Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

America contained about two and a half million people when we declared our independence in 1776. Today’s Portland, Oregon is bigger than that.The Constitution (1787) empowered every citizen who was white, male and a landowner. Minorities, women and poor people? Not so much.America was unlike Europe in that we didn’t divide our population into nobles and peasants. We divided our people into landowners and land workers. This was different from Europe where the nobles owned the land and the peasants worked on it. You see the difference, don’t you?Three years later (1790,) our first census reported that America had mushroomed to 3,929,000 people; roughly the population of Seattle. But Seattle did not yet exist. It would be another 13 years before Thomas Jefferson would buy the Louisiana Territory and send Lewis and Clark to the other side of the continent to search for Starbucks. They didn’t find it, but they did find enough land to ensure that everyone who wanted to be a landowner could easily become one.“Land? I can own land?” Here came the people.Study America’s history and you’ll find that most of us are the children of castoffs, rejects and refugees. Some of us were even brought here against our will. But that was also true of the original settlers of Australia, wasn’t it? Australia, wow. What a gorgeous place to start a penal colony! If you’re going to banish me, England, please send me there.My own belief is that modern America – America 2.0 – began in 1883 when a 34 year-old writer born in New York City penned a poem to be auctioned in a fundraiser to help erect a 305-foot statue of a woman lifting a torch to the sky; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Emma Lazarus died just 4 years after she wrote that phrase, never suspecting her words would help shape the personality of America for a century. The rest of the money needed to erect the statue was raised by another Jew, a young refugee who had started a little newspaper in New York. His name was Joseph Pulitzer.Jews understand the importance of tolerance.The Dutch understand inclusion. Throughout history the Dutch have been quick to shelter the outcast and embrace the oppressed, so you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that a fifth-generation Dutch New Yorker was President of the United States at the zenith of the “Me” in 1903* when the statue was finally finished and those now-famous words of Emma Lazarus were officially placed on the pedestal beneath it. This visionary Dutchman shut down the power of big corporations to oppress the poor and put an end to child labor. But before he did any of this, his first official act as President of the United States was to invite an African-American, Booker T. Washington, to the White House.Tolerance and inclusion. “I accept that you are different and I want you to be in our group anyway.”  This is America.Humility and courage. “I cannot do it alone, but working together, I believe we can.” This is America.Audacity and a sense of humor. As Babe Ruth reportedly introduced himself when he met the Queen of England, “Hey Queen, pull my finger.” This is most definitely America.Emma Lazarus, Joseph Pulitzer and Teddy Roosevelt believed in the beauty, the power and the wisdom of the little guy. They believed in you.Wizard Academy does, too.The US census tells us there are 5.91 million businesses in America with fewer than 100 employees. Wizard Academy is a business school created expressly for them. This is where we teach big things quickly, the kinds of things that often mean the difference between failure and success.The American Dream is alive and well and 2012 is going to be a very good year for you.Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.Roy H. Williams

A Barely Explicable Collection of MomentsEvery person is a collector, I think.Businesspeople collect money.Travelers collect places.Competitors collect shining moments.Insecure people collect conquests, panties hanging from the bedpost.My own collection consists of curiosities, tokens of moments nearly forgotten; captured glimpses of interesting lives. I’m not certain what this says about me but I like to think it says I’m a writer. Marcel Proust lectured, “The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.” So I try to interpret what I find.Arthur Schopenhauer added, “The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.” So I do my best to make each small item in the collection interesting.Mignon Eberhart echoed my soul when he confessed, “I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk.”My collection of curiosities is a rock that skips across 500 years of cultural icons. The worldwide ocean of art is impossibly deep and wide and my rock touches only a few superficial places.But the ripples are amazing:A 500 year-old Spanish ship’s bell dragged up from the ocean floor in the Philippines, very possibly from one of the two ships Ferdinand Magellan lost there in 1521 during his historic circling of the earth.A pencil sketch of Napoleon drawn by his little brother, 24 year-old Lucien Bonaparte, shortly after the pair of them captured the throne of France in 1799.Don Kehan, Marshall of Manchon, the original manuscript of an unpublished book about Don Quixote written by John Steinbeck.The world’s only copy of a 1936 photo of Jacqueline Bouvier at a horse show when she was just 6 years old, but already unmistakably “Jackie O.”The Wise Men who sat on the piano of Liberace each Christmas, complete with Joseph and Mary and an angel with just one wing. A one-of-a-kind, handmade set dressed in velvet. (Liberace was a flamboyant piano player known for his over-the-top costumes, the original Elton John.) A cultural icon is never about the thing itself, but the idea it represents.Magellan = ExplorationNapoleon = StrategyQuixote = Commitment to a DreamJackie O. = EleganceLiberace = ShowmanshipYou’ll find these and other curiosities touching Teddy Roosevelt, Pablo Picasso, the Wright Brothers, Oceanic Flight 815 and dozens of other ripples on the water of time as you tour the campus at Wizard Academy.You’re coming, aren’t you? Roy H. Williams

