Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

No, We're Not Talking About Advertising TodayI recently had dinner with a young friend who has been married for about a year. When he said that he and his wife were hoping to have a child, I knew it was time for The Talk. An older friend gave me The Talk twenty-eight years ago when Pennie was pregnant with Rex, our oldest. Since then, I’ve never failed to pass it along when I hear that a man is about to become a first-time father.“Everything you hear about the joys of fatherhood are true,” I said, “but if you’re not ready for the backlash it can knock you off your feet and screw up the rest of your life.” He gave me a quizzical look so I continued. “Men who cheat on their wives usually do so for the first time shortly after the birth of their first child.”His quizzical look intensified. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”I spoke to him matter-of-factly, like a judge pronouncing judgment on the accused. “You become invisible on the day your baby is born. You remain invisible for nearly a year. You exist only for carrying things. All conversations revolve around the baby. No one asks you about your day. Friends and family walk past you to get to the baby. You’re effectively an outcast. You can’t complain that the baby gets all the attention. That would make you look like a jerk. Your wife is always tired and distracted. Days turn into weeks. You feel like you’ve been dumped by your girlfriend. You’re lonely. Then a girl smiles at you at work. You haven’t seen that in awhile. And she laughs at all your witty remarks. She pays attention to you…”My friend’s mouth opened a little as his jaw slackened. “Wow.”And that, dear reader, is what’s known among men as The Talk.Helping a young man past the crisis of his first child is easy. What’s tough is counseling a mature husband who finds himself attracted to another woman.Dr. Richard D. Grant is a clinical psychologist on the board of directors at Wizard Academy. Here’s some advice he gave a roomful of men recently in Tuscan Hall:“When you find yourself attracted to a woman who is not your wife, sit down with a pen and paper and make a list of the things you like best about the woman. Then look at those attributes as action items on a ‘To Do’ list for self-improvement. It’s never really about the woman. It’s about what’s missing in your own life.”Dr. Grant then told a story about taking his sons to get a haircut when they were young. “…out of the backroom comes a young woman with scissors in her hand, tan, taut, perky, athletic, windblown, outdoorsy. I was spellbound. So I grabbed a pen and starting writing like mad. Then, looking at the list of her attributes, it hit me: 'I've been working feverishly on a book for months, buried in a manuscript. I'm in need of exercise, sunshine, the outdoors.' So I made a commitment to myself to pursue those things aggressively. Thirty minutes later I left that barbershop with two freshly groomed sons and a To Do list for self-improvement. I never looked back.”Among the 40,000 readers of the Monday Morning Memo there are certain to be many for whom today’s memo brought back memories of past heartaches. For this, I apologize.My goal is not to turn your eyes to the past, but to the future.SUMMARY: Guys, we’re always attracted to what’s missing in our lives. And the thing we miss most will sometimes show up in the form of a woman.So if you are married but attracted to another woman, grab a pen and paper. Make a list. Get to work on yourself. This is the path that leads to lasting satisfaction.Yours,Roy H. Williams

And Tried To Warn Us Three Years AgoI met Greg Farrell in 1999 while on a book tour promoting Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads. We shared a bottle of red wine at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Bull and Bear pub. Greg and I hit it off and we stayed in touch.I remember making the phone call in 2002. “Greg, I’ve been thinking about what you told me and I want you to write a book called America Robbed Blind. Will you do it?” Greg wasn’t sure he had the time, so I emailed him my cover design: the Statue of Liberty wearing a blindfold, holding a bag full of cash.The image was a double-prediction:1. The American people, blindfolded, left holding the bag after a robbery.2. The American people, blindfolded, about to be robbed of all they had.Greg laughed when he saw the cover and said he would write the book. That was 2002. Wizard Academy Press published America Robbed Blind in January, 2005.Back in those days Greg was an investigative reporter for USA Today. His job was to monitor the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and investigate Wall Street crime.Greg was America’s only reporter in the courtroom for every minute of the trials of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Martha Stewart. As an investigative reporter Greg dug deep, full time, year after year. “Roy, the SEC is being set up to take the fall for a series of financial disasters,” he said. “This whole Enron thing is just the tip of the iceberg.”