Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Our system of education is built on the belief that learning is best achieved by bringing the best of the past forward through expert advice and clear example. Consequently, educators rise through the ranks like officers in the military: through compliance and conformity to the norm. But in this era of quantum change, are we really best served by imitating the past? Let’s look at two characteristics the innovative leaders of today all seem to have in common:  1. They tend to be college dropouts. Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker of Facebook. Dropouts, all. The list goes on and on. 2. They have no fear of failure. Innovative leaders experiment constantly because they see failure as an unavoidable step toward success. These leaders know the truth about failure; it’s an extremely temporary condition, a fleeting moment, nothing to be feared. Failure is motion and motion is life.Educators hesitate to experiment because they fear failure and reprimand. Consequently, the average teacher with 20 years’ experience really has just 1 year’s experience 20 times.In the October 22 issue of the New York Times, researcher Michael Ellsberg wrote,“Entrepreneurs must embrace failure. I spent the last two years interviewing college dropouts who went on to become millionaires and billionaires. All spoke passionately about the importance of their business failures in leading them to success. Our education system encourages students to play it safe and retreat at the first sign of failure… Certainly, if you want to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer, then you must go to college. But, beyond regulated fields like these, the focus on higher education… is profoundly misguided.” Pennie had a fantastic idea while we were taking our morning walk. As she explained it to me, I realized her plan would make solid education more widely available, more relevant to the student and save a great deal of money as well.“Princess,” I said, “if someone isn’t already doing this, they will be soon. This is the right idea at the right time so it’s highly likely that lots of people are having this same idea right now.”I was right. Salman Kahn (pictured above,) already has the project well underway. Pennie’s idea – and Kahn’s – is to harness Youtube to deliver 10-to-12-minute tutorials in an effort to fill the painful gaps in public education.Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo recently said,“There is a disaster recipe developing among boys in America dropping out of high school and college. And it’s not simply poor performance. One of the problems is, a recent study shows, that by the time a boy is 21, he has spent at least 10,000 hours playing video games by himself, alone… They live in a world they create. They’re playing Warcraft and these other games which are exciting… Their brains are being digitally rewired, which means they will never fit in a traditional classroom, which is analog. Somebody talks at you without even nice pictures. Meaning it’s boring. You control nothing. You sit there passively. Disaster.  These kids will never fit into that. They have to be in a situation where they are controlling something. And school is set up where you control nothing.” Video allows the world’s best teachers to be everywhere simultaneously. And if you eliminate the time spent for roll call, bad behavior, discipline, silent reading and working on exercises, there’s rarely more than 10 minutes of real teaching delivered during the average class-hour. Tightly scripted 10-minute videos allow the quicker students to move at 5 to 6 times their current pace while slower students are free to pause and rewind as often as they feel necessary. Everyone is happy. Everyone learns more. And the quality of education available to you is no longer dictated by your school district. Wizard Academy applauds Salman Kahn and will do everything we can to accelerate his success. I hear a question sparkling and tinkling in your mind.Your question sounds like those little sleigh bells that hang on Santa’s reindeer as they paw roof-snow in the moonlight, tiny flashes of light and sound that pierce the hot fog of the reindeer’s breath as it clouds the cold night air: “Does your newfound appreciation of video mean Wizard Academy is going to make all its classes available through online streaming?” That was your question, wasn’t it? Wizard Academy will definitely increase its video offerings of brick-on-brick information. But our greater energies will continue to be focused on expanding our selection of transformative classes, those immersion experiences that facilitate an understanding that can be gained in no other way.Informative classes are incremental and best taught through video.Transformative classes are experiential and best taught through immersion.As David Sandler said 25 years ago, “You can’t learn to ride a bicycle by listening to a tape or reading a book.”  Put down the book. Come to Wizard Academy and your tomorrow will be very much different than yesterday. Roy H. Williams