I’m a Merry Christmas person. Does that make me bad? “Happy Holidays” doesn’t carry quite the same exuberance for me as “Merry Christmas.” And I must shamefully confess that deep in my heart I still think of Navajos, Cherokees and Apaches as Indians. My publisher tells me there is no such place as the Orient anymore! So are the boundaries of Asia the same as they were back when I was in school? In those days Asia was everything east of Constantinople. I’m sorry. My bad. Istanbul. Russian Cossacks with their knee-high boots and furry hats, Arab Sheiks with their flowing robes and elegant turbans, and those squinty, inscrutable men wearing silk gowns with big sleeves are no longer to be differentiated from one another. They’re all just “Asians” now. Evidently, the goal is worldwide homogenization. We’ve already achieved it architecturally so now we’re spreading that colorless twilight over every other expression of individuality. Welcome to Zoloft Grey where the mood is forever funereal. Cultural Splendor lies quietly in the coffin there but please don’t look at it, admire it, comment upon it or celebrate it. If you do, you’re obviously a racist. If you fail to ignore cultural differences you are a very bad person indeed. Indians? The Orient? Shame on you! What were you thinking? I just finished Agatha Christie’s mystery novel, Murder on the Asian Express. John Wayne starred in a lot of cowboy and Native American movies. I’m sorry. My bad. Cowperson and Native American. The best Indian food I ever had – (I can still say “Indian” if they’re from India, right?) – was in 1986 at the Bombay Palace restaurant in Washington, DC. I’m sorry. Mumbai Palace. I don’t want to be insensitive. What the…? I just Googled Bombay Palace in Washington DC and they’re closed! I wonder if it was because they failed to change their name to Mumbai Palace in 1995? Does the word holiday come from holy day?  I should check into that. I don’t want to be insensitive to people who prefer to live deity-free. I’ll let you know what I find out. In the meantime, from me and mine to you and yours: Merry… Happy… Have a good day. Roy H. Williams

Do Creative People Have to be Self-Destructive? New York Times writer Samuel G. Freedman asks,“Can the forces that make you creative also kill you?”“Can you live with control and yet create free of restraint?”“Can you live enough of the dark side to tell the tale without becoming a casualty?”Freedman’s curiosity is well founded. History is littered with the corpses of creative geniuses who were self-destructive. Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear and mailed it to his girlfriend. Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko would likely have made out the mailing label and taped up the box. Rothko is the lightweight of this trio. His most valuable painting is worth only about 80 million dollars, while Van Gogh and Pollock have paintings worth 150 million each. Nobel laureates Hemingway and Faulkner are the opening names on a Who’s Who list of alcoholic authors. James Joyce, Dorothy Parker, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and dozens of others trot faithfully behind. Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain and Winehouse are the high-stepping drum majors in a holiday parade of musicians who flirted with death until it finally seduced them. Each of these artists deserved better than what they gave themselves. In her research paper, Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, Dr. Maureen Neihart says, “The belief that madness is linked with creative thinking has been held since ancient times. It is a widely popular notion.” In his book, Creativity and Madness: New Findings and Old Stereotypes, Dr. Albert Rothenberg says, “Deviant behavior, whether in the form of eccentricity or worse, is not only associated with persons of genius or high-level creativity, but it is frequently expected of them.” But we still haven’t answered Freedman’s questions. Let me do that for you now: Q: “Can the forces that make you creative also kill you?”A: There are no “forces that make you creative.” Practice and determination are what make a person good at basketball, ice skating or cliff diving. The same is true of creativity. Q: “Can you live with control and yet create free of restraint?”A: Yes. Q: “Can you live enough of the dark side to tell the tale without becoming a casualty?”A: Can a man fight in a horrible war and return home safely to the people he loves? Examine the life of a creative genius who got lost in the dark and you’ll find that he or she had no partner watching out for them. When Pennie says, “Honey, help me carry the trash to the curb,” it’s not because she needs help with the trash. I’m always annoyed that she broke my concentration in the same way a pot smoker is annoyed when you harsh their mellow. But I help her carry the trash to the curb. As we fall ever deeper into creative thought, we float weightlessly in a silent world underwater where time stands still and everything is beautiful. But it is dangerous to go swimming alone. Be sure someone who loves you ties a rope to your leg so they can haul you up when you’ve been under too long. Self-talk is the other key to keeping your balance. Do you want to drown in the darkness alone? All you have to do is say to yourself, “No one understands me… I’ll never be appreciated… Some people have all the luck but nothing ever works out for me… It just wasn’t meant to be.” Each of us believes what we hear ourselves say. The maternal side of my DNA includes a strong predisposition to depression and suicide. I am familiar with that darkness. The most effective antidote I’ve found is to tell Pennie 2 or 3 times a day about some small thing that makes me happy. Many of the things I choose to celebrate are admittedly stupid but the technique works anyway. “This bowl of beans and rice is really hitting the spot tonight! I’m glad I found this can of beans in the pantry and I put exactly the right amount of black pepper in them. And this Fuji apple is the perfect side dish. Food just doesn’t get better than this.” Pennie smiles and nods. She knows I need to find something to be happy about, no matter how small it might be. Each of us believes what we hear ourselves say.And it changes our mood. What have you been hearing yourself say lately? Roy H. Williams

