Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I bought an old oil painting. It’s not a large painting or an important one, but it came from the private collection of the founder of the Whitney Museum.I bought it because I’ve always admired Cornelius Vanderbilt and his great-grandson, Willie K. Vanderbilt II, and I consider the delightful Gertude Vanderbilt-Whitney, the great-grandaughter of Cornelius, to be the third, truly interesting Vanderbilt.The First Vanderbilt:The fourth of nine children, Cornelius was in the first grade when George Washington died. At sixteen, he borrowed $100* from his mother to buy a little sailboat to haul passengers and freight between Staten Island and New York City.By the time he was forty, the Vanderbilt fleet was hauling passengers and freight to ports all along the Atlantic coast, earning Cornelius the nickname “Commodore.” He then began buying up struggling railroads and turning them around.The difference between Vanderbilt and his competitors was that his boats and trains ran on schedule and the service was always excellent. If Cornelius Vanderbilt was running an airline today, you would no longer dread going to the airport.The Second Vanderbilt:Willie K. Vanderbilt II (1878–1944), was often seen covered in grease with an automobile engine spread out in pieces around him. Young Willie K outran Henry Ford in 1904 to set a new world land speed record of ninety-two miles per hour. Later that year, Willie held the first Vanderbilt Cup Auto Race and singlehandedly changed the course of American auto making.By offering a first prize of about a million dollars (by today’s standards), Willie K inspired more than 3,000 entrepreneurs to leap to the task of manufacturing stronger, better, faster cars. The Vanderbilt Cup was discontinued after its seventh year because the crowds of more than 400,000 spectators could no longer be safely controlled.He then built a modest home for himself with an excellent wharf and boathouse. His energy was forever after focused on marine life in all its strange and wonderful forms. Every day was a new adventure in the waters of the deep. Prior to his death in 1942, Willie K. Vanderbilt II discovered and documented sixty-eight species of ocean life previously unknown to science.The Third Vanderbilt:Gertrude Vanderbilt (1875–1942,) married a thoroughbred horse breeder named Harry Whitney when she was 21 years old. Harry was a descendent of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin in 1839.Shortly after she got married, Gertrude began studying sculpture in Paris with Auguste Rodin. Her love of the arts, her skill as a sculptor, and her Vanderbilt fortune allowed Gertude to become one of the world’s foremost collectors of art. Her artistic fever inflamed New York’s Greenwich Village and caused it to burn brightly as a new bohemia in the early 1900s.In 1931, Gertrude donated 600 of her most precious paintings to create the Whitney Museum of American Art.She kept only a few paintings for her private collection at home.Pennie and I plan to hang the one we bought in Alchemy, the Renaissance coffee and cocktail bar being built by our son, Rex. The painting is of two young women in a kitchen, painted in that style for which Frans van Mieris is famous. If those women aren’t twins, they are obviously sisters.When you visit Wizard Academy next year, perhaps Alchemy will be completed, and you’ll see it there.Aroo,Roy H. WilliamsPS – Of the 111 descendents of Cornelius Vanderbilt, I consider Timothy Olyphant, the actor, to be The Fourth Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper, the broadcast journalist, to be Vanderbilt #5. You can see the entire list on WIKIPEDIA.

