEL FX) YA GOTTA BE CONFIDENT WHEN YOU FISH…MAYBE YOU HAVE A FAVORITE ROD AND REEL… IS IT READY TO HANDLE ALL THE FISH YOU’RE GONNA CATCH THIS YEAR? GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE CAN MAKE IT “CATCH-A-WHOLE-LOTTA-FISH-READY”. STOP IN TO GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE IN OLD TOWN AND GET READY TO FISH. LIKE ‘EM ON FACEBOOK TOO. GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE… REEL EM IN!Here’s the ad we refined from that one. We used only 85 words compared to the original 114 so that we can have a relaxed, easy-going delivery:Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait.And the really BIG fish prefer that you get itfrom Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.Your luck will change the moment you step through that door.You can actually feel it happening.Time slows down, your neck muscles relax and the radio plays better music.It may look like they sell bait and tackle, but what they really sell is the perfect day.Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.Just add water.Now let’s look at the memorable, brandable chunks we’ve created that could easily be repurposed in web copy and face-to-face with your customer:1. Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait.2. Grand River Bait and Tackle believes there’s no time like the present, and no present like time.3. No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices. Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles.4. Your luck will change the moment you step through that door.(The face-to-face variation would be, “Your luck changed the moment you stepped through our door.”)5. It may look like they (we) sell bait and tackle, but what they (we) really sell is the perfect day.6. Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.7. Just add water.Look at those 7 chunks.Imagine each of them as a headline on a web page.Now imagine each as a way to answer the telephone.Look the customer in the eye as you hand them their sales receipt and smile as you say another brandable chunk. This is the key to aligning your ads with your web presence with your store experience. People tend to do what they hear themselves say. You need to make sure your people are saying exactly the right things.Unlike a slogan or a tagline or a positioning statement, brandable chunks are never predictable because you have so many from which to choose.Brandable chunks are opening statements, closing statements and simple explanations of benefit to the customer. They are carefully worded pieces of a bigger corporate message. They communicate your values and beliefs. They show where your treasure is hidden. A company’s brandable chunks are the anthem of its tribe.Would you like some help crafting yours?Brandable chunks are an invention of the Wizard of Ads partners.Perhaps you should get to know us.Roy H. Williams

Her plan was obviously brilliant, so why wasn’t it working? Susan was as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. I was about to suggest an answer when she said it herself; “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”Every experienced consultant knows that a third-best plan that will be executed is better than the first or second-best plans that won’t.The first time I heard the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for lunch,” was 14 years ago when another student at Wizard Academy was explaining why he resigned his position as Chief Visionary Officer in a Fortune 500 company in which he had labored for 30 years:“Time after time I’d have all the C-level executives* in agreement with me, only to find that the rank and file would choose not to implement what the executive team had decided. In a small company you can simply replace those workers who won’t comply, but when you have more than 200,000 employees, culture eats strategy for lunch.”Another name for culture is corporate memory. And the anthem of corporate memory is, “That’s not how we do it here.”But this isn’t really about Susan or my friend from corporate America. It’s about you and what you’re trying to do.Values and traditions are the left and right rails of the railroad track that will determine the direction of your company. Moving those rails is extremely difficult and it’s impossible to do so quickly.Your company is the train that rides on those rails. A company without values and traditions is a train without a track, unable to gain momentum.Strategy is a motorcycle exploring the territory ahead.The train can easily push the motorcycle.The motorcycle can’t push the train.It’s not the job of the strategist on the motorcycle to move the railroad tracks. And only a foolish strategist would pretend those tracks don’t exist.The job of the strategist on the motorcycle is to prepare the passengers on the train for all the hills and valleys and tunnels that lie ahead, suggesting which window might offer the better view, and when they might need to turn on the lights.The job of the copywriter is to ride behind the strategist and cry out to the citizens of the countryside about the glories and wonder of the train that is about to pass their way.Roy H. Williams