“What do you mean?”“The number of publicly traded companies has grown exponentially in recent years, yet the budget for the SEC had been increased by only a small amount. Think of it this way,” Greg said, “Andy and Barney did a pretty good job patrolling Mayberry, but now they’re being told they have to patrol Los Angeles without any additional help, and without any bullets for their guns.”Greg went on to explain how Congress keeps the SEC under-funded so that big business can grow unimpeded, unsupervised, and unregulated. If Congress allowed the SEC to do its job, big business would cry, “The government has us handcuffed! We can’t compete with all these government regulations.”Big companies donate big dollars to congressional candidates. Are you beginning to get the picture?Page 68 of Greg’s book details the proposal made during the summer of 2000 by Arthur Levitt, chairman of the SEC at the time.Levitt was absolutely convinced that a financial catastrophe was coming and begged Congress to give him the power to stop it.“But several big firms whose campaign contributions to lawmakers on Capitol Hill gave them enormous clout, fought the proposal aggressively… Levitt went to extraordinary lengths to show Congress the dangers that lay ahead… But Levitt’s warnings fell on deaf ears. So he took the battle to the states… It was only in November of 2000, when he learned that Congress was threatening to cut the SEC’s budget if the new rule went into effect, that Levitt relented.” – Page 69, America Robbed Blind, (2005)In essence, Congress told Andy to quit complaining or they would take away his budget to pay Barney.When the whole Enron thing was over, I asked Greg if he thought anything like that could ever happen again. “You can count on it,” he said, “It’s inevitable. As long as Congress keeps the watchdog starved, muzzled and on a chain, the abuses will multiply. Arthur Levitt begged Congress to empower the SEC and they spanked him for it.”Enron and his cousins robbed American investors of more than 500 billion dollars. Then on September 18, 2008, after it was learned that Americans would again be left holding the bag for a 700 billion-dollar bank heist, John McCain, a lawmaker on Capitol Hill for the past 26 years, said, “The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president and in my view, has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were president today, I would fire him.’’Wow. They’re trying to hang this debacle around the neck of the SEC and use them as the scapegoat, just as Greg said they would. (Hey, if Obama had said it, I’d be equally appalled, so don’t make the mistake of thinking I have a political bias. I don’t.)Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that Greg described exactly how to fix the problem in his book (pages 180-181,) but no one paid attention:1. Allow the SEC to keep the feesit currently collects from public companies. Self-funding would protect the financial health of the commission from the whims of its Congressional overlords, and allow the SEC to grow at the same rate as the financial markets it polices.2. Give SEC attorneys criminal enforcement powers.3. Give bonuses to successful SEC attorneys.Plaintiff’s lawyers who bring cases against tobacco companies and asbestos manufacturers put years of effort into the cause because if they win, the financial payoff is astronomical. But an SEC lawyer has almost no incentive to take on difficult cases where the commission is outgunned by a public company’s army of lawyers.Greg Farrell is a past winner of the Jesse Neal Award for investigative reporting, a recipient of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship for business journalism, a graduate of Harvard University (with an MBA from Columbia) and a cognoscenti graduate of Wizard Academy, where he also serves on the adjunct faculty. He was recently lured away from USA Today by the Financial Times.You want to know what’s really happening in financial America? Pay attention to Greg Farrell. So far, he’s batting a thousand.Roy H. Williams

