Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Today I’m going to tell you 3 new things you need to know about.My enthusiasm will probably make it sound like I’m giving you a sales pitch. Sorry about that. If you’re not in the mood, the tiniest motion of a finger will take you to a new and different place…You decided to stay? I think you’ll be glad you did.YouTube. Not FaceBook.Throughout the year I’ve been saying to students of Wizard Academy, “YouTube will deliver one trillion views during the 365 short days of 2012. It’s a message delivery vehicle that has yet to be maximized. YouTube’s potential to grow a business is vastly greater than FaceBook. The number of search strings typed into YouTube each day is second only to Google.”The actual number of views in 2012 turned out to be 1.46 trillion. Let’s put that in perspective:One million seconds is about 12 days. tick-tick-tick-tickOne billion seconds is nearly 32 years. tick-tick-tickOne trillion seconds is 31,688 years.This means 46,264 people per second click to watch a YouTube video 24/7/365. Nearly 3 million per minute, 4 billion per day. That’s 13 times the population of the United States every day.*You have things to say. Why not say them to the world?#1 VidBetter is a video production systemthat lets goobers like you and me crank out YouTube videos that look like big money. And there’s no learning curve with VidBetter. All the tricky stuff has been fully automated. The hardware comes in a box. Your professional editors are in the cloud and available to you 24/7. Take a look.#2 Do you talk better than you write?Dave Young and Paul Boomer have created a content-extraction service that pulls your very best out of you and puts it on paper. It’s a fabulous way to create witty and intelligent blog posts, craft award-winning web copy, record relaxed and informative podcasts, write training manuals, create policy and procedure documents, whatever it is you need to get out of your head and onto the web or onto paper. All you have to do is talk on the phone to a professional interviewer. BAM. The whole thing is recorded, transcribed, edited, and given back to you in whatever format you desire. These guys will make you sound like a genius. Check it out.#3 Become a happier you.Kyle Cease was voted the #1 comedian on Comedy Central in 2009 but his real passion is for transformative change. I’ve watched him lead his classmates through exercises that made a profound difference in their thought processes, their attitudes, and their expectations. When his 2-day class was announced a couple of weeks ago, the classmates who had already met him snapped up all the rooms in Engelbrecht House immediately. If you want 2013 to be VERY DIFFERENT than 2012, be at this class. Sleep in a hotel. Don’t tell yourself that you’ll catch Kyle’s class next time. Kyle did more than 200 shows last year and right now he’s hotter than ever. It took weeks to find dates for this class that would work in his schedule for 2013. It will be awhile before we can get Kyle back to Austin. This will be a highly interactive, fast paced, experiential workshop. You will definitely leave better than you came.I shared this stuff with you today because I want you to have the happiest possible 2013. I want you to be energized and productive. I apologize if I sounded like I was making a sales pitch. I’m an ad writer, remember? I sound like I’m making a sales pitch when I pray.But God’s okay with that. He understands.Hopefully you do, too.Roy H. Williams

I recently spent a day with two lawyers who practice the same legal specialty. We’ll call them Nick and Ralph. They live on opposite sides of the country. They met at a conference and became friends.Nick read my books, attended Wizard Academy, and decided to go fishing for customers with a net. He put his money in radio.Ralph thought it made more sense to target only those people in immediate need of a lawyer within his specialty. Ralph went fishing with a hook called Pay-Per-Click.Ralph said, “Nick, you’re hunting with a shotgun. I’m hunting with a rifle.” Ralph believes in targeting, you see. That’s why he fishes with a hook and catches just one fish at a time. But you don’t build a widespread reputation by waiting until your customer needs you and then targeting them through Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click.Nick the Net chose to win the public before they needed his services. Nick the Net wanted everyone in the city to know about him, even if many of them would never need his services. Nick the Net chose to win the hearts of the people 52 weeks a year.Ralph the Hook, by the way, practices law in a trade area that offers 22 times the potential of the area served by Nick the Net.Both men are smart and aggressive. They plunged. Hard.Ralph the Hook spends $180,000 per month on Search Engine Optimization, online marketing consultants, and locally targeted Pay-Per-Click. His annual ad budget of $2,160,000 brings in slightly less than $6 million per year in legal fees, leaving Ralph with a little less than $4 million for gas money. Not bad.One year ago, Nick the Net was spending $30,000 per month on radio. His $360,000 ad budget brought in $1.4 million the previous year in legal fees, leaving Nick with a little more than $1 million to spend on lunch.NOTE: Nick brought in 1/4 as much money but spent only 1/6 as much on ads.And then Nick asked me to begin writing his ads. This year he and I brought in $4.2 million with that same $30,000/mo. ad budget.About 6 weeks ago, Nick said he wanted me to add another $20,000/mo. to his radio budget. I said, “Not yet. First we need to improve your close rate.”