Storytelling is gaining momentum.  Open-mic nights are the hot ticket in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and New York with people lining up two hours before show time to hear storytellers tell stories.Let’s look at the reasons why:“Storytelling is human connection at its most primal form,” says Catherine Burns, artistic director for the storytelling broadcast, The Moth, winner of the 2010 Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. “In the midst of this technological revolution, it’s not surprising to me that people are looking to return to their roots. We want more than a status update about a breakfast cereal or someone’s child’s potty-training escapades. We crave more than a ‘like’ on Facebook or a retweeted Tweet. Storytelling is to entertainment as the slow food movement is to dining – it’s fresh and it’s local.”Researchers at Princeton University in 2010 discovered that storytellers cause the brains of their listeners to operate in synch with their own. Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert and Uri Hasson used functional magnetic resonance imaging to reveal how the same brain areas in the storyteller and the listener were stimulated at precisely the same points in the story.The biological mechanism that enables vicarious experience was only recently discovered. Groups of specialized neurons called “mirror neurons” exist opposite each other in the left and right hemispheres of the brain, allowing us to vicariously participate in what someone else is experiencing.These neurons enable human empathy, allowing us to tune in to each others’ feelings. In effect, mirror neurons allow you to live inside the minds of others. This is why hearing stories of adventure is almost as exciting as having the adventure yourself.You don’t take books and movies with you; they take you with them.When you’re watching sports, a piece of you is in that game.  Salespeople, evangelists and speechwriters have long known that a good story can cause the listener to see and feel what the storyteller is seeing and feeling, thereby empowering the storyteller to transfer ideas and emotions intact. Every good story provides a point of entry – a portal – that allows the listener to join in the adventure. Secrets to Storytelling in Advertising will be the topic of our monthly webinar next Monday, November 14, and a special Storytelling Workshop will soon be announced at Wizard Academy. Questions? Jackie is your girl. You can phone her during business hours (Central Time) at 512-295-5700 or email her at Jackie@WizardOfAds.com Adventure. Storytelling. Advertising.Taking your business to the next level.Find your adventure. Tell your story.It works every time.Roy H. Williams

Pearl was a bit of a whore.We never kept her in a fenceSo she had puppies at least once a year.She was a good mother.Abandoned in the country, starving,We found her when I was in third grade.She knew she was my dog immediately.God help you if you got mad at me.A blur of fur and teeth and little-dog roaringAwaited you halfway to me. No one ever calledPearl’s bluff because they knew she wasn’t bluffing.I think I learned loyalty from Pearl.Her oversized sense of protectivenessExtended to the house a little, too.But not much.We lived on a small riseAt the end of a long driveway.We would see her asleep on the porch in the sunshineBut when the crunch of tires on gravel reached her earsShe would leap like Wonder Woman off the porchAnd race to the far end of the yard,Barking the whole while,Careful never to look our way.She’d bark at the unseen burglarThen cut and run a different way toStop and bark at other phantoms.The shutting of a car doorMade her look our way, startled,As if to say, “Oh, you’re back already?When did you arrive?”And then she would trot with great pride,Paws lifted a little too highHer head swinging back and forthAs if to say, “Aren’t I wonderful?”“Pearl, you’re wonderful,” I would sayBecause she knew her job and I knew mine.In later years I stepped from the kitchenInto the garage to see her curledWith a small cat under her foreleg,It’s head snuggled beneath her chin, friendsLaid down for a nap.The screen door springs closed with a clapAnd Pearl lifts her bleary eyes, “What was that?”She looks up to see me,With a cat in her bed.Standing slowly to her feetPearl gives a soft “woof,”As if to whisper,“The boss is here.”The cat, knowing her job, too,Stands,Looks at me,Looks at Pearl,Then trots out the garageAnd around the corner.Pearl gives me one more lookThen chases the catTo do her duty.Later, I walk outsideAnd see Pearl beside the houseIn the soft sunshineLaid down for a napWith her friend.Forty years laterI walk aroundanother house500 miles away,And secretly hope toSee Pearl and the catOne last time.– Roy H. Williams

Your brain is hardwired to notice the exception, the incongruity, the discrepancy, the disturbance, that thing – no matter how small – that doesn’t belong.  “Something of the sense of holiness on islands comes, I think, from this strange, elastic geography. Islands are made larger, paradoxically, by the scale of the sea that surrounds them. The element which might reduce them, which might be thought to besiege them, has the opposite effect. The sea elevates these few acres into something they would never be if hidden in the mass of the mainland. The sea makes islands significant.”– Adam Nicolson, Sea Room “The sea makes islands significant,” is just another way of saying “Normalcy makes the aberration exceptional,” or “Boredom makes the surprising delightful,” or “Mundanity makes the punch line funny.” The pattern makes the gap noticeable.Discoveries are made when people do something wrong.Discoveries are made when people do something new.Discoveries are made when people do something surprising.Discoveries are made when people do something different. Mistakes often lead to discoveries. This is why so many discoveries are made by accident.Discovery… is the signature… of Adventure. Adventure begins when we break a pattern, when we do something wrong, new, surprising or different. This insight has profound implications in advertising, public speaking, political campaigns and the arts, but these are not the focus of our attention today.Our thoughts are turned toward you. If you choose to take