I recently asked a group of 14 men to share a snapshot from their photo albums of random memory, a vivid image, unfaded, a moment inexplicable, captured forever by a long-ago click of that camera in the brain.Here’s what they handed me on scraps of paper: “Trish’s laugh as she walked out of the room on the day we met.”Click.“How my knee bled when I crossed the line.”Click.“Father Caprio lifting the fear of failure from my fifteen year-old shoulders.”Click.“Game nearly over, rain pouring, no time outs remain. A seven year-old says, ‘Coach, I gotta go to the bathroom.’ I say, ‘No time-outs. Go in your pants.’ He does. We win.”Click.“The sight of my mother driving into the park an hour after I nearly drowned.”Click.“Seeing my Dad lying in a hospital bed after a liver transplant, hundreds of tubes running out of his body.”Click.“Trevor’s face after I beat him in a footrace – two things had died – our friendship, and something in his eyes.”Click.“Holding her hand as we said a prayer and goodbye.”Click.“Walking onstage for the first time at age 40 to play a sold-out show for screaming fans.”Click.“Seeing my one year-old nephew’s lifeless body.”Click.“Cleaning two garbage bags full of fish in the bathtub with my Dad.”Click.“Ringing the bell to start a local wrestling match when I was seven.”Click.“The car ride with my parents as we drove across town to pick out a puppy.”Click.“Walking through the haunted hallway to get to the playground on the other side.”(That last one about the haunted hallway almost sounds like a metaphor for life, doesn’t it?)My point today is this: Each of us lives in a private world alone, trapped by our own opinions, limited by our own attitudes, guided by our own experiences. Sometimes I wonder how we’re able to relate to each other at all.And yet we create ads under the assumption that customers are all alike.When writing ads:1. Never assume that other people think like you do. You’ve got to be willing to see your own opinions as those of an irrelevant freak.2. Never assume that other people make decisions using the same criteria you use. EXAMPLE: A product comes in two sizes. A ten-ounce package costs a dollar. A forty-ounce package costs two dollars. Half the people will buy the ten-ounce package because it’s cheaper. The other half will buy the forty-ounce package because it’s cheaper.3. Never assume your ad to be relevant to more than 10 percent of the people who encounter it. There is no such thing as the general public.4. Never write to “everyone.” An ad written to an individual is always more effective than an ad written to a faceless mob.Click the highlighted word in any of the quotes above to see how a random quote can be used as a persona-target at which to aim your ad writing.I’ll see you next week.Same time. Same computer.Roy H. Williams

Elizabeth was a young Quaker girl who fell happily in love and got married in 1929. “Morgan Vining, my husband, swept my little boat out of the shallows into the sunlit depths of life’s stream and we had almost five years together before, in a single moment, he was gone.”Car wrecks happen quickly.Elizabeth Vining was adrift. A line from the Breton Fisherman's Prayer said it best, “Oh Lord, your sea is so great and my boat is so small.”Elizabeth became a schoolteacher who in the evening wrote children’s books. Her most popular title was Adam on the Road (1942).Then, at the end of World War Two, 43 year-old Elizabeth Vining got a call. General Douglas MacArthur had decided not to charge Japan’s Emperor Hirohito with war crimes. Instead, he asked that Elizabeth Vining become the tutor of Crown Prince Akihito, the emperor’s son.Elizabeth accepted.Upon her arrival in Japan, she encountered a lonely 12 year-old boy whose eyes sparkled with “a hidden sense of humor.” As crown prince, Akihito lived separately from his parents. He saw them only once a week, for a one-hour meal together.The next 4 years were filled with English lessons, games of Hide and Seek, Monopoly and stories of Abraham Lincoln. The seeds of independent thinking were planted.Risk orientation.Individual effort and reward.Breaking the rules.Thinking outside the box.These ideas were profoundly unJapanese.In 1950, Elizabeth Vining returned quietly to the United States since Akihito’s mastery of English was nearly as good as her own. Akihito’s farewell gift to Mrs. Vining was a poem, written in his best calligraphy, about the birds returning to the Akasaka Palace Gardens after the war.Soon after the departure of Mrs. Vining, young Akihito met beautiful Michiko on the tennis court. In 1959, he broke 2,600 years of Japanese tradition by marrying Michiko, a commoner.And a Quaker woman from America was the only foreigner allowed to attend the wedding.But Akihito wasn’t finished