“But we’re closing 30 percent of the people who call us,” answered Nick, “Ralph the Hook is closing barely 10 percent of his online leads.”When you advertise 52 weeks a year on the radio, you become a household word. Yours is the name the customer thinks of first and feels the best about. The leads brought in through radio are much warmer than the leads generated through pay-per-click.“Nick,” I said, “our close rate should be up around 60 percent. Bring all the people who answer your phone to Austin for a day of training.”Nick brought them to Austin for a day. They listened. They learned.At the end of the day, Nick drove his people to the airport and sent them home to answer the phones. Nick then returned to my office with his buddy, Ralph the Hook. As a favor to Nick, I spent a couple of hours with Ralph. Ralph, of course, only wanted to know “how to choose the right radio station.”Ralph the Hook still believes that “targeting the right customer” is the secret to growing a business.But Nick and I believe in building a widespread reputation with a warm predisposition in the hearts of the general, untargeted public.What do you believe?Common sense says targeting would be more efficient, right?My thirty years of experience say otherwise. One last thing: Nick’s telephone team is now closing more than 60 percent of all incoming leads. This means Nick the Net will likely do $8.4 million in 2013 with no increase in ad budget and no increase in sales opportunities.Release the Kraken.Roy H. Williams

The Miraculous Disappearance of Black-and-WhiteMost of the choices we make have effects we did not anticipate. This is due to the Law of Unintended Consequences.“Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it.”– Rob Norton, author of The Concise Encyclopedia of EconomicsHere’s an example of politicians ignoring it: The Chinese government introduced the one-child policy in 1978 as a measure to curb China’s population growth. Thirty-four years later,“The policy has been implicated in an increase in forced abortions, female infanticide, and underreporting of female births, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China’s gender imbalance.”- WikipediaLimited to just one child, many families opted for a boy because men have always had more power in Chinese society.The unintended consequence of the one-child policy is that marriageable young Chinese women are in extremely short supply. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, unmarried men between 20 and 44 already outnumber their female counterparts 2 to 1.* This gives young Chinese women amazing power.Score one for poetic justice.All this seems perfectly reasonable in hindsight, but did anyone see it coming 34 years ago?Before you wag your finger at those Chinese parents, consider what American parents were saying to their daughters during those same years,“Why dream of being a nurse when you can become a doctor? Don’t be a secretary, become a CEO. Make something of your life! You can always get married AFTER you’ve established your career.”Thus warned against becoming that ultimate of losers – a stay at home Mom – American girls grew up and became “successful” by foregoing the creation of a family.And what did we tell our boys?“If you don’t go to college, you doom yourself to be a loser, son; a common, blue-collar laborer who gets no respect, no admiration, no love. Please, son, go to college. Don’t be a loser.”Thirty-four years later we have millions of college-educated, unmarried men and women returning to live in their childhood bedrooms at Mom’s and Dad’s house because they can’t support themselves, much less pay off the tens of thousands of dollars they owe in student loans. There are plenty of good-paying jobs out there, but most of them require a technical skill; something not taught in college.The Unintended Consequences of the advice America gave its children is that the American subgroup Bill O’Reilly likes to call “Traditional America” (code for “white,”) no longer controls the outcome of elections. Ironically, it is the subgroups who continue to value motherhood and skilled labor that have become the deciders of America’s future.And I, for one, have no problem with that.America has a surplus of young adults empowered with pointless educations and staggering student loans. For now, at least, it would appear the spotlight belongs to men and women who are skilled in a trade, who take pride in the work of their hands; chefs and carpenters, plumbers and electricians, mechanics and technicians and jewelers who can set a diamond in gold.The American Success Myth of the 20th Century taught us to buy things we didn’t need with money we didn’t have to impress people we didn’t like. We were taught, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”So we chased happiness with dollars in our hands and it fled from us faster than we could run. Exhausted, we sat down and learned the truth:“The key to happiness is an ability to celebrate the ordinary.”Family. Friends. Food. Fun.Having been born into a 1958 America that was strictly black and white, I will finish my days in a full-color nation.And what, I ask you, is so terribly wrong with that?Roy H. Williams