a wildly different route to work tomorrow, it will be less efficient that the route you normally take. But you will also see new scenery. If you took that different route to work tomorrow, you’d have to leave home earlier or risk being late. Leaving earlier would alter your schedule, disrupt your routine, break your pattern. And we wouldn’t want to do that. Would we? As long as we’re talking about things we’re not going to do, let’s plan not to stop somewhere along this new route to investigate something we notice. We couldn’t possibly make time for that. Could we? Adventure begins when you do something new, surprising or different. Anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation. We don’t want those. Do we? If you take the long way to work tomorrow and stop to investigate something you notice, send me an email about it. Address that email to Adventure@WizardAcademy.org One thing leads to another.There’s really no telling where this might lead. Roy H. Williams

Anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation are the smells and bells of adventure. Paul Tournier was a 3 year-old orphan in Switzerland when Teddy Roosevelt became President of the United States.  Paul grew up to become a doctor. He did a lot of thinking and he wrote a few books. Paul Tournier was nearly 70 when he wrote The Adventure of Living: “Our actual lives rarely suffice to assuage our thirst for adventure. Fortunately we can all supply the want by using our imaginations. The dullest and most humdrum life can be enlivened by imagined pleasures… Those who are lacking in imagination of their own can always use that of other people. There is no shortage of novels to read… The same mechanism of identification makes it possible in the cinema, through the radio or television, or at a circus to procure cheaply the feeling of taking part in an adventure. This is the case, too, with ‘sportsmen’ who come back from a football match proudly proclaiming ‘We won!’ although they personally have done nothing but applaud the winners… That the need for adventure lies behind the passion for gambling hardly needs mention. A habit that is quite as difficult to cure as gambling is that of drug-taking, in all its various forms. This too can be regarded as an expression of the instinct for adventure… Looked at in its best light, adultery may be seen to be for many men the only means of satisfying their craving for adventure.” Tournier believed every human life is a never-ending search for adventure. “A most important observation must, however, be made at this point, and that is that a distinction is to be made between quality adventure and quantity adventure. In capitalist countries financial success is still, if not a truly satisfying adventure, at least a symbol of adventure. There are of course other quantity adventures aside from those of money, gambling or dope. There is, for example, that of frenzied activity. It is obvious that for many people these days the whirl of activities with which they fill their lives is a compensation for a profound dissatisfaction in regard to the quality of life they are living.” Video games, movies, reality TV shows, online flirtations, romance novels, sporting events and conspiracy theories are just different manifestations of our common need for adventure. I learned all this in the first 17 pages of Tournier’s 250-page book. I’m glad my friend Ron told me about it. Purchases are often an adventure. Much of what we buy is bought to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are. The politically correct term for this, I believe, is self-expression. Kurt Vonnegut may have been pondering self-expression when he said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”I pretend to be a writer and an advertising consultant and a connoisseur of fine art. (I say “pretend” because I’m not actually qualified to be any of these things. It’s really quite an adventure.) What is your current adventure? Are the stakes high enough to make it truly riveting? Page 21 of Tournier’s The Adventure of Living helped me to understand why people often do stupid things: “Many people are never able to come to terms with the death to which every adventure is inevitably subject… The Law of Adventure is that it dies as it achieves its object.” And then we must find a new adventure. Desperate for adventure, some people feel compelled to outsmart society. Vandalism and shoplifting are two of the standby adventures of youth. Road rage and embezzlement are just around the corner. And all these people ever really wanted was anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation.  Life is a challenge. New problems slap us daily. In the words of the immortal G.K. Chesterton, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”In other words, adventure is everywhere. You don’t even have to go looking for it. You just need to learn to recognize it when it’s wearing a disguise.Thornton Wilder said, “It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.” But Mark Twain encouraged us openly. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Wizard Academy is a 501c3 nonprofit business school for companies with fewer than 100 employees. The Academy has helped launch hundreds of adventures and been a frosty oasis of rejuvenation for thousands of thirsty travelers hot in the middle of an adventure they had already begun. Come!Roy H. Williams