surprising the world. All Japan was stunned when he and Michiko announced they would raise their own children. Another 2,600 year-old tradition, shattered by the 125th emperor of Japan.Akihito’s attitude gave freedom to other Japanese to begin thinking independently as well. Honda, Sony, Toyota, Mitsubishi and their amazing fruits of innovation sprouted from a single seed, planted by a Quaker widow.Vining opened the door in 1946. Deming walked through it in 1950.Elizabeth Vining lived to be 97 years old. And each year on her birthday, with all the precision and dependability we have come to expect from Japan, a limousine from the Japanese embassy would stop in front of her home as a tuxedoed ambassador delivered a giant bouquet of flowers.A simple woman quietly did her best,a young boy had a change of heart,and a nation opened the doors of its mind.It would appear that a small boat is able to cross a great sea.Roy H. Williams

for Realtors, Used Cars and Free PuppiesReal estate is a business involving mountains of money. It’s also a business in crisis. Put these together and it means ka-ching if you know how to make the phone ring for realtors.You ought not be surprised that I know how to make phones ring. What should surprise you is that I’m willing to tell you… for free.Here’s how to Make Magic in real estate:1.   Ask the realtor to show you an unusual house. More often than not, you’ll want the house to be in the price range an average person could afford.2.   What makes this house quirky or weird or memorable isn’t really important. What matters is that it has something distinctive about it.3.   Visit the house. Ponder the distinctive feature until it triggers the memory of a cultural icon.4.   Pull the icon into your ad copy. Radio works best, but this technique also works well in newspaper classifieds.5.   Always mention the price of the house.6.   Never mention the square footage, the number of bedrooms, or the address.Let’s say it’s a white, frame house with a front porch, the kind that blanketed America during the first half of the 20th century. Older parts of every town are littered with these. The only thing this house has going for it is a giant tree in the front yard.ANOUNCER: Telling your friends how to find your new house will be easy.FEMALE ON PHONE:  “We’re the house with the giant tree in the yard. You can’t miss us.”ANNOUNCER: That big tree is begging for a tire swing. Will yours be the family that finally hangs one from that massive branch? Add a white picket fence and it’s the house of Tom Sawyer. Here comes Becky Thatcher down the sidewalk. This is the house of a Norman Rockwell image. In a minute you’ll see Andy and Barney cruise past in the patrol car. Aunt Bee is making a pie in the kitchen. This is a house for celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. A home to come home to. And just two hundred and nine thousand dollars makes it yours. Want to see it? Call Kathryn Nelson at 555-5555. She’s not one of those big hair, lots-of-jewelry realtors. She’s regular people.REALTOR: Kathryn Nelson. Small hair, modest jewelry. 555-5555Okay, that was easy. Let’s try again. This time it’s a house begging for a remodel. The appliances are a weird color, the sinks and bathtubs are pink porcelain and the bathroom tile is checkerboard black and white. The light fixtures are strange.ANNOUNCER: Did you ever see Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Distinctive. Avant-guarde. Sophisticated. Straight out of The New Yorker magazine. This is the house of Holly Golightly. Ridiculously retro. Definitely not for everyone. But absolutely adorable. And it has a driveway built for a sportscar. There’s only one and this is it. Two hundred and twenty-nine thousand. And the shrubbery! I’m not even going to try to describe it. Listed by Harvey Rich Realtors, of course. Harvey Rich has all the interesting houses.REALTOR: Boring houses are for boring people. Harvey Rich has interesting houses. And I’d love to show you this one. 555-5555 Harvey Rich.Now let me make this clear: The goal is to make the phone ring. Whether or not the caller buys the advertised house is unimportant. The realtor just wants to meet folks who are thinking of moving. He or she wants a shot at listing their current home. If the respondent doesn’t like the home you featured, the realtor will happily drive them to see some other ones.NOTE: If you yield to temptation and add any of the typical “3 bedroom, two bath” real estate language, it’ll kill response deader than a bag of hammers.The Cognoscenti will recognize this technique as a variation of Being Perfectly Robert Frank:1. Selected