“Added value” is the popular name for what’s included at no extra charge. But we are entering a time when it will no longer be sufficient to tell the world what you include and what you stand for. To hold the attention of the public in 2012 and beyond, you must identify what you leave out and what you stand against.Organic fruit and vegetable growers leave out the fertilizer and pesticides. Netflix leaves out the trip to the video store. Southwest Airlines leaves out meals and assigned seating. Digital cameras leave out the film. The Full Plate Diet leaves out fiberless foods. What does your company leave out? My friend W. Reed Foster and his partner Joel Peterson were men ahead of their time. They employed this technique more than a decade ago to distinguish their brand in what is perhaps the most overcrowded retail category on earth: wine. If they had described their wine as “intense and full-bodied, with hints of…” they would have sounded exactly like 1,000 other wineries. But the slogan “No Wimpy Wines” made Ravenswood an important, worldwide brand. (Their wine also had to be good, of course, but that’s the easy part. Lots of vineyards produce good wine.)You can’t have insiders unless you have outsiders. I demonstrated this technique in last week’s Monday Morning Memo. I’ll wager you remember it: “Wizard Academy is not a school for whiners, posers, devil’s advocates, nitpickers, hand-wringers, crybabies, complainers, chicken-hearts or fools. But it is definitely the school for you.”I’ve written before about “leaving things out” and it’s becoming more important than ever. But definition though exclusion is about to be taken too far. John Steinbeck spoke of a similar time when he wrote, “a teetotaler is not content not to drink—he must stop all the drinking in the world; a vegetarian among us would outlaw the eating of meat.” I’m not saying that’s how it ought to be. I’m saying that’s how it’s going to be. And I have 3,000 years of history to back me up.We’re about to enter the final 10 years in the upswing of a “We” cycle, an event that happens only once every 80 years. It is a time of high polarization, Us versus Them. “Working together for the common good” produces, over time, a gang mentality. The Salem witch trials, Robespierre’s reign of terror in France, the American Civil War and the rise of Adolph Hitler are just a few of the angry, Us versus Them events that have occurred within 10 years of the zenith of a “We.” Just three weeks ago, Joan Smith, a reporter in Britain for The Independent wrote, “The red poppy has been a symbol of remembrance since shortly after the First World War… a means of honoring the fallen and raising money for veterans and their families… This year, the pressure to wear one has been greater than ever… This year, coercion of reluctant red-poppy wearers has been joined by an outbreak of sheer nastiness towards the few who wear white ones.” Stand-up comedian Chris Rock makes this point more sharply in the rabbit hole. I know today’s memo makes me sound like a raving loon, but I trust that our new book, Pendulum, will change your mind when it’s released in April.David Farland warns us, I believe, very presciently, “Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.” “Choose who to lose” works well in marketing. Not so well in life. Roy H. Williams

Man of La Mancha rocked Broadway in 1965 with its thundering theme song, The Impossible Dream. You remember that song, don’t you? It opens in soft reflection, “To dream the impossible dream… To fight the unbeatable foe…” but then it defies mortal gravity to rise heavenward on a column of fury like an old Apollo rocket from Cape Canaveral:This is my Quest: to follow that star!No matter how hopeless, no matter how far!To fight for the rightWithout question or pause,To be willing to march into hellFor a heavenly cause!And I know, if I’ll only be trueTo this glorious Quest,That my heart will lie peaceful and calmWhen I’m laid to my rest…Wise Men follow a star when they believe the destination will be worth the journey.Time and money: you can always save one by spending more of the other. But money can be replaced and time cannot. We spend the hours of our lives like a pocketful of pennies, one by one until they are gone. What are you buying with yours?Can you name your current journey? You can call it your 5-year plan, your business plan, your goal, your mission. You can dress it up with numerals and call it a pro forma or wrap it in legalese and call it a prospectus. All that really matters is that you understand your time, your energy, indeed the hours of your life are being spent in the pursuit of something.“And I know, if I’ll only be true to this glorious Quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest…”Wait a minute… are we talking about business goals, life goals, the Christmas story of Matthew chapter two or the Broadway musical of 1965?Yes, yes, yes and yes; we are talking about those. That’s the thing about an archetypal story. Its message will echo through different actors dressed in different costumes but the play never changes: Each of us follows a star. How clearly can you see yours?Wizard Academy is a 501c3 nonprofit educational organization committed to helping individuals achieve the things they have committed to do. You choose the star. We don’t care. Our only job is to get you there.A solid limestone plateau rises 900 feet above downtown Austin, overlooking that city from 20 miles away. We cut perfectly northward into that limestone with heavy diesel equipment for 4 months, then planted a vertical sword in the wall of the Stardeck that sits like a crown on the million-dollar tower we built at the end of it.Walk to the center of that deeply cut limestone becauseway and stand on the Laughlin stone on any clear night. The point of light just above the hilt of the sword is Polaris, the North Star that rises above the axis of the earth. The whole world revolves around it. Polaris has served as a navigational tool for millennia because unlike other stars, its position never changes.Can you name the star that beckons you?We cut a 300-foot furrow 14 feet deep in solid rock on top a 900-foot plateau and then built a landmark tower with a sword in its crown purely as a symbol to help us make a point: that’s how serious were are about the importance of picking a destination and launching your life’s journey.Wizard Academy is not a school for whiners, posers, devil’s advocates, nitpickers, hand-wringers, crybabies, complainers, chicken-hearts or fools.But it is definitely the school for you.Come. The next chapter of your adventure is about to begin.Roy H. Williams