It is easy to attract attention:Predictability is death. Spontaneity is life.Day and night, left and right,timid and bold, young and old,up and down, smile and frown.Start and end. Do it again.Negative and positive, effected and causative,passive and active, repulsive and attractive:Paired opposites are the essence of magnetism.You can attention now attract!But opposites quickly get old.To keep that attention,you must learn how to hold.Straight lines are okay, but so are twists, and twirls.Learn to do all three and create Magical Worlds.Two opposites can only disagree.Scientific Chaos begins with three.Opposites collide and we hear the laughter,but the space in the middle is what we’re after.Relieve opposing tensions and you’ll get no respect.Make them work for you, and you’ll be an architect.Marley Porter had the idea, so I gave it words:“Let other people have seconds; we want thirds.”Big endings and beginnings come with a riddleand the answer is hiding in that space in the middle.When a character is tri-flicted, we get addicted.When your story is hollow, fill it with what you can borrow.When your joke has a hole, fill it with what you stole.When your ad has a cavity, fill it with gravity.You can tap your foot. You can play the fiddle.But the dance will happen in that space in the middle.To hold attention slickly,transfer big ideas quickly.If you want to hit hard,make them drop their guard.When they quit thinking and start feeling,you’ll have them reeling.So now you know – but you always did –attention is auctioned but you have to bid.And you, my friend, are a story-telling squid.Wrap the audience in your multiple arms.Pull them in closer. Ignore the alarms.Hold their attention, and they will hold their breath.And what they will feel is life, the opposite of death.Roy H. WilliamsOn October 16, 1923 — precisely 100 years ago today — Walt Disney and his brother Roy launched an entertainment business. It filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter. But the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio rebounded and evolved into one of the world’s best-known and most beloved companies. This week, roving reporter Rotbart explores the history of The Walt Disney Company and reveals an incredible Disneyland document that he and his son Maxwell discovered deep in the archives of a Kansas museum. You know that our roving reporter began his career as an investigative reporter and award-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal, right? Finding things that no one ever found before is what Rotbart does best! Prepare to be amazed at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Most of us cheer for the little dog that doesn’t have a chance. The underdog.We like them because they need us.Underdogs are those little dogs that rise above their circumstances and overcome their disadvantages. It is the underdog we see in our mind when we say, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”Underdogs do the best they can. They push and struggle and hope for a brighter future. They remind us of ourselves.“The scientific literature suggests that fans of losing teams turn out to be better decision-makers and deal better with divergent thought, as opposed to the unreflective fans of winning teams.”– Dr. Jordan Grafman, a researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders (2011)That’s interesting, don’t you think? People who cheer for little David in his fight against big Goliath are reflective, good decision-makers, and unafraid to think new thoughts.We cheer for the underdog, always and forever. We go out of minds with ecstasy when the underdog finally wins. That’s our dog! We look at each other and we know, “That little dog is you and me.”The underdog is a cultural hero.“How do human beings put into words their ideas about the meaning of human life? How do they convey through art and religion their beliefs about the significance of human life? They do it partly by investing in certain transcultural stories, like the one about the adventures of a culture hero, which, after a period of trial and hardship, always ends in triumph.”– Barry Lopez, Horizons, page 323Do you know what has me concerned?The United States began as a nation of underdogs, but it took us barely 10 generations to become a nation of overdogs, victors, champions, and our values have changed because of it.Today we believe, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.