Style Guides and Audio Signatures: Part ThreeWords shine like a movie projector on the screen of imagination, creating lifelike images in the mind.1: Which actors will you place on the screen? Will your voice be first person “I,” second person “you,” or third person “they?”2. What will be your time perspective?Will your verbs be past tense “was,” present tense “am,” or future tense “will be?”These two, simple choices yield nine different voices:“I was…”I was walking down 5th street, my dog with me, when…“I am…” I am walking down 5th street, my dog with me, when…“I will be…”I will be walking down 5th street, my dog with me, when…“You were…”You were walking down 5th street, your dog with you, when…“You are…”  You are walking down 5th street, your dog with you, when…“You will be…”  You will be walking down 5th street, your dog with you, when…“They were…”Sally was walking down 5th street, her dog with her, when…“They are…”Sally is walking down 5th street, her dog with her, when…“They will be…”Sally will be walking down 5th street, her dog with her, when…3. How will you structure your sentences?At one end of the spectrum are long, rambling sentences that bridge from one thought to another in a conversational stream-of-consciousness reminiscent of how William Faulkner and Jack Kerouac would fill page after page with colorful images without ever feeling the need to take a breath or insert a period that might allow the listener to think a thought or see an image other than the ones they so carefully projected onto the screen of imagination.At the other end: Hemingway. Declarative. Short and tight. Calling upon the imagination to supply what the writer leaves out. Action happening between the lines. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Faulkner and Hemingway wrote in opposite styles but each of them won the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Faulkner in ’49, Hemingway in ’54.) Faulkner said of Hemingway, “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” To which Hemingway replied, “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”Somewhere between loquacious Faulkner and Spartan Hemingway is the meter, the cadence, the rhythm of syllables that will become a distinctive identifier of your brand, an important part of your audio signature.We’re very anxious to hear it.Roy H. Williams

The boys were born on the same day in the same year: February 12, 1809. Both were intensely private. Each boy lost his mother in early childhood. Neither was close to his father.The two never met but together they tipped the world on its axis and made it wobble for 100 years.You know the story of the first one; born in a log cabin, taught himself to read by the light of the fireplace, wrote with charcoal on the back of a shovel because there was no paper in the house, became a lawyer, had a big heart, kept the Union together. He accomplished his axis tilting because he believed the soaring words Thomas Jefferson had written 87 years earlier. He even made reference to those majestic ideals in the opening line of his most famous speech:“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”The other man believed precisely the opposite. He held a different set of truths to be self-evident. I find it strange that so many people consider him to be the greater hero. Robert was raised with privilege, servants, independently wealthy.  He toyed with the idea of becoming a doctor, then flirted with becoming a minister. His father said, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” At the age of 22, Robbie convinced the captain of a ship that he could provide intelligent conversation at the dinner table and was thus allowed to tag along on an adventure that would free a different kind of slave. Five years later, a much-changed Robert returned to the shores of England where he began to edit the journal of his journey. After two decades of agonizing refinement, the story of his voyage was published: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This book that elevated Charles Robert Darwin to god-like status was built upon his observation of “the survival of the fittest.” Lincoln held to the belief that all men are created equal, but Darwin insisted that some are a little more equal than others. His theory of natural selection tilted the earth again on its axis.  When humans use “survival of the fittest” as a model for making decisions, we lower ourselves to the level of animals. These conversations usually conclude with an agreement that “the end justifies the means” because of something we call “the greater good.” Natural selection would justify every pogrom and ethnic cleansing in our history. But the real earth-wobbling of Charles Robert Darwin was that he gave us a belief system that empowered us to triumphantly dismiss God from our thoughts. We say, “If God does not exist, then we are no longer subject to him.” This shedding of our need for a deity is generally regarded as “the next important step” in human evolution. Most of us, I believe, are captives of bad theology. We often escape one slavery only to be captured by another master even more demanding than the first. And each of us believes his or her own theology, or anti-theology, to provide the truest and best answers. Personally, I consider modern Darwinism to be a religion, or more accurately an anti-theology, a belief system that argues against a creator.  I believe in science and am devoted to its principles. I depend upon the reliability of physics. I acknowledge that evolution can and does happen. But I also believe that God spoke a universe into existence as is written in the book of Genesis and I believe “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” as is proclaimed in the Gospel of John. I am saddened by most televangelists and I deeply resent the annexation of Christianity by the religious right.  I am suspicious of anyone who claims to speak for God. You, too, have a theology or anti-theology, a belief system about God: whether he is or is not, and if he is, whether he is like this or like that. Most people believe in a God who is a lot like them. And this God can usually be trusted to do what that person would do if they were God. God obviously prefers your political party. After all, he’s not stupid, right? And he enables the athletes of your favorite sports teams. I do not mean to be irreverent. An atheist believes there is no god.A theist believes there is.An agnostic tries not to think about it. God is a big thought, a big question, often inflammatory, always uncomfortable, never to be brought up in polite society. I guess I’m just not feeling that polite today. Roy H. Williams