Voltaire is often quoted as having said it, but he never did.It was actually Pierre de Beaumarchais in 1775, just a few months before Thomas and George and Ben and the boys wrote their scathing letter to England’s king.Beaumarchais was working on the second scene in the first act of The Barber of Seville, when it hit him, “Aujourd’hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.”“Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.”Now before you get all hinky-dink and say, “But George Washington didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence,” allow me to assure you that my statement is six times correct: Clymer, Read, Ross, Taylor, Walton and Wythe. Georges all. Declaration signers.Isn’t it funny how the mind makes assumptions based on fragments of information? I gave you 1775, Thomas, George, Ben and the boys, and a letter to England’s king. You thought, “Revolution, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and the founding fathers, and The Declaration of Independence they sent to King George.”Your mind filled in the empty spaces.But what if there were no empty spaces?What if the mental bandwidth of your attention was filled with other information?Fill some of that vacancy with music and you’ve got a song.Crowd the remaining emptiness with images and actions and you’ve got a movie. Make it participatory and you’ve got a video game, but now we’re introducing an entirely different lesson…Allow me to get back on track: song lyrics don’t have to make sense because words that are wrapped in music aren’t held to the same level of scrutiny as words that must stand on their own.Every language is made of obstruent and sonorant phonemes with the vowels of the language supplying the musical tones. The letters of the alphabet are not phonemes. The sounds represented by those letters – and certain combinations of letters such as sh, th, ch, ng, – the sounds are the phonemes. (I’m not making this stuff up. It is a studied and known science. We can look further into it in the rabbit hole, if you like.)Humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sound. Some of these sound-messages are the combinations of phonemes we call words, but a complex sound-message without phonemes is called music. Mix phonemes with music and you’ve got a song.Words wrapped in music are no longer strictly words, but components of a complexly woven auditory tapestry with additional messages embedded in the pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, interval and contour of the tune. Song lyrics cannot be easily evaluated until they’ve been separated from the music that has swallowed them.When the music feels happy, we usually think of the song as being happy, even when the lyrics are tragic. When the music is sad, we feel the song is sad even when the lyrics are joyful. When the music is triumphant, we feel the song is triumphant even though its lyrics may describe rejection and defeat.On September 12, 2001, the day after 9-11, the most-played song in America was Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. This is a fact. Radio stations across America wanted to lift the mood, remind us of our heritage and defy Osama Bin Laden, so they filled the sky with our favorite anthem to American exceptionalism:“Born down in a dead man’s town,The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.You end up like a dog that’s been beat too muchTill you spend half your life just covering up.Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A….Those lyrics get increasingly sad, describing rejection and defeat without redemption, as a returning Viet Nam vet can’t find a job even though he turns to the Veteran’s Administration for assistance. In the end, he winds up working without hope in the shadow of a penitentiary and he blames it all on the fact that he was born in the U.S.A. The End.Yet we shout the chorus to Born in the USA at the top of our lungs because the triumphant arc of the music and the defiant tone of Springsteen’s voice feel profoundly patriotic and proud, lyrics be damned.Music is a language of emotion so powerful that it is capable of contradicting the very words it carries. Control the music and you control the mood of the room. But choose the music for its feel, never for its lyrics.Sound is a stunning phenomenon.Learn how to use it, then choose whom you would like to stun.Roy H. Williams

An auction house is an island of cast-offs and misfits where the rejected and broken feel finally at home.I am speaking of the merchandise, of course, not of the people.Perhaps I am speaking of the people, as well.From the age of 18, Pennie and I have searched for buried treasure in auction houses. When you collect the misfit and the broken, you quickly learn how to accentuate natural beauty and disguise the inevitable flaws. These are valuable skills for a marketing consultant.There is magic in that moment between Before and After.AThe most miraculous makeovers happen when the misfit is made of wood. Formby’s Conditioning Furniture Refinisher is an amazing solvent that dissolves old varnish, lacquer and shellac, gently melting the crackled, grimy layers of age into a homogenous, flowing liquid.It’s not a stripper, exactly. Formby’s refinishing solvent merely allows you to redistribute the accumulated weirdness that was already there, giving the piece a rich, original, old finish.Time is like Formby’s Refinisher; a solvent dissolving memories and events into one another, creating altogether new realities based only loosely upon the ones that were before.The past was reality. But it does not remain reality.What is today’s reality? Yours, I mean.My mind has been topsy-turvy for a year. Last month marked the first anniversary of the death of a lifelong friend. I am only