Most people see life as a linear progression, a canoe ride on the river of time. The scenery passes. The sun rises and sets. Occasionally there is a storm.It’s a tempting metaphor because we often think of time flowing like a river and to see ourselves as passengers on that river is a natural extension. But my life hasn’t been like that and I’ll bet yours hasn’t either.I see us as boulders tumbling down a mountainside, our rough edges smoothed by all the hard places we encounter that make us older and wiser. We’re not often sure which way is up.Time is the gravity we cannot resist, the energy behind this avalanche called life. Before a thing is dealt with another is upon us and as we turn to it we’re bumped from behind because we don’t have time for this while the telephone rings and someone is at the door and then we go over a cliff.I didn’t see that coming. Did you?It’s hard to tell a person who you are because you are so many things.Quantum Theory was born when Werner Heisenberg published his Uncertainty Principle in 1927. He wrote, “It is impossible to determine accurately both the position and the direction and speed of a particle at the same instant.” His Uncertainty Principle opened the door to Chaos Theory and Fractal Geometry, the mapping of chaotic systems.Like you and me, Heisenberg lived the avalanche. I HAD ALREADY WRITTEN EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINEand was staring at the computer screen unsure of what to write next when “ding,” a little pop-up alerted me that one of my business partners, Manley Miller, had just sent me an email:Have you ever heard of the Droste effect?Apparently it’s Fractals + Portals. I clicked the hyperlink in Manley’s email and was greeted by a video that illustrated precisely what I was trying to describe. Manley’s boulder was evidently tumbling next to mine. I spent some time reading about the Droste Effect and said, “Wow. What I’m feeling is so common that it even has a name.” Here’s the weird part: No one on earth could have known what I was thinking and feeling in that moment. I had just received some unexpected news that caused me to lean against the wall, unable to focus my eyes. Stumbling to the computer I pecked out the words, “Life in the Clothes Dryer” and wrote the nine paragraphs at the top of this page. I didn’t plan to send them to you but then Manley’s email arrived.The Droste Effect is a powerful tool that combines the visual suction of a spiral with the infinity of a picture-within-a-picture-within-a-picture. The result is that the viewer is pulled into the alternate reality of a fractal image, the map of a highly specific infinity, one of the “many worlds” predicted by Quantum Theory.Variations of this visual technique will likely prove to be highly effective in online marketing. Do you want someone to click a button? Sprinkle a little Droste into the mix and watch what happens.Manley recognized the Droste Effect as a simple combination of fractals and portals because he remembered studying each of these in Wizard Academy’s Magical Worlds Communications Workshop and the even-more-advanced sequel to that class, Advanced Thought Particles (including Portals and the 12 Languages of the Mind.)These classes are taught back-to-back just once every other year.February 20-24, 2012.  I can hardly wait. It’s a wild, wild ride.Roy H. Williams

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

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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

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 

Ad Campaign: a series of ads bound together by a set of distinctive identifiers.Can you name the identifiers that mark your campaign?Okay, there’s the font you use for your company name and the color scheme you use on your business cards, letterhead and signage. But the world overflows with fonts and colors. What other distinctive identifiers cause your readers, listeners and viewers to immediately recognize your ads as yours?Think of an ad campaign other than your own that you admire. What are its distinctive identifiers?Every successful campaign has a style guide that gives its ads their “connectedness.” The longer you use a memorable style guide, the more recognizable your brand becomes.Customers prefer the known to the unknown, the familiar to the unfamiliar.  The Morton Salt girl has changed dramatically over the years, but always within a clearly defined style guide that makes her seem forever the same; right foot forward, left foot back, umbrella cradled in the crook of the right elbow, salt pouring behind her as she carries it in the crook of her left elbow, and the rain falling at an angle, right to left, as though pushing the girl forward rather than opposing her. And the color scheme is strictly dichromatic: yellow and navy blue.Salty Sally has had six different faces and has changed her clothes and shoes and hairstyle in virtually every incarnation but she remains one of the most recognized brand icons in the world due to Morton’s commitment to work within the boundaries of a highly specific style guide.A good style guide is built upon the words “always” and “never.” What is always in your ads? What is never in them? What are the boundaries of your style guide?A distinct brand personality is the result of a memorable style guide. A tight style guide makes your company feel reliable in the mind of your customer.It’s easy to be creative when you’re free to do anything you want. The test of real creative genius is whether you can be unpredictable and consistent simultaneously. Can you create something new, surprising and different within a recognizable framework carved in stone?If you do what people expect you to do, you bore them. If you say what they expect you to say, they turn their attention elsewhere.Predictability is death in advertising. But consistency is the lifeblood of brand building.Predictability is the result of bad writing.Consistency is the result of a style guide.Good writing within a memorable style guide is the mark of a master.In works of fiction, the style guide is known as the Character Bible. It defines how each character thinks, acts, and sees the world. If a fictional character says or does something that doesn’t ring true, it’s because the writer stepped beyond the boundaries of the Character Bible.Bill Watterson created the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes within a devilishly narrow style guide and an unbelievably tight Character Bible. Hobbes is a lanky tiger with a dry wit when only Calvin is in the frame of the cartoon with him but when anyone else is present, Hobbes is a small, stuffed tiger with button eyes. Watterson steadfastly refuses to license Calvin and Hobbes television shows, plush toys, action figures or other products. This unforgettable pair will forever be limited to the printed page.Watterson is giving up tens of millions of dollars and he knows it. I admire him.Animals are much better equipped than you and me to judge color differences, depth perception, pattern disruptions and smells. The gift that allows us humans to rule the world is our ability to attach complex meanings to sounds. Some of these sounds are called words but other sounds have specific meanings as well.You no longer see when you look away, but you hear and retain information even when you’re no longer listening. This is why the average person can sing along with more than 2,000 songs, none of which they ever intended to learn. Does your style guide include a unique audio signature that is used in all your electronic advertising? Do you employ specific word flags, rhythms, sound effects or vocal styles that cause listeners to know immediately that you’ve walked into their world?Mick Jagger, Billy Joel and Frank Sinatra might sing exactly the same word in precisely the same key, but you’d still know which one was who, right? You’d know instantly, without even having to think about it.Never use the house announcer in your electronic ads. Own a voice that is distinctive and memorable. Don’t share it with anyone else in your marketplace. That voice will be an imporant element in your style guide.Guess whose voice I believe in most?Yours.Roy H. Williams