“We want more subscribers, more influence, more likes, more admirers, more fame, and more money. How much is enough? “Just a little bit more.”I suspect Louis Menand was contemplating all of this in June, 2011 when he wrote:“In a society that encourages its members to pursue the career paths that promise the greatest personal or financial rewards, people will, given a choice, learn only what they need to know for success. They will have no incentive to acquire the knowledge and skills important for life as an informed citizen, or as a reflective and culturally literate human being.”Wouldn’t it be great to have a nation – and a government – of people who were informed citizens and reflective, culturally literate human beings?Wouldn’t that be great?Roy H. WilliamsCurt Tueffert has spent four decades helping people enjoy world-class sales success. When it comes to selling, Curt has seen it all, done it all. Qualify customer prospects, help them past their hesitations, and never feel rejection when rejected: Curt can tell you how. According to roving reporter Rotbart, this week’s episode will instantly boost your batting average in the great game of selling. MondayMorningRadio.com

My novelist friend, Brad Whittington and I share a deep and abiding love for the colorful canvases of Robertson Davies, a Canadian writer who paints pictures in the mind."Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position." – Robertson DaviesUseful knowledge is intellectual. Ornamental knowledge is artistic, fascinating, emotional. But please don't feel that you need to choose between the two. Just as air and water are both essential to your physical wellbeing, Useful knowledge and Ornamental knowledge are both essential to your happiness.Useful knowledge is hard to share. Short sentences are required. There is no room for wordplay when 20/20 clarity is your goal. Writers who can write clearly are needed and needed badly. How is it that every instruction manual is written by a Loquacious Luke who insists on using 27 words when 1 will do? Give me 10 people who can write the truth simply, sharply, and clearly, and I will remove half the frustration from the world.Writers of Useful knowledge communicate clearly and quickly.Writers who share Ornamental knowledge splash splendid colors in the mind to produce vivid visions.But there is a third writer for whom there is no place, no purpose, no need. This is the writer of Adspeak, that empty language of fluff and feathers favored by people who have nothing to say.Adspeak in the boardroom is known as 'Business-dude lorem ipsum'.Charlie Warzel writes for The Atlantic. Here's what Charlie said on August 31, 2022:"'Business-dude lorem ipsum' is filler language that is used to roleplay 'thought leadership' among those who have nothing to say: the MBA version of a grade-school book report that starts with a Webster’s Dictionary definition. Advanced business-dude lorem ipsum will convey action ('We need to design value in stages') but only in the least tangible way possible. It will employ industry terms of art ('We’re first-to-market or a fast follower') that indicate the business dude has been in many meetings where similar ideas were hatched. Business-dude lorem ipsum will often hold one or two platitudes that sound like they might also be Zen koans ('value is in the eye of the beholder') but actually are so broad that they say nothing at all."Weird Al Yankovic has a video on Youtube called "Mission Statement" featuring a delightful song made of 100% 'Business-dude lorem ipsum'. These are some of the lyrics:"We must all efficiently operationalize our strategies, invest in world-class technology and leverage our core competencies in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy. We'll set a brand trajectory using management philosophy, advance our market share vis-à-vis our proven methodology, with strong commitment to quality, effectively enhancing corporate synergy. Transitioning our company by awareness of functionality, promoting viability, providing our supply chain with diversity, we will distill our identity through client-centric solutions... and synergy."Write colorfully, or write clearly, but please never become so vapid and shallow that you resort to Adspeak and 'Business-dude lorem ipsum'. You are smarter and better and more resourceful than that. You have the courage and wit to drive the snakes out of Ireland, shoot arrows from a rooftop, and land a fighter jet in a field.Maybe you didn't know those things about yourself, but they are true.Roy H. WilliamsVicky Brown knew she was wading into shark-infested waters when she opened a consulting firm specializing in Human Resources. Four of those sharks were Accenture, ADP, Deloitte, and KPMG. By focused on emerging and mid-size companies, Vicky won an impressive roster of clients from coast to coast and now even the biggest sharks know her name. Due to the work-from-home migration, the impact of artificial intelligence, and ever-changing state and federal employment regulations, Vicky says more and more business owners are outsourcing their HR and payroll functions. Lean in close and listen as Vicky tells you how to avoid the HR landmines facing today’s America. MondayMorningRadio.com!