Details.2. Interesting Angle.3. What to Leave Out.This is a Wizard of Ads signature technique. Consequently, it requires an advertiser bold enough to believe that every other realtor is doing it wrong. These people are harder to find than you think. Most advertisers secretly believe in conformity to the norm.Jason Embleton is a Cognoscenti graduate of Wizard Academy and a used car dealer. Here are a couple of radio ads Jason wrote recently:A Chevy pick-up with a sunroof. Four doors. And the back seat along with the wall behind it folds down to create the longest, roomiest cargo space of any vehicle on the road. Yours for $19,995. It’s the Swiss Army knife of trucks. Jet black with dove grey leather. It’s a weird, cool truck for a weird, cool person. See it for yourself at Embleton Auto, where the only pressure is in the tires. Recognize the technique?It’s a car you’ll want to drive forever. Just nineteen thousand, nine hundred dollars. A limited-edition Mini-Cooper with a factory-supercharged BMW engine. Black with a charcoal hood scoop and wrap-around racing stripes. Six speed transmission. It doesn’t just look fast. It’s a bullet-on-wheels that corners like a Formula One racecar. See it for yourself at Embleton Auto, where the only pressure is in the tires.Keep in mind that no one is looking for a realtor. Everyone is looking for a house. And no one is looking for a used car dealer. Everyone is looking for a car.My mother taught me this ad-writing technique when I was thirteen. My dog’s accidental puppies were ready to wean when this ad appeared in the paper:Authentic Precious Pearl puppies.Free to good homes. 555-5555“Hello?”“What kind of dog is a Precious Pearl?”After we got through telling them all about Pearl, our dog, every caller wanted a puppy.The secret is knowing how to make the phone ring.And now you know how.Aloha and Aroo.Roy H. Williams

A Monday Morning Memo of the Wizard of AdsIt’s like you’ve asked him to defend his religion; the business owner who believes in growing his businesses through exceptional service delivered by extraordinary people gets testy when you ask him to name a business that has successfully employed this strategy.It’s like trying to convince a believer there is no God.I’ve encountered dozens of business owners who believed in their hearts they had extraordinary employees.None of them ever did.Properly enforced systems, methods, policies and procedures allow a company to get exceptional actions from ordinary people. If your business requires you to attract and retain extraordinary people, you’ve got a dangerous business model.And then there’s the Exceptional Service Myth:“If we give our customers exceptional service, they’ll tell all their friends.”My response:“No, they won’t. Not in large numbers, anyway.”“But we get comments and letters every day from customers raving about the service we gave them.”“Good service leads to customer loyalty but it doesn't breed word-of-mouth. Most people assume any plumber can fix the pipes, any electrician can solve the electrical problem and any retail store will accept the return of a defective item with a smile. We take competence for granted. We tell their boss when an employee has delighted us. That’s how we reward the employee. We tell our friends when a company has disappointed us. That’s how we protect our friends. Most people feel they’ve settled the service debt when they praise the employee to their boss. But they hesitate to tell their friends because they can’t be certain their friends will encounter the same employee.”“But our competitors are dishonest and incompetent and we’re not! You just need to help us educate the customer.”“I’ve been down that road dozens of times during the past 30 years. You’re not going to like where it leads.”“What do you mean?”“I’ve spent million of dollars of other people’s money trying to convince the public they should buy from my clients because my clients were more honest, cared more deeply and were committed to delivering an extraordinary buying experience.”“How did that turn out?”“Most customers assume you’re trying to direct attention away from the fact that your prices are too high. When the occasional customer does believe your claims, you’ve usually raised their expectations so high that you can’t possibly live up to the picture you’ve painted in their mind. Ads that promise exceptional service don’t increase your sales figures but they do increase your complaints.”“So what kinds of ads will increase my sales figures?”I’ll tell you next week.