You’re reading this and I’m honored, because you delete far more emails than you open.Which others do you open?I know, of course, that you read emails from your closest friends and family. But are there any newsletters, blog posts or subscriptions that you open more often than not? Can you pick a single favorite you’d be willing to share?I was crafting an altogether different Monday Morning Memo when “ding” my computer let me know an email had arrived. I glanced at the time and said, “That will be Exley.”And it was.I’ve known Richard Exley for 30 years. We met when he was a struggling preacher holding church in a school gymnasium and I was a bright-eyed advertising salesman trying to make a living on straight commission. I never attended his church but we often had lunch together.  Although Richard and I have spoken only about 5 times in the past 25 years, we continue to be important to one another. You have friends like that, don’t you?Take comfort. Frequency of communication does not equal depth of relationship.Richard began sending out a daily One-Minute Devotional about a year ago.  Like any good writer, Richard nudges my mind into green fields where it might not otherwise have wandered.“I don’t like to think of myself as a materialistic person but driving away from the Highway 12 East storage complex I could hardly come to any other conclusion. For nine years I paid almost $40 a month to store things I haven’t used in nearly a decade. Add it up – nine years at $444 a year comes to $3,996.”Richard’s thoughts interest me because he notices all kinds of things that most people don’t. This was his greeting last Christmas:A“There is not a shred of evidence to indicate that the shepherds were in any way special; nothing to suggest that there was anything in their spirit, or nature, or lifestyle that predisposed them to receive the angelic announcement of the savior’s birth. Which means that God doesn’t just come to religious people in church but to undeserving people the world over, be it lepers or lunatics, shepherds or Samaritans, or even women taken in adultery.”Sometimes Richard offers grandfatherly advice.“If you have the courage to follow your heart’s desire you will usually gravitate to your area of giftedness. You may not end up in the most prestigious position, or land the best-paying job, but you will have a more fulfilling life.”I give Richard Exley 60 seconds each day and I consider it a good investment.“Don’t mistake recklessness for boldness. Boldness is a calculated risk based on the best possible information.”“Forgiving those who have wronged us is often a process rather than a single event.”I asked my friend Richard to record these quotes in his own voice because I wanted to ask your opinion: Is it just me, or does he sound a little bit like Sean Connery? Every time I hear Richard I expect him to say, “Bond. James Bond.” Now it’s your turn. I want you to tell the rest of us about a daily or weekly email you always open. But just one. Give us a link to it. Tell us what you get from it that causes you to always open it. I’ve told Indiana Beagle to post all submissions in next week’s rabbit hole. But this is the rule: you must select just ONE subscription to share with us. If you send more than one, you will be disqualified.I’m imposing this strange rule for just one reason: you hear hundreds of e-voices every day. I want you to know which one you value most. When you are forced to choose just one, you will learn something about yourself.Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I am tempted to agree.Come. It is examination day. Send your favorite blog or e-subscription to [email protected] many people will do this?We shall see.Roy H. Williams

What Do You See In Your Mind?The goal of the batter is to hit the baseball. This is why every kid who holds a bat is told, “Don’t take your eye off the ball.”Later, when endurance is needed, we say, “Keep your eye on the prize.”Can you name the ball you’re trying to hit? Can you name the prize?As a consultant to business owners for more than 30 years, I can tell you without equivocation the question that is the hardest for the average businessperson to answer. This is the question: Drum roll, please. (rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble) “What are you trying to make happen?”With death hanging in the balance, mountain climbers turn my question into the imperative command: “Don’t Look Where You Don’t Want to Go.”The first step in any journey is to see your destination.Your mind is an amazing thing, crammed with invisible and unknown mechanisms* that move you unconsciously toward whatever future you believe to be real.What future do you believe to be real? Do you have the audacity to believe in a happy ending? Do you have the courage to move toward that ending with every action you take? Persons who are frightened, angry or bitter will see this and call you “naïve.”Sadly, this will be most people.Your choices and your actions are merely reflections of what you see in your mind. What do you see?The first step toward accomplishing a thing is to project it onto the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory. This is the scientific phrase for “see it in your mind’s eye.” You can do only what you have first imagined.What do you imagine?Boredom is a kind of death. Human beings need strong emotion. This is why we would rather be angry than bored. Anger is a type of excitement.Fear is another type of excitement. The success of horror movies is proof of this. Our thoughts are informed and our moods are altered by the voices we let into our minds. What voices do you invite in? In the dark, oppressive days of colonial America Thomas Jefferson wrote sparkling words about the bright future he saw in his mind, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal…” I believe Jefferson’s ability to see this bright future was rooted in something else he wrote, “I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.”My greatest luxury in life is that I have a terrifically strong wife. Pennie pays attention to all that’s happening in the world and shares with me only those things she believes I’d like to know. The Princess of my world is one of those rare people who feels no fear and is slow to anger. For these and other reasons, Pennie can gather news about current events and not be affected by it. I do not have her gift. Most people, I believe, do not. Had the Princess and I not been married these 35 years, I’d have had to choose between being woefully uninformed or being made miserable by the demons who smile from behind teleprompters and microphones.Call me childish and broken if you want, but I avoid woeful country music for the same reason I avoid self-important newscasters: my world overflows with possibilities that seem not to exist in theirs. Sad country singers and somber newscasters try to drag me into their world but I hang tightly to the one I prefer.In my world, each of us is swimming in opportunity and everything is possible. I see opportunity all around you. You can see it too, can’t you?My highest wish is that you should have a crystal clear vision of what you are trying to make happen.1. See it clearly in your mind. This is the first step toward a happy ending.2. Commit. Don’t waffle. Waffling diminishes focus, negates serendipity and triggers boredom.3. Talk about it. Words are rockets that launch thoughts into reality.4. Take action. The size of the action is less important than its relentless regularity. Miracles are made of Exponential Little Bits.5. Don’t look where you don’t want to go.Roy H. Williams   