But Not Their Own Facts “If you’ve read about social media or been to any marketing conferences, you’ve probably heard tons of advice like love your customers, engage in the conversation, be yourself, and make friends. I call this unicorns-and-rainbows advice. Take a couple of time-honored adages, add in the unquestioning awe of an unaware audience, and pretty soon you’ve got an entire industry based on easy-to-agree-with but unsubstantiated ideas. But there’s a problem. Myths aren’t real and superstitions often do more harm than good.”-Dan Zarrella, Zarrella’s Hierarchy of ContagiousnessI agree with Dan Zarrella.Have you ever met a person who was absolutely certain that a flu vaccination gave them the flu? “I got a flu shot and immediately got the flu and I know lots of other people who have had the same experience.”“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc” is the Latin name for this highly seductive, misbegotten logic and it’s difficult to resist; “The second thing followed the first thing, therefore the first thing caused the second thing.” But it’s almost never true.It is impossible for a flu vaccine to cause the flu. Flu vaccines contain a killed virus, not a weakened one. The flu germs you receive are dead, dead, dead and cannot come back to life.I sense the narrowing of eyes, the clenching of jaws and the tightening of fists as thousands of readers hunker down to defend a deeply held personal belief: “I got the flu from a flu vaccine no matter what you say. You cannot debate my experience.”It takes a couple of weeks for a flu vaccine to develop sufficient antibodies to protect you from the flu. If you are exposed to the flu within those 2 weeks, bingo: you get the flu. And guess what? They give flu vaccines during flu season. That’s why it’s common for people to get the flu after receiving a flu shot. Those people were going to get the flu anyway, but they don’t know that. All they know is, “I got a flu shot and then I got the flu. The End.”Superstitions about advertising and social media are far more pervasive than misundertandings about flu vaccines. Honestly, I’d rather have the flu than argue with someone whose only “facts” are to say, “Well, I’ve always believed…” and “Me and all my friends…”And then there’s the BIG one: “Studies have shown…”I always want to throw my head back and scream to the sky, “Name the study! Who did the study? Where is the study? Show me the study!” but I usually don’t. I just smile and nod like a bobblehead doll and try to think of a way to escape the conversation.There’s no way to convince a person who makes up their own facts.In my 30 years as an ad writer, I’ve come to the conclusion that most people believe that everyone else thinks like they do. This has led to more disasters in advertising than you can possibly imagine.Think about your business, the thing you do for a living.Here is my promise: you can be certain that people outside your business DON’T think about it like you do.Consequently, you are uniquely unqualified to write ads for your business. You know too much about it. More importantly, you care too much about it. This causes you to assume that everyone else cares, or should care as much as you do.But they don’t. So do the right thing; hire an experienced professional to craft your ads for you.And go get a flu shot.Roy H. Williams

Eleven million copies of Tuesdays with Morrie have been sold. But one hundred years before Mitch Albom began spending the-day-after-Monday with Morrie, a previous Tuesday gathering had already left its mark upon the earth and walked triumphantly into the pages of history. You are cordially invited to the home ofStéphane Mallarmé89 Rue de Rome, ParisTuesdays, 9PM until Midnight Stéphane Mallarmé was an English teacher who wrote a little poetry on the side. Marcel Proust, the writer Grahame Greene would call “the greatest novelist of the 20th century,” was fond of Mallarmé but did not care for his poetry, saying, “How unfortunate that so gifted a man should become insane every time he takes up the pen.” Ouch. Other writers who spent Tuesdays with Stéphane were André Gide, Paul Valéry, Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke, and W.B. Yeats. Of these, only Verlaine was impressed with the poems of Stéphane Mallarmé. Of greater consequence, perhaps, than the writers who gathered on Tuesdays were the artists who came and filled Stéphane’s house with their drawings and paintings of him. These “Tuesday” works of art are now worth tens of millions of dollars though very few people realize Stéphane Mallarmé is the man portrayed. These works of art sell for millions because they were created by Manet, Degas, Gaugin, Whistler, Renoir and Munch. Auguste Rodin would pop in from time to time even though he was busy sculpting The Thinker. Claude Monet said very good things about the snacks. Yes, these were the days when legends walked the earth but they did not yet realize they were legends. In Paris they were known only as Les