just now beginning to regain my balance.A couple of weeks before the anniversary of his death, I contacted his right-hand man of many years and asked him to organize a “memory party” with good food and fine wine to be held on the anniversary of our pal’s departure. I sent a significant budget and asked that he invite everyone who might have a story to tell about our friend.I believe good stories need to be spoken into the living memories of others, a sort of cross-pollination of realities.The party was a big success. Lots of people came and I’m told the stories were wonderful. I’ve decided to make it an annual event.I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, citizens who never met my friend will be able to share sparkling memories of moments with him that never really happened.And it is possible that these true stories will be the most magic of all.Myths and legends are true, you see, even when they are not.Roy H. Williams

A wise man sees both sides of a matter. The fool sees only one.The origin of the word “wizard” is wise-ard. It means wise man. Nothing more.The wise-ards of the Christmas Story followed a star, had an adventure, made a discovery and leaped onto the pages of history. What did they talk about along the way? Who did the cooking? What pressing issues did they leave unattended back home? What did they do with the rest of their lives? Where, when, and how did each of them die?We know only that they followed a star everyone else was content to ignore; that they were nonconformists with strange beliefs who had the courage of their convictions.They took action. They left home and found the thing they sought.How about you? Will you run with the big dogs or sit on the porch and bark at the postman? Talk is cheap, the buzzing of flies. I didn’t say that to hurt your feelings. I said it because I love you.What are you trying to accomplish?How will you measure progress-to-goal?Do you know what needs to happen next?Which star do you follow?An encounter with the wise man in the woods is part of every hero’s journey. Athena was the wise man in the woods for Odysseus. When Obi-Wan was gone, Luke went to Dagobah and Yoda became his wise man. Mr. Miyagi was wise-ard for the Karate Kid. Morpheus for Neo. Galadriel for Frodo.When you’re in the darkness of the forest – the belly of the whale – look around for the wise-ard who will help you complete your journey. The wise man in the woods exists only to assist the hero on his or her adventure.21st century wise-men-in-the-woods become faculty at Wizard Academy. Putting you together with them is why we built this place.Mark Huffman from Procter & Gamble.Dave McInnis from PR Web.Tim Storm from FatWallet.comDean Rotbart from the Wall Street Journal.Greg Farrell from Bloomberg News.Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg, Dr. Lori Barr, David Freeman, Michele Miller, Kyle Cease, Ze Frank, Jean Backus, Jeff Sexton, Rich Christiansen, Mark Fox, Dr. Richard D. Grant, Ken Brand, Dennis Collins and the unforgettable Beate Chelette.Wizard Academy is America’s small business institute, a training facility and think-tank for open-minded and courageous business people from around the world. The star you follow is entirely up to you. We simply prepare you for your journey, tell you what to expect on the road ahead, and celebrate your success when you find what you seek.Two or three days at the academy is an informative experience for some, transformative for others.I’ve rambled enough for one day. I thank you for your kind attention.As I bow at the waist and back slowly off the page, I pass along these carefully crafted words from heroes who carved their names deeply in the tree of life.“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!'”– Hunter S. Thompson“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”– Wes JacksonNever forget that failure is temporary, a moment quickly forgotten. 2013 awaits you. Damn the torpedoes.Full speed ahead.Roy H. Williams

We can listen much faster than we speak. Consequently, a listener’s mind will wander when we take too long to make a point. This isn’t new. What is new, however, is the current trend toward voluntary, rapid distraction. Defenders of this practice call it ‘multi-tasking.’ But brain-imaging studies reveal that ‘multi-tasking’ is merely the switching of attention back and forth between two tasks.The danger of multi-tasking is that it trains the brain to be more easily distracted. Combine this with the exponential growth of information that assaults our brains each day and you’ll see why – and how – radio ads must change.Information saturation has risen to the point that an auditory neuroscientist at Brown University, Seth Horowitz, published a stern warning about it in the Nov. 9, 2012 issue of the New York Times: “Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.”In other words, few people these days can listen to a single voice drone on and on about a product or service for sixty, or even thirty, seconds. The only way for an ad to elbow its way into the customer’s fragmented attention is to become the most interesting and surprising thing that’s happening at that particular moment.Horowitz goes on to explain that focused attention is what separates mere hearing from active listening. “Attention is not some monolithic brain process. There are different types of attention, and they use different parts of the brain.”1. The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A chain of five neurons from your ears to your spine takes that noise