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episodeA Post American World? Really?August 25, 2008ListenOur American men dropped the baton in the 4×100 meter relay. It was embarrassing. Unthinkable.A few minutes later our American women did precisely the same thing.The commentators were brutal, but accurate: “You have to look at the new leadership at USA Track and Field and wonder if it’s been a vacuum of leadership. There does seem to be no cohesiveness. It seems that everyone has their own agenda.”Bob Costas wrapped it up by saying, “Did you notice that all the other nations had their country names nicely printed on their bibs? And look at the Americans: ‘USA’ written on theirs in magic marker.”Oil is more than $120/barrel, which makes the cost of driving home from work approximately the same as the cost of dinner. Gold and platinum recently rose to all-time high prices because rich people hoard precious metals when they lose confidence in the leadership of America. Our newscasters make certain we go to bed each night knowing inflation and unemployment are on the rise.Thanks guys. You’re a real ray of sunshine.I switched off the TV, went online and stumbled across a headline posted by CBS News: “Coming Soon: A Post-American World.” The subtitle said, “With The Rise Of China And Other Economies, The Golden Age Of American Influence May Be Coming To An End.”The story opened by saying, “Millions of us have been swept up in the color and drama of the Olympic Games. But the Beijing Stadium isn't the only arena for global competition. Now, after decades of dominance, will the U.S. soon be 'passing the torch'”?CBS went on to say, “America's beverage, Budweiser beer, is now owned by Belgians… And isn't the United States supposed to be the place with the biggest and best of everything? The tallest building in the world isn't in New York or Chicago anymore. It's in Taipei. The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, once the world's largest, isn't even in the top ten now. The biggest one's in – surprise, surprise – China.”CBS then quoted Albert Keidel, an expert on China's economy, as saying China “will deserve and demand leadership in global institutions.”CBS asked rhetorically, “Are we slipping? Are we reaching some inevitable tipping point that will change the world as we know it? Is the golden age of America coming to an end?”I turned off my computer and grinned as I recalled Mark Twain’s response to the American newspaper that printed his obituary. His telegram said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”Yes, it’s dark and it’s getting cold. But I’ve already seen this movie, so I know how it ends. It was 1980. Our president was miffed because Russia had invaded Afghanistan, so he told our athletes they couldn’t compete in the Olympics in Moscow. Oil and gold were at an all-time high and we were in the grip of rising inflation. Even more embarrassing was the fact that fifty-two U.S. diplomats were held hostage in Iran for 444 days. Our president tried to rescue them but America’s helicopters broke down and 8 of our military people lost their lives.Iran laughed at us.Then we got a new president. The Iranians respected the new guy and released the hostages while he was taking the oath of office.My comments today have nothing to do with political parties. My comments have to do with leadership. And optimism. And the ability to inspire optimism in others.When times are good, America gets soft. I’ve seen it. But when times get tough, America tightens her belt, rolls up her sleeve and shows her true colors. I’ve seen that, too. All we need is a leader.Oh, yes. I have one last thing to say:Kiss my ass, CBS. We’re about to have an election.Roy H. Williams

Advertising salespeople are highly paid because rejection hurts. They told me to rub Zig Ziglar on it, but the sting and the ache stayed with me. I was 20 years old.The smiley seminar speaker said, “Look in the mirror each morning and repeat these affirmations.”Sorry, I’ve already got a religion and it makes me very uncomfortable with self-worship. I know there’s a God and it isn’t me.My manager tried to teach me how to overcome objections but that only made me feel worse. People were rejecting me because they assumed I was a professional liar and now I was becoming one.Everywhere I went I heard, “I tried advertising and it didn’t work.”