This will be the smartest thing I’ve done in years or it will be the stupidest. And I’m going to do it openly so the whole world can watch to see what happens as these next few months unfold.The promotion of Wizard Academy is about to be turned over to someone else.Mark Fox said, “Roy, instead of hiring someone to do what you do badly, why not hire someone to do what you do best?”“Huh?” Mark is on the board of directors of Wizard Academy so I had to keep listening.“You say the Academy needs a vice-chancellor to stay connected with the students because you do such a bad job of that. But the truth is that the faculty and staff are making sure that everyone’s needs are met. What we need is a marketing apprentice, someone who can spend all day, every day, doing the ten thousand things that need to be done to promote the academy and its classes.”Suddenly I remembered why Mark is on the board. I am on the inside, looking out, and had been seeing the problem backwards. Mark is on the outside, looking in, and saw the problem clearly. Have You Chosen advertising, marketing and public relations to be your life’s work? Are you overflowing with ideas, energy and time? Are you teachable? Are you willing to relocate to Austin, Texas? Can you live on less than $50,000 a year? The marketing apprentice at Wizard Academy will attend classes for free and be advised by some of the greatest media minds in America: Mark Huffman of Procter and Gamble, Dean Rotbart of Wall Street Journal fame, Greg Farrell of Bloomberg News and David McInnis, the revolutionary founder of PR Web. And these are just 4 of several hundred giants who will be happy to take your phone call.The online marketing books of Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg have ridden the bestseller lists of The New York Times, BusinessWeek, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. Bryan and Jeffrey will help you in any way they can. The scope of Wizard Academy’s relational resources is so vast that you’ll need to lie down and put a cold rag on your head when the full impact of it lands on your mind.Your office will be in the tower at Wizard Academy, overlooking Austin from a 900-foot plateau at the edge of town. You’ll be horribly overworked and underpaid, but you’ll have a fabulous office and lots of friends.This job does have a downside: The chancellor of Wizard Academy will be your boss and the current chancellor is overcommitted, reclusive, moody and impatient. He will expect you to use short sentences and make your points very quickly. He will not help you process your thoughts. You’ll have to use other staff members for that. And you WILL have to live in Austin so that you can meet and interact with your principal resource: the alumni and friends of Wizard Academy. Telecommuting is not an option.Are you up for it? If so, email us 2 pages. Tell us about yourself on the first page. We want to know who, what, where and why. The second page will be a 1-sheet marketing plan detailing exactly what you would do to promote Wizard Academy if your only tools were a computer with online access, a recording studio, a television studio, access to hundreds of profoundly important people and the names and email addresses of a few thousand Wizard Academy alumni. If you have an idea that requires anyone’s energy but your own, that idea is immediately disqualified. And one last thing: you have no marketing budget whatsoever. Are you still up for it? Email your 2 pages to [email protected] Luck,Roy H. Williams

These are the 5 questions you must answer before you can know how soon your ads will start working:Q. 1: What percentage of the noise made in your category – in all the different media combined – is being made by you? This is your Share of Voice.Q. 2: What percentage of the population will actively be in the market for your product or service this week? This is your Product Purchase Cycle.Food has a very short Product Purchase Cycle. The shorter the Product Purchase Cycle, the quicker your ad campaign will reach maximum ROI.Cars have a medium-length Product Purchase Cycle. The average American trades cars every 180 weeks (42 months.) Consequently, 0.55 percent of us will buy or lease a car this week. (Does this mean that anyone who advertises cars is wasting 99.45 percent of his investment?)That’s right; 180 weeks (42 months) is a medium-length product purchase cycle. What do you suppose is the Product Purchase Cycle for HVAC system replacement? Engagement rings? Furniture? Products with longer purchase cycles require more time for their ad campaigns to ramp up to their full potential.  These campaigns usually show poor results during the first 90 to 150 days then begin to deliver increasingly good results until the growth curve begins to flatten out about halfway through the Purchase Cycle. If the purchase cycle is 10 years, the campaign will start slow, then generate increasingly good results until it levels off in about 5 years. You will then have to continue advertising just to maintain the market share you’ve achieved. If relevant new information is not injected into the campaign at this time, the advertiser will become frustrated and disgruntled and begin to say things like, “Our ads aren’t as good as they used to be,” or “I don’t think we’re reaching the right people.”Q. 3: How many people will ever be in the market for this product or service?  What percentage of the public will ever consider this product to be relevant? A high percentage of the public will someday need a refrigerator, furniture, HVAC system replacement and an engagement ring. The best strategy for advertisers such as these is for them to use relevance and repetition to become the provider the customer thinks of first and feels the best about.But what about fine formal china, such as Royal Doulton at $100 per place setting and the solid silver tableware that accompanies it? What percentage of today’s public will ever be in the market for these?Q. 4:  What degree of credible urgency does your ad contain? Is there any reason for the customer to take action now? You can shorten a Product Purchase Cycle by making a strong offer that is time-limited or quantity-limited. If you create a once-in-a-lifetime offer for a product with a long purchase cycle, you’ll likely move a number of people into the market who would otherwise have purchased at a later date. If your offer is powerful and credible, you’ll see great success. But don’t take a good thing too far; the more often you do this, the less well it will work. Sadly, the success of this “urgency” technique makes it highly addictive. Almost without exception, the advertiser who makes a once-in-a-lifetime offer will choose to make a similar, once-in-a-lifetime offer within a year. Soon his “sale” ads lose all credibility and his customers will begin to ask, “When does this go on sale?” God help us. We pushed a good thing too far and we’ve trained the customer NOT to buy unless we’re promoting a massive discount.Marketing is tricky. It almost makes you want to hit yourself in the head with a hammer sometimes, doesn’t it? Q. 5: What is your Competitive Environment? In other words, how well are your competitors known? How good are they at what you do? Your ads are not the only ads your customer will see and hear.  Is a competitor making a more powerful offer than you?  Share of Voice can be purchased. Share of Mind must be earned. Share of Voice is the percentage of noise in the marketplace that is yours. Share of Mind is the mental real estate you have purchased in consciousness of your customer.Share of Voice times Relevance equals Share of Mind. Frequent repetition of your ads will earn you a higher Share of Voice. But a big Share of Voice times zero Relevance equals zero Share of Mind and zero results.Most advertisers talk in their ads about what the customer should care about, what they ought to care about, instead of what they actually care about. If you remember nothing else from today’s memo, remember these two things and you’ll do well: 1. Clarity is more important than creativity. 2. Relevance is more important than repetition. &nbsp