and converts it into a defensive response in a mere tenth of a second. This simplest form of attention requires almost no brains at all and has been observed in every studied vertebrate.2. More complex attention kicks in when you hear your name called from across a room or a birdcall in an underground subway station. This stimulus-directed attention is controlled by pathways through the temporoparietal and inferior frontal cortex regions, mostly in the right hemisphere — areas that process raw, sensory input, but don’t concern themselves with what you should make of that sound.3. When you actually pay attention to something you’re listening to, the signals are conveyed through a dorsal pathway in your cortex, a part of the brain that does more computation, which lets you actively focus on what you’re hearing and tune out sights and sounds that aren’t as immediately important.A high percentage of radio ads are being tuned out because they are judged by the brain to be “not immediately important.” Radio has not yet embraced the giddy pace of 2012.To embrace the new pace:1. Talk faster, say more.2. Use big ideas, presented tightly.3. Introduce a new mental image every 3 to 5 seconds.4. Use fewer adjectives.5. Embrace unpredictable timing and intonation.6. Say things plainly. Bluntly, even.7. Emotion is good. Even negative emotion.8. Allow distinctly different voices to finish each other’s sentences.9. Prepare for lots of complaints. Listeners want to be able to ignore radio ads. When they can’t ignore your ads, they complain. A lot.10. Prepare to make more money.We have proven this technique works, but you can definitely take it too far: the confusion that results from going too far is a condition I call Cloud Atlas. (Those of you who are laughing right now have seen the movie.)Would you like to listen to a performance of numbers 1 through 7 simultaneously? Visit YouTube and type “Ze Frank The Doctor’s Office.” Watch the video and you’ll realize that Ze requires your entire attention just to keep up with him.These are the tightly-connected, verbally-delivered surprises that will bloody your nose in the first 30 seconds of this delightful video:1. Pain day2. Double-stacked3. Purposely forgot4. A physical5. prehypertension6. bacon7. pre-dead8. R.D. Lang9. sexually-transmitted disease10. 100 percent mortality11. Hallway of Shame12. make you tell lies13. drink and exercise14. people watchThose first 14 ideas are delivered at an average pace of one idea every 2.15 seconds. But the story continues:15. inflatable arm-cuff16. swimmies17. puked in the pool18. hard to get up speed19. totally traumatic dog-paddling20. arm cuff hurts21. life and death battle with a robot22. Good News23. 11 cups of coffee24. NurseWow. Twenty-four ideas in 60 seconds is exactly 1 idea every 2.5 seconds. Give Ze’s verbal riff 60 seconds and I promise you’ll keep listening. And you’ll laugh when he says “Australian puke me,” because strangely, it will make perfect sense.How to do this – across all media – will be the focus of a 2-day workshop called How to Advertise in a Noisy World. You need to be there.January 23-24 at Wizard Academy, America’s small business institute.2013 can be a fabulous year if you want it to be.Roy H. Williams

Everyone wants to make the same three things,” the Princess said, “money, a name, and a difference. But our actions are dictated by the one we want most.”You can make a name for yourself – become famous – or you can make a lot of money in complete obscurity. Either way, people will consider you a success. But famous people with piles of money seem always to be haunted by the need to make a difference, don’t they?You’ve seen it. So have I.Getting is more fun than having.Building is more fun than maintaining.Giving is more fun than receiving. Just ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.Bob Buford says, “The first half of life is a quest for success, the second is a quest for significance.”Success is measured by the money and the name you’ve made.Significance is measured by the difference you’ve made.GOOD NEWS: Making a difference doesn’t always require money and it certainly doesn’t require a name.Significance is achieved by caring and doing.Caring without doing is the mark of frightened, tentative, whiners. That’s right; small people complain. But big people don’t whine. They swing the hammer, bang the problem, sing a song and alter the world.In other words, shut up and do something.Our world is full of people who have achieved success without significance. Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote about these people 115 years ago:Whenever 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, he was everything?To make us wish 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.The day is young. There’s still plenty of time to make a difference.Someone should have told Richard. Roy H. Williams * good-looking