“Yeah, I know,” whispered the little voice inside me, “I see it not work every day.”You would have fired me by now, right? I would have fired me, too. But Dennis Worden saw a spark in me that he believed he could fan into a flame. Lucky for both of us, he was right.My career found wings the day I encountered an advertiser who had a message worth hearing. I delivered his message to my little audience and his business exploded. No question about it, my tiny audience was making him rich. Now I had a success story to tell my prospects. But a success story is a doubled-edged sword. Filled with names and dates and details and numbers, success stories cut through the doubt and make prospects say yes. But the second edge – the one that cuts the seller – is the implied promise, “The same thing will happen to you.”But if that advertiser’s message is weak, you’ll soon be hearing, “I bought what you said and it didn’t work.” I had been groping blindly in a pitch-dark room when I flicked the light switch on the wall. Suddenly everything was clear: Message and copy are two different things.“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.” – Chuang-tzu, 350 BCIf Chuang-tzu had been in advertising, he would have said, “Copy exists because of message. Once you’ve gotten the message, you can forget the copy.”That first successful client owned an auto body shop. He had an invisible location but a powerful message that had never been told. I was merely the guy who uncovered his shiny message and held it up in the light. That was 30 years ago, but I can still tell you the essence of Danny’s message:1.   No one ever plans to have a traffic accident.2.   You don’t really have to get 3 estimates from 3 different body shops.3.   You don’t even have to pay your $250 or $500 deductible.4.   Your insurance company will happily pay whatever their adjustor says is the right amount.5.   When you’ve been involved in a traffic accident, call me.6.   I’ll send out a wrecker to pick up you and your car.7.   I’ll give you a free loaner car to drive while I’m repairing your car.8.   I’ll notify your insurance company and meet with the adjustor.9.   I’ll fix your car for whatever amount the insurance adjustor agrees to pay.10.   You don’t even have to pay your deductible.11.   And since we’ve already got the paint in the gun, we’ll fix those little door dings and scratches on the other side of the car that were there before the accident. No extra charge.12.   You’ll get back a car that’s better than it was before the accident.You don’t have to be a good copywriter to create a great ad from that message. You just have to make sure the advertiser understands:1.   They need to stay on the air long enough for people to hear them and remember their message. That’s when they’ll begin to see results.2.   Then they have to wait for the listener to need them.3.   The longer they stay on the air, the deeper the message goes into memory and the better it works.I’ve never seen an advertiser fail because they were reaching the wrong people but I’ve seen thousands fail because they had a weak message. We create failure when we assume creative copy will compensate for the fact that an advertiser has nothing to say.Are there exceptions to what I’ve told you? Of course.1.   The advertiser with a weak message, often repeated, will prevail over a competitor with an equally weak message less often heard. When weak vs. weak, frequency is a tiebreaker.2.   The advertiser with a weak message wrapped in cleverness and humor will prevail over a competitor with an equally weak message wrapped in a brown paper bag.3.   The advertiser with a weak message and a big ad budget will prevail over a competitor with a strong message that never gets heard.I made my fortune searching out little businesses with strong messages that had never been heard. Everyone thought I was a great copywriter, but they were wrong. I was a great message-finder.When I finally wrapped my head around the fact that success wasn’t determined by the “rightness” of my audience, the loyalty of my audience, the size of my audience or the cleverness of my copy, I began to sell everyone I met. I knew all I had to do was dig until I found a message worth sharing. And if the advertiser didn’t have a message worth telling, I had to convince them to create one or prepare them for a life of mediocrity.What I said to them made sense. My prospects were sold on me long before I was sold on them.I knew I could grow the business if the business owner would only let me. When prospects didn’t want to meet with me, I no longer felt rejection. I felt pity for them. And if they were so unfortunate as to hurt my feelings I would track down their smallest competitor and make that competitor their worst nightmare.People say I have a big ego. But in truth I’m shy and easily wounded. I learned how to make advertising work because I was unable to face my clients when it didn’t.And now you know.Roy H. Williams