If History, Indeed, Repeats Itself “There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as in religion.”– The Letters of Junius, 1769 – 1771“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to bed in the streets, and to steal bread.”– Anatole France, 1844 – 1924 “Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.”– David Farland, 2001We are in danger of becoming self-righteous, sanctimonious and insufferably judgmental. You don’t want to see this happen. Neither do I.My hope is that you and I – with open eyes and soft words – might be able to mitigate this coming trend. I recently completed a study of societal trends that have repeated themselves for the past 3,000 years. Pendulum, the book that resulted from this study, will be released on September 4, 2012.Let me start at the beginning:We see the world through the lens of an entirely different set of values every 40 years. We become a different people.We are pulled 20 years up from the tipping point to the zenith of a “We” (1923 to 1943.)We swing 20 years down to the next tipping point (1963.) Tipping points are interesting times.We are pulled 20 years up to the zenith of a “Me” (1963 to 1983.)We swing 20 years down to the next tipping point (2003.)Eighty years is a complete cycle but there are only 40 years between the extremes. (The 1943 zenith of “We” to 1983 zenith of “Me.”)We’re nearly halfway up to the next zenith of “We” (2023.) 2011 is 1931 all over again. But instead of being gaga over a thing called “radio” we’re gaga over this thing called “online.”A new set of values every 40 years…On one side are the values of “We,” the team, the tribe, the group working together, staying connected.On the other side are the values of “Me,” the individual, unique and special and possessing unlimited potential.“Me”1. …demands freedom of expression. 2. …applauds personal liberty.3. …believes one man is wiser than a million men, “A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee.”4. …wants to achieve a better life.5. …is about big dreams.6. …desires to be Number One. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”7. …admires individual confidence and is attracted to decisive persons.8. …leadership is, “Look at me. Admire me. Emulate me if you can.”9. …strengthens a society’s sense of identity as it elevates attractive heroes. “We”1. …demands conformity for the common good.2. …applauds personal responsibility.3. …believes a million men are wiser than one man, “Two heads are better than one.”4. …wants to create a better world.5. …is about small actions.6. …desires to be a productive member of the team. “I came, I saw, I concurred.”7. …admires individual humility and is attracted to thoughtful persons.8. …leadership is, “This is the problem as I see it. Please consider the things I am telling you and perhaps we can solve this problem together.”9. …strengthens a society’s sense of purpose as it considers all its problems. “Me” and “We” are equal-but-opposite attractions that pull our perspective one way, then the other. Western society swings like a pendulum from one set of values to the other every 40 years with the regularity of an old and reliable grandfather clock. “Me” and “We” values are equally good, but we always take a good thing too far. If history is to be our guide, the next 20 years will be when we move from our agreement of mutual brokenness, “I’m Not Okay – You’re Not Okay,” to embrace a self-righteous indignation, “I’m Okay – You’re Not Okay.” Sanctimonious vigilante-ism will become popular as indignant leaders demonize their enemies and rally their followers by appealing to their inborn sense of rightness and social obligation, “Let’s clean this place up and to hell with compromise. They are entirely wrong and we are entirely right. They are stupid. We are wise. They are evil. We are good.”The last time we went through this, America formed a committee in Congress called the House Un-American Activities Committee (1938) which later watched with glee while Senator Joseph McCarthy destroyed countless careers by recklessly branding his enemies as “Communists” and creating the infamous blacklists.This sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? I know it does. I’m writing because I want you to be able to look back and recall how absurd this all sounded when I first told you what was on the horizon if history can be trusted.A self-righteous nut with a gun killed dozens of people in Norway and believed he was doing the right thing.That’s the problem w