When I was growing up, I could never change the opinion of my mother by saying, “But everyone else is doing it.”My mom had the courage and confidence to believe that Everyone Else’s mother was wrong.That’s a high level of courage and confidence. I’m hoping that you have it, too.When I speak to advertising professionals on the subject of advertising, I often find myself having to explain how certain widely-held beliefs are wrong. I will patiently produce the evidence, the case studies, and scientific documentation. In most instances, the audience will concede that I am right. Then someone will say, “But everyone else is doing it,” as though it is impossible for “everyone else” to be wrong.Here’s an example: most people believe in tightly targeting the right customer. They are convinced that the secret of successful advertising is to “reach the right people.”I believe targeting is essential if you are in a business that sells to other businesses.If you sell computer chips, you need to reach computer manufacturers, so send a letter, an email, a salesman to knock on their door. If you sell cardboard boxes by the traincar load, you need to reach companies that sell things packaged in cardboard boxes. Send a letter, an email, a salesman to knock on their door. The world of B2B lives and dies with their ability to “reach the right people.”But when you are selling a product or service to the public, “targeting the right customer” works only about 10% better than reaching the untargeted masses.If the cost of targeting is less than 10% higher than the cost of not targeting, go ahead and target. But I am confident you will find that targeting usually costs considerably more than that.“But everyone else is doing it.”Please excuse me while I bang my head against the wall.Nielsen is the highly scientific organization that measures television and radio audiences.D2D is cloud based, and leverages open source technology designed to collect, manage, and analyze complex data.Les Binet is a highly respected data scientist.In the summer of 2020, Les Binet published a huge, longterm study on the effectiveness of marketing. Here is one of the many things he learned:“In many ways, online marketing and online media has done itself a disservice by focusing on targeting more than reach. A couple of very interesting studies are out there. One was a study by Nielsen, about the relative contributions of reach versus targeting in effectiveness, and they concluded, with a survey of about 500 econometric models, that targeting only adds about 10% to the effectiveness of the campaign on average. A very similar result came from some work by D2D, where they looked at over 200 econometric models, from a wide range of categories, and they concluded that targeting of a campaign adds only about 10% to effectiveness. So the same numbers, two very different methods.”Have you been following the news about Phenylephrine, the decongestant that was proven to be ineffective in 2007 and in multiple studies since then, but is still on the shelf 16 years later?According to a recent news story by Sarah Zhang,“Americans collectively shell out $1.763 billion a year for cold and allergy meds with phenylephrine, according to the FDA, which also calls the number a likely underestimate. That’s a lot of money for a decongestant that does not work.”Generally speaking, I’m in favor of government staying out of the way of business, but this seems to be a case where the Federal Trade Commission might ought to step in and say, “Guys, you need to quit lying to the public.”“But everyone else is doing it.”One last example: Google, LinkedIn, and every other seller of pay-per-click will aggressively argue that you need to include their “expanded network” to achieve the lowest cost-per-click. What they are telling you is absolutely true as long as you don’t mind paying for clicks by bots.Industries with the highest rates of click fraud include photography (65%), pest control (62%), locksmiths (53%), plumbing (46%), and waste removal (45%). [data provided by clickcease.com]Let me be clear: I do not believe – even for one second – that Google or LinkedIn or any other major seller of pay-per-click advertising is directly involved in a scheme to sell bot-clicks. But have you ever looked into exactly who and what constitutes an “expanded network?” You really should, and I hope you will. When you have gathered the facts, I believe you will probably opt-out of all the expanded networks offered by the major sellers of pay-per-click.But please know in advance that when you do this, alarm bells will go off and each of those sellers of pay-per-click advertising will tell you that I don’t know what I’m talking about and they will passionately argue that you are making a horrible mistake because, “everyone else is doing it.”Did you know there are a variety of services that can identify, track, and block bots from clicking your online ads?You didn’t know that? Well, it’s probably because, “no one else is doing it.”There are more than 6 million businesses in America, but the largest of those bot-tracking and bot-blocking companies [cheq.ai] has only 15,000 customers.I’m convinced the sellers of pay-per-click ads are perfectly willing to let you buy bot-clicks from their expanded networks for the same reasons that all the drug companies are willing to sell you Phenylephrine.It is entirely possible that I am a cranky and catankerous old man, and that everyone else is right.So I’ll let you look into these expanded networks and decide for yourself.Does that sound fair?Roy H. WilliamsNOTE: The photo at the top of today’s Monday Morning Memo is a fairly recent picture of Roy’s mom. At the bottom left is her famous “Band-Aid Beige” Corvette. Roy’s friend Tony calls that color “Caucasian.”Gregory Shepard is autistic, dyslexic, and has a sensory condition known as synesthesia, commonly described as “having the brain’s wires crossed.” Universities wouldn’t admit him and the U.S. Navy said, “no thanks.” Greg could have allowed his neurodivergent struggles to defeat him. Instead, he leveraged his atypical mind to build and sell 12 businesses, co-lead a global investment syndicate in the technology sector, and use his earned wealth as a philanthropist. This week, in a poignant conversation with roving reporter Rotbart, Greg makes a strong case for integrating neurodiverse people into the workforce. Where do you go to learn what you ought to know? MondayMorningRadio.com.