Most people believe in The Way Things Ought to Be.Others embrace The Way Things Are.Arguments, terrorism and war happen at the intersection of these Ways.“Here’s what you ought to do.”“That’s just not going to happen.”“Okay, then we’ll fight.”An even weirder, three-way intersection happens atThe Way I Remember It,The Way You Remember It, andThe Way It Actually Was.Standing in the reflection of that intersection is like standing in a house of mirrors.My friend Dean Rotbart believesyou are three different persons:1: The person you believe yourself to be.2: The person others believe you to be.3: The person you really are.This means there is:1. the person I see when I look in the mirror.2. the person you see when you look at me.3. the person God knows me to be.The Roy I See lives in my mind.The Roy You See lives in your mind.The Roy God Sees lives in God’s mind.(I’d like to meet that Roy, wouldn’t you?)Sorry, but these are the strange things I’ve had on my mind this week.If you judge these contemplations to be the disjointed ramblings of an overworked ad man at Christmastime, you will doubtless be correct. But if you discover among these 312 words a worthy nugget to contemplate, and it grows to become a portal in your mind that allows you to see new and wonderful things; well, that’s okay, too.Final thought: I was contemplating the word “encouragement” when it hit me: Encouragement happens when a person needs courage… so you give them yours.Your friend was worried and fearful.You had courage, and gave it to them.They were encouraged.What a gift!Encourage someone out there today, okay?People who need it are all around us.Roy H. WilliamsA

ahrenheit RevisitedPennie and I were at the airport in San Francisco about to board a flight for home. I needed a book to read.I’d been thinking about the halfway points in Pendulum theory as well as pondering a phenomenon I’ve decided to call Information Saturation. Both are heady topics. I needed to take a break.The two halfway points of our most recent “Me” cycle were 1973 (halfway up to the “Me” zenith of 1983,) and 1993, (halfway down from it.)Similarly, the halfway points in our previous “We” cycle were 1933 (halfway up to the “We” zenith of 1943,) and 1953, (halfway down from it.)Whether halfway up or halfway down, the Pendulum is in the same position. Consequently, the motivations and values that drive our society will be surprisingly similar even though these halfway points are 20 years apart. There will be striking parallels in the inventions we create to satisfy the hungers we feel, and our most popular music and literature will reflect surprisingly similar fixations and orientations at every halfway point of a “We.” A different set of fixations and orientations occupy us at the halfway points of a “Me,” but they are no less predictable.The second topic of consideration, Information Saturation, is a communications phenomenon: a feeling of too-much-coming-at-you-too-quickly, resulting in a state of constant, rapid distraction. The statistics I’ve gathered on our current state of Information Saturation are mind-boggling.I walked into the airport bookstore and spotted Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I’d heard people speak of this book, but I had never read it. At just 46,118 words Fahrenheit is a slim volume, but that hasn’t keep it from selling more than 10 million copies. I looked at the date of publication: 1953.Wait a minute. Wasn’t 1953 one of the halfway points in our previous “We” cycle? And in a few more weeks won’t it be 2013, a halfway point in our current “We”? And don’t all the halfway points mirror one another in “We” after “We” after “We”?I bought the book. Soon I was reading highly accurate descriptions of Information Saturation. On page 52, Beatty describes to Montag the condition of media in their society:“Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”“Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”If those comments sound contemporary, please remember that Harry S Truman was president when those words were written and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president when they were published. The top TV shows were I Love Lucy, Dragnet, and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.Ten years ago, while being interviewed about Fahrenheit 451, the late Ray Bradbury said,“Fahrenheit’s not about censorship. It’s about the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news, the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids. We’ve moved in to this period of history that I described in Fahrenheit 50 years ago.”Wow. This Pendulum stuff is real; frighteningly predictive, profitably instructive, and highly propulsive. 1953 was the halfway point of a “We.” 2013 will be another. Is there anything we can learn from 1953 that will help us succeed tomorrow?A COMMAND PERFORMANCE:During a meeting of the directors of Wizard Academy last week, I was asked to share my thoughts on the climate for small businesses in our society. I shared with the board my concerns about Information Saturation and how this phenomenon is making it harder for advertisers to gain and hold human attention. “How can a business fight back?” they asked. “What can be done to defeat the auditory and visual noise?”“It’s time to start flinging third gravitating bodies,” I told them.Chairman Mark Fox said, “I want you to teach a class on this. Set a date right now.” Mark opened his laptop. “I’m putting it on my calendar to be there.”The other 6 board members flipped opened their laptops and said, “Me, too.”This is when Mark said the comment he receives from students most often is that I should offer advanced training on the creation of third gravitating bodies. Evidently, the cognoscenti of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop realize the power of the 3GB technique they learn on the third and final day of that class, but feel the need for additional exercises and examples.The time for that is now.How to Advertise in a Noisy World:Piercing Information Saturationwith Third Gravitating Bodies.January 23-24, 2013.Register for it at WizardAcademy.org and accelerate past your challengers.Roy H. Williams