Mardistes, derived from the French word for Tuesday; “The Tuesday people of Stéphane Mallarmé.” Mallarmé believed poetry should evoke thoughts through suggestion rather than description and that it should approach the abstraction of music. Music! Claude Debussy, speaking of his masterpiece The Afternoon of a Faun, said “The music of this prelude is a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s beautiful poem… a succession of scenes through which pass the desires and dreams of the faun in the heat of the afternoon. Then, tired of pursuing the timorous flight of nymphs and naiads, he succumbs to intoxicating sleep…” Likewise, Ravel wrote Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé shortly after Mallarmé died, fantastic music dedicated to his memory. It’s easy to understand why musicians and impressionist painters liked Mallarmé. He said, “I am creating a language which must necessarily spring from a quite new conception of poetry, and I define it in these words: To paint, not the thing, but the effect which it produces.” Mallarmé liked images of snow, ice, swans, gems, mirrors, cold stars, and women’s fans. He saw the poet’s function as being, above all, “to give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe.” The music of Debussy and Ravel.The sculpture of Rodin.The words of Proust, Wilde and Yeats.The paintings of Monet, Degas, Gaugin and Renoir. The world may have forgotten Stéphane Mallarmé but we will never forget his tribe. Les Mardistes. It is enough. Roy H. Williams

Style Guides and Audio Signatures: Part Two THE OUTER YOU: The best ad campaigns have a style guide. Implicit or explicit, the style guide is always there.A visual style guide determines the look and feel of visual ads, signage and décor. Audio Signatures (distinctive enunciations, sound effects, special effects, unusual voices, rhythms, delivery styles, etc.) are the primary elements in a style guide for electronic media.If a campaign lacks a style guide, it’s a group of disconnected ads. The tighter your style guide, the tighter the connection between your ads and the more memorable your ad campaign.THE INNER YOU: A Character Bible is the style guide that determines the personality of each actor on the stage, telling the playwright how each character thinks, acts and sees the world. The Character Bible is what makes character arcs believable in works of fiction. (A character arc is the emotional transformation of a fictional character as he or she reacts to events in the story, thereby becoming a different person than the one he or she was when the story began.)Keep that thought in mind: The personality of a fictional entity is created through a style guide.INSIDE YOUR BRAND: Every brand is a fictional entity. The strongest brands are those with the most attractive personalities.What is the personality of your brand? What does it look like? What does it sound like? How does your brand think, act, and see the world? (If you’ve spent any time with David Freeman at Wizard Academy, you know exactly what I’m talking about.)INSIDE YOUR COMPANY: A company is another type of fictional entity.The personality of your company is spread across its employees, representatives who are supposed to think, act, and see the world according to the principles your company was built upon. Your employees are your actors and they hunger for a style guide.Your Mission Statement is not your style guide. Mission Statements are amorphous dollops of wishful thinking, high hopes committed to paper. Forgive me, but the average Mission Statement is packed with more clichés than the greeting card aisle in a drugstore. Every time I read one I’m reminded of those young women in beauty pageants who look to the judges with big Bambi eyes and say, “My dream is for world peace.”It takes more than a Mission Statement to bring about world peace and it will take more than a Mission Statement to unify your employees.HOW TO USE THIS INFORMATION:1. Identify the Unifying Principles of your company.2. Write them down.3. Make them real through your words and actions.Unifying Principles become the Character Bible for real-world employees.Unifying Principles are not core values. They provide more guidance than core values.Unifying Principles are not rules. They provide more freedom than rules.Unifying Principles are specific statements that reflect a belief system.Unifying Principles bring people into unity and form the basis for coordinated action.When Jesus was challenged to name “the highest” of the 10 Commandments, he did not answer with a commandment but with two Unifying Principles: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest [Unifying Principle.] And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two [Unifying Principles.]”Honesty is a core value.“Do not steal” is a rule.“Love your neighbor as yourself” is a Unifying Principle. Generosity is a core value.“Allow second helpings” is a rule.“Provide enough that an abundance remains when everyone has had all they want” is a Unifying Principle.Fairness is a core value.The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment is a rule.“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” is a Unifying Principle. Rules are for people whose minds are too small to grasp the principle behind the rules. Involve your employees in your Unifying Principles and you’ll find that rules are no longer required.Principles, not rules, determine how we think, act, and see the world. When employees embrace the principles upon which your company is built, you can trust them to make the right decisions.Can you articulate your Unifying Principles? Give it some thought.Need some help? Come to Austin.Roy H. Williams