This podcast explores the concept of constant interruptions and distractions in our daily lives, comparing it to being characters in a video game. It highlights an experiment where participants chose to shock themselves rather than be left alone with their thoughts. The podcast also discusses the trend of seeking shortcuts, the power of effective communication, and generating compelling ideas.

You cut a nick into a stick to mark a moment. Then, at the end of the time being measured, you make another nick.To do a thing at the last possible moment is to do it within that second nick, “in the nick of time.”Millions of us have been using this phrase since the year 1580, but very few know the story behind it. You are now one of the chosen few who possess the arcane knowledge of the nick on a stick.But why do we say, “nick of time” instead of “notch of time”? If nick and notch mean the same thing, why haven’t we been saying for 443 years, “This money arrived in the notch of time.”We say nick because “nick” ends with a sharper, cleaner sound than “notch.” Say it out loud. “nick-nick-nick.” “notch-notch-notch.” “nick-nick-nick.” “notch-notch-notch.”“Nick” sounds like a sharp, narrow cut, shaped like a V, narrow and specific. But “notch” sounds softer and wider, with an indistinct bottom shaped like the letter U, a bite taken out of an apple.But nick doesn’t have a V in it, and notch doesn’t have a U. So what’s going on?The letters V and U are graphemes, visual letters in the alphabet. But the meaning of a word is not determined by the look of its letters, but by the sounds they make within the word. Those sounds are called phonemes.When describing a phoneme, don’t say the name of the letter. Make only the sound represented by the letter. The letter is a grapheme. The sound it makes is a phoneme.The sound of a word has a lot to do with how it makes us feel, even when we are reading silently.This is incredibly important when choosing names for products and services and companies. It is also important when writing messages that you hope will persuade.Ad writers, song writers, speech writers, and poets, are you listening?Phonemes with abrupt, clean sounds are “p” “b” “t” “d” “ck” and “g”. The visual graphemes that visually represent those phonemes are P, B, T, D, K, and G. “p” “b” “t” “d” “ck” and “g” are known as the stops, or plosives. This is because all the air is stopped, then released with a plosion: “Kate kicked a kite. nick-nick-nick.” The grapheme is called a K, but the final phoneme in “nick” is “ck”.The “tch” sound in “notch” is an affricate, a sound that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, a sound that will hiss, hush, or buzz, like “f” “v” “s” “th” “z” “sh” “j” and “h”. The indistinct ending of the sound is what causes us to hear something less sharply defined than we hear in “nick.”We could go on for at least 30 more minutes describing the 44 sounds that make up the English language and discussing the conceptual ideas we unconsciously associate with each of those 44 sounds, but right now my interest is elsewhere.I want you to return with me to the title of today’s Monday Morning Memo, “Living in the Nick of Time.”Do you remember the Monday Morning Memo from 8 weeks ago, July 17, 2023? Today’s Monday Morning Memo is a callback to that memo. A callback is a powerful tool in storytelling because it deepens the understanding of the audience by giving them a new context to consider.When you end with a callback to the beginning, this is called “going full circle.”In the words of T.S. Eliot,“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”Here is what I told you on July 17th:“You cannot suffer the past or future because they do not exist. What you are suffering is your memory and your imagination.”You cut a nick on a stick to mark a moment. At the end of the time being measured, you make another nick. To do a thing at the last possible moment is to do it inside that second nick, “in the nick of time.”You are living in the nick of time. Every moment of your life is lived in the nick, that sharp bottom of the V cut into the stick of time by the knife of the present.All the little moments in life add up to your life. If you don’t get it right, nothing else matters.Roy H. WilliamsPS – Having gone full circle, and ended by revisiting the title of today’s memo, does “Living in the Nick of Time” mean something different now than it did when you first read it?