A Monday Morning Memo for the Clients and Friends of Roy H. WilliamsYou walk into a room, empty but for a table carved from crystal. Girdling the table are 11 other persons whose occupations are similar to yours.You place ten thousand dollars on the table, your gift to the group. Each of the other 11 does the same. But this is a magic table. You don’t walk away with your own ten thousand. You get the entire hundred and twenty.And so does everyone else.The crystal table is a metaphor. Its benefits are real, but the stakes are much higher than a mere hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And you need not bring any cash. Bring instead the things you’ve learned over the years – your failures and successes, your experiments and discoveries, your golden nuggets of experience.And everyone else will bring theirs. Are you beginning to see the power of a Peer Group?My friend John Young says, “There’s a fundamental difference between a smart man and a wise man. A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake altogether.”When people share their experiences in an atmosphere of respect and mutual trust, a special kind of magic occurs: smart people become wise and their businesses begin to grow.The American Small Business Institute is about to launch Peer Groups of 12 persons each. Would you like to be in one of them?Guided by a moderator and an agenda, each group will teleconference weekly for exactly one hour.Extraordinary? Yes.Exclusive? Yes.Expensive? No.The new member fee will be $500 and first year dues will be just $200 per month. We anticipate there will be Peer Groups for gym owners, body shop owners, convenience store owners, restaurant owners and bookies.Just kidding about the bookies.We will, however, try to form an American Small Business Peer Group for just about any business category except jewelers. This is because jewelers already have the ultimate peer group available to them. Likewise, plumbers and HVAC contractors have extraordinary opportunity as well.You’re just one click away from complete details about the American Small Business Peer Groups.Heads Up: Next week’s Monday Morning Memo is going to be highly controversial. If I don’t talk myself out of it between now and then, I’ll probably lose a lot of subscribers.It's a subject far more personal than politics or religion.I wonder which me will win the debate.Yours,Roy H. Williams

and the Smell of Fresh PaintCommercially speaking, where are things happening in your town? Move to where the action is. Follow Best Buy, Home Depot, Starbucks and the other Big Boys who have already done the research.Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.Media costs are escalating and the public is hiding from ads. These are just two of the reasons why a great location is more important today than ever before.Expensive rent is the cheapest advertising your money can buy.Is Walgreens able to afford great locations because they do a big volume, or do they do a big volume because they always secure great locations?A high-visibility location communicates leadership. It implies that you do things better than your competitors.The goal of advertising is to become familiar to your customer, to become part of their world so they think of you immediately when they need what you sell. All else being equal, customers choose the familiar over the unfamiliar. A great location makes you familiar to the public.Are you in retail? Cut your yellow page ads dramatically or altogether. Add these dollars to your occupancy budget. (The yellow pages are a service directory. Don’t waste your retail exposure dollars there.)Cheap rent is seductive and insidious. It ensnares even the brightest people.Two weeks ago I was listening to a man tell me about his business when I abruptly told him that his problems were the result of a bad location. He hadn't yet told me anything about his location when I made the statement.“What makes you think I have a bad location?”“I knew the moment you told me which parts of your company were profitable and which were struggling.”“But I didn’t think the location would matter for a business in my category. We’re a destination. We don’t need drive-by traffic.”“How much do you spend for occupancy and how much are you spending for advertising?”“Two thousand a month for rent. Seventy-five hundred a month on radio ads.”“What would it cost to be where the action is?”“About four thousand a month.”“Take the extra two thousand from the ad budget. Four thousand for occupancy and fifty-five hundred on the radio will make you a lot more money.”Your location tells the public what you believe about your company in your heart.How proud is your location?Roy H. Williams