A friend rotated my brain toward the subject of fame.He aimed my eyes in a new direction when he said, “Do you remember that thing you sent me 10 or 15 years ago?”I gave him the same blank look that you would have given him.He continued, “It was that thing Leonard Pitts wrote about being ‘the Man.'”I recovered it from the Random Quotes database at MondayMorningMemo.com, handed my phone to him and told him to read it out loud. When he was finished, we laughed together like two little boys who heard someone fart in church.Here it is:“I’ve got nothing against fame. I’m famous myself. Sort of.OK, not Will Smith famous. Or Ellen DeGeneres famous. All right, not even Marilu Henner famous.I’m the kind of famous where you fly into some town to give a speech before that shrinking subset of Americans who still read newspapers and, for that hour, they treat you like a rock star, applauding, crowding around, asking for autographs.Then it’s over. You walk through the airport the next day and no one gives a second glance. You are nobody again.Dave Barry told me this story once about Mark Russell, the political satirist. It seems Russell gave this performance where he packed the hall, got a standing O. He was The Man. Later, at the hotel, The Man gets hungry, but the only place to eat is a McDonald’s across the road. The front door is locked, but the drive-through is still open. So he stands in it. A car pulls in behind him. The driver honks and yells, “Great show, Mark!”The moral of the story is that a certain level of fame — call it the level of minor celebrity — comes with a built-in reality check. One minute, you’re the toast of Milwaukee. The next, you’re standing behind a Buick waiting to order a Big Mac.”– Leonard Pitts, January 14, 2008There is something about laughing with a friend that soaks into your heart and redirects your thoughts.I woke up the next morning thinking about fame, and how easily it comes and goes.I thought about Bill Cosby and Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. And then my computer told me “Joe the Plumber” had died. Remember Joe the Plumber? He became a celebrity in 2008 when he asked Barack Obama a question. We learned later that his name wasn’t Joe and he was never a plumber, but his perspective resonated with a lot of Americans.And then it hit me: Andy Warhol was a painter, but what we remember about him was his colorful comment about each person receiving “15 minutes of fame.”I could feel the freight train of curiosity gaining momentum in my mind, so I had to quickly decide whether to grab a handrail, swing aboard and see where it would take me, or spend the rest of the day regretting having missed the chance.I didn’t want to live in regret, so I grabbed a handrail and was yanked off my feet into a noisy, rattling railcar.When my eyes had grown accustomed to the dust and the half-light, I found the following 19 statements carved into the wooden walls of that railcar. These statements were signed by Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Depp, Erma Bombeck, Tony Bennett, Emily Dickinson, John Wooden, Gene Tierney, Jack Kerouac, George Michael, Eddie Van Halen, Sinead O’Connor, Fran Lebowitz, Michael Huffington, Lord Byron, Arthur Schopenhauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Clive James, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Davy Crockett.But not in that order. I’m not going to tell you who said what, because I don’t want your reactions to be influenced by your memories of those people.“Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.”“Fame is the thirst of youth.”“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”“Fame comes and goes. Longevity is the thing to aim for.”“Fame is like caviar, you know – it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it at every meal.”“I’m not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure. I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame… People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them, and I don’t want to be another cliché.”“Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful.”“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”“When kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I’m not a rock star. I’m not in it for the fame, I’m in it because I like to play.”“I’m shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I’ve done everything I can to avoid it.”“A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.”“Fame is a curse… it was the worst phase of my life, which I thank God I’ll never have to go through again.”“Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!”“When we die our money, fame, and honors will be meaningless. We own nothing in this world. Everything we think we own is in reality only being loaned to us until we die. And on our deathbed at the moment of death, no one but God can save our souls.”“If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.”“If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.”“First of all, plain and simple, you have no real idea of what it means to be famous until you become famous. It’s a double-edged sword. Obviously there are a lot of amazing things about fame, but there are also a lot of challenging things about it.”“Andy Warhol made fame more famous.”“Fame? It’s like old newspapers blowing down Bleecker Street.”I did not write to you today to warn you about the flickering seduction of fleeting fame.I wrote to encourage you to grab quickly onto the handrail of curiosity whenever you sense that rattling, noisy, half-lit railcar beginning to gain momentum in your mind.Ride the rattling railcar of curiosity! Regardless of where it takes you, it is always a wonderful ride.That is my advice to you.Roy H. WilliamsThe odds of a small enterprise surviving for 50 years are fewer than one in a hundred. Now imagine trying to survive half a century while relying on employees who are called upon regularly to risk their lives and who are not paid. That’s the story our roving reporter Rotbart has spent the past 18 months chronicling for his new book, Dedication and Service: 50 Years on Call with the Volunteers of Colorado’s Genesee Fire Rescue. It’s an organization with roots dating back to Benjamin Franklin and his “Bucket Brigade” of 1736. This week, Rotbart and his son, Maxwell, invite Jason Puffett and Hank O’Brien to explain what motivates their firefighting crew and what for-profit businesses can learn from the enduring success of their fire company. It’s hot! It’s on fire! It’s MondayMorningRadio.com

The comedian Mark Russell said you can judge a generation by its magazines.Life magazine was first published in 1883. It was followed byPeople in 1974, which was followed byUs, which was followed bySelf.Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803, just a few weeks before the Louisiana Purchase was announced to the American people by President Thomas Jefferson. Emerson was 23 when Jefferson died.America was still heavily influenced by Europe, but Ralph Waldo Emerson saw a future that no one else could see.At the age of 34, he gave a speech to a group of college students in Boston that provided a visionary, philosophical framework for escaping the influence of Europe and building a distinctly American cultural identity. That speech was entitled “The American Scholar” and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered it to be America’s “intellectual Declaration of Independence.”Ralph Waldo Emerson was a poet, a writer, a lecturer and an encourager who inspired generations of positive thinkers that stir among us to this day. Friedrich Nietzsche considered him “the most gifted of the Americans” and Walt Whitman referred to him as his “master.”Emerson was also a passionate opponent of slavery. Throughout his life he urged Congress to bring slavery to an immediate and permanent end.When Emerson was lecturing in Springfield, Illinois on January 10, 1853, a then-unknown Abraham Lincoln was in the audience. Years later, Lincoln invited Emerson to the White House and told him of the impact that lecture had on him.Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke with whimsy, sentimentality, and vulnerability when he said,“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”Modern businesspeople believe whimsy, sentimentality, and vulnerability to be weaknesses.But I know those people to be wrong.When you choose to like a person who does not like you, this is whimsy.It is hard not to like a person who likes you.When you choose to believe in someone, this is sentimentality.It is hard not to love a person who believes in you.When you say something that requires humility and love, this is vulnerability.It is hard not to trust a person who says something that only a humble, loving person would say.As a writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson was lofty. But as a person, he was famously open and vulnerable.Vulnerability is the price of intimacy.Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Self Reliance in 1841.Elbert Hubbard wrote A Message to Garcia in 1899.Dale Carnegie updated Emerson’s ideas in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936.Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich in 1937.Norman Vincent Peale added a veneer of Christianity in his book, The Power of Positive Thinking, in 1952.Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson wrote The One Minute Manager in 1982.Stephen Covey wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in 1989.Joel Osteen wrote Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day in 2007.And every one of those writers owes a debt to Ralph Waldo Emerson.Life, People, Us, Self.Lifeis about more than just business. It’s about balance. It’s about the freedom to be stupid with old friends.Peoplecover the earth. They speak lots of languages and have confusing cultures, but every person is made in the image of God.Usis problematic because it necessitates the idea of “Them,” those who are not Us. Uh-oh.Selfis who you think about when no one is more important to you than you.Roy H. WilliamsNOTE: If you are planning to read Emerson, the place to begin is with these book recommendations of James Marcus.

I have a friend who is a famous online marketer. Last week he sent me an observation I found interesting. It occurred to me that you might find it interesting as well.“Now that targeting is pretty much dead on Facebook and Instagram, I have a theory that the rules of reach and frequency that have always applied to radio will also apply to social platforms as they shift away from micro-targeting and toward looking more like mass media.”[Frequency means repetition. – editor]And then he asked a question.“Can you remind me again what your magic formula is for reach and frequency when buying radio ads? I know this is a bit like someone asking me how to spell SEO, but this came up in a conversation I was having with a buddy the other day and I felt stupid that I couldn’t remember it.”Happy to help. Here’s what you’re looking for:APE = Advertising Performance EquationShare of Voice x Impact Quotient = Share of MindShare of Mind x Personal Experience Factor = Share of MarketShare of Market x Market Potential = Sales Volume1.Share of Voice: How much of the noise in your category in your marketplace is your noise? (All media combined, including word of mouth)2.Impact Quotient: The average impact of a message in your category is 1.0. If your ads are 30% better than average, you score a 1.3. If your ads are 10 percent weaker than average, you score a 0.9 … the Impact of your message can accelerate or reduce your Share of Voice3.Share of Mind is the percentage of real estate you own in your category in the mind of the average customer.4.Personal Experience Factor is likewise measured with a 1.0 being, “exactly the experience your customer expected.” Anything above a 1.0 is a delight factor. Anything below a 1.0 is depth of disappointment. Online reviews are just measurements of a customer’s Personal Experience Factor5.Share of Market is your sales volume as a percentage of the total sales available in your category, in your marketplace.For a message to enter Declarative Memory  (mid-term memory – longer than Working Memory – but not yet Procedural Memory, which is involuntary, automatic recall,) a message should be repeated to the same individual at least 3 times within 7 night’s sleep. Further research has lowered this number to as little as 2.5 repetitions per week.The more memorable the message, the less repetition is required. Therefore, the only way to beat the system (Google) and save money is to create messages that are highly memorable. NOTE: Any limited time offer with a call-to-action is erased from declarative memory when the “limited time” window is closed. This is why you cannot build a brand with Direct Response calls-to-action.To become a household word and enter long-term Procedural Memory, you need to hammer your message into the mind of your target at least 2.5 per week for at least 3 years. But even then, it will fade within 24 months after your ads disappear, assuming that your ads have only the average 1.0 Impact Quotient. But a message – or an experience – with a significantly higher Impact Quotient can enter Procedural Memory and become automatic, involuntary recall, with only a single repetition. PTSD is an example of this.The key to absolute category dominance is to elevate your Impact Quotient and Personal Experience Factor to numbers above 2.0.In other words, you’ve got to have awesome ads and deliver an amazing customer experience.But you already knew that.“This is perfect. Thank you. Have any of your partners tested APE in social ads (FB, IG, TikTok, etc.) to see if the numbers hold up? I would have to assume that Share of Voice would be difficult to lock down given that the media is so mass and it’s obviously easier to scroll past a social ad than it is to skip a radio ad, but it would be interesting to run an impression campaign set at 5 impressions per week (2X the 2.5) to see how long it would take to move the needle on overall leads and sales.”We haven’t tested the APE online. You get to be the official pioneer. “Game on.”ONE LAST THING: The reason that so few people lift their companies to the level of category dominance is that they chicken out, pull the plug and proclaim, “That didn’t work.”Messages written to accomplish Customer Bonding don’t work immediately. Building a relationship takes time.If you are conditioned to seeing urgent, direct-response ads deliver quick results, you will soon become convinced that your Customer Bonding campaign isn’t working.The majority will bail out within the first 4 months. I’ve seen campaigns take as long as 7 months before they emerge from the darkness into the sunlight. But once you reach breakthrough, your Customer Bonding campaign will work better and better the longer you keep moving your message forward. And then you wake up one morning and the competitor in second place is so far behind you that they don’t even show up in your rear-view mirror.Game over.Roy H. Williams