Relevance has always been an important part of effective communication but never so much as today. The appalling dropout rate in High Schools and the sharp decline in church attendance are just two of the indicators of an accelerated demand by people for relevance. “Why should I? Will it make me happier? Is it really going to make a difference or is it just a waste of my time?” These are the unspoken questions asked all day, every day, by every customer. I believe these fierce, unspoken questions are society’s response to the jet-engine whine of information overload. Are you answering these unspoken questions in your ads, or are you just adding to the overload? “I am the customer. How will you change my condition? Convince me that interacting with you would be worth my time.” Keep in mind, advertiser, that your ad will be just one of 5,000 sneaky little messages that will try to break into the customer’s consciousness today. Most of these 5,000 messages will be evaluated and dismissed in a fraction of a second. Will yours be one of these? Look around. The air is thick with messages. They bark like little dogs and wave at us like shadows from the corners of our eyes.Let’s talk for a moment about the two basic styles of selling:A dynamic “Me” personality believes in “overcoming objections.” Selling is combat. Push.A responsive “We” personality believes in “positive attraction.” Selling is seduction. Pull.Most people talk about Push and Pull as different forms of media. “The Internet,” they say, “is a Pull media. Everything else is Push.”But don’t you believe that for a second. “Push” and “Pull” don’t describe the media; they describe the relationship between advertiser and customer. Internet advertisers who use a Push message strategy quickly conclude they’re somehow “reaching the wrong people” and then go off to find a qualified opt-in list because, “By golly, if I can just reach the right people I know I can make me some money!” It’s hard to convince an overbearing Push jackass that he needs to change his approach.Let me say this plainly: Marshall McLuhan was wrong. The media is NOT the message. The message is the message.What, I ask you, will be your message? The media is just the messenger who will deliver it. Do you actually believe it is the messenger who determines the customer’s response to your message?Push or Pull can be used online.Push or Pull can be used in traditional media.Advertisers using a Pull strategy in traditional media are seeing this new style of advertising work extremely well.Pull is built on relevance, positive attraction, connection, relationship and credibility. But you can’t create an ad that relates to your customer and seems credible to them until you first understand the wants, needs, hungers, fears and anxieties of your customer.It’s not about you. It’s about them. How will your product or service change their condition? Tell them.If I could teach you in 6 minutes how to create a Pull message, I’d happily do that for you in next week’s Monday Morning Memo. But I can’t teach it in 6 minutes.I can, and I will, teach it in 2 long days.Are you coming? If so, be sure to bring lots of examples of the recent ads you’ve been using. This class won’t be about me and my message.It will be about you and yours.Roy H. Williams

A 20 year-old kid walks the streets in Oklahoma. Married. No money. Works construction by day, changes tapes in an automated radio station from 1AM to 11AM each Saturday morning for $3.35 an hour. No microphone. No one will know if he’s doing a good job because station management is at home fast asleep.Frankly, the kid is a goober.The broken-down little radio station is ranked dead last in a city of 23 stations. Just one radio listener in 200 will ever tune in to listen to the radio preachers this station airs. The ratings book says that only 18,000 people will spend 5 minutes or more listening to his station each week and there will rarely be more than 500 people listening at any given moment. The city is home to nearly a million people.But 500 people sounds like a lot to the goober and it occurs to him that 18,000 would fill Skelly Stadium at the University of Tulsa. “If a person could reach all 18,000 listeners that would be huge and even 500 people can make a difference to a small business.” One Saturday morning the station manager calls to ask if Goober can cover the next shift. Goob happily agrees to work the rest of that day, then asks, “Why are there never any ads scheduled on our station?” The manager explains that the station makes its money by selling 14-minute and 28-minute blocks of time to radio preachers. Then on impulse he asks, “Would you be willing to sell some ads for us?” “You bet!” says Goob. “How much do I charge?” “Whatever you can get,” the manager replies. This is when our 20 year-old Goober made a decision that would change his life forever. Like most of life’s pivotal forks-in-the-road, the decision didn’t seem important at the time but in later years he would look back and remember this day as the beginning of his career. A Mom’n’Pop retailer had a small showroom filled with carpet samples at the bottom of the hill near the radio station. With a yellow legal tablet in his left hand and holding the tip of an ink pen to it with his right, he said, “I’m Roy Williams and I’m studying advertising and I’d consider it a huge favor if you could answer a couple of tiny questions for me; have you ever done any advertising that you felt was worth the money you spent?” Staring at the business owner like an eager young reporter, our 20 year-old goober wrote down exactly what the carpet store owner told him. “One last question. Have you ever done any advertising that you felt was really going to make a difference, but it wound up doing no good at all?” The carpet storeowner started laughing. Looking down and writing furiously on his yellow legal tablet, the goober said, “Tell me about it.” And then the goober did something very different. He said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” and left. He did not ask the man if he wanted to buy some advertising. A few weeks later, after the goober had spoken to hundreds more business owners, he walked in to that little carpet store and said, “Remember me?” When the carpet storeowner nodded yes, Goob said, “Another business owner told me something the other day that I thought might be helpful to you…” And then he relayed a very relevant story of a successful innovation that had been pioneered by a business owner in a different category on the other side of town. Goober then said, “I really appreciate the time you spent with me the other day. Hopefully, you’ll get some benefit out of some of the things I learn from other people.” And then he left again without asking the man if he wanted to buy some advertising. By the time our goober had his 21st birthday he was a walking encyclopedia of real-world knowledge. At least 500 business owners, each with an average of 20 years experience and an ad budget of $10,000 to $100,000 a year, had shared their best and worst experiences with Goober and received some excellent insights in return. Nearly all of them would smile when they saw the goober come in.Goober now had the results of 10,000 years of combined experience (500 businesses x 20 years) at $25,000,000 (500 businesses x $50,000) per year spent in advertising. His education had cost his instructors as much as it would cost to put 5,000 young doctors through medical school.  By the time he was 22, Goober was making $70,000 a year at the number 23 station in a city of 23 stations. This was 1980, when a really good job paid $24,000 and major league BIG money was $50,000 a year. When he was 40, Goober wrote a book about all the things he’d learned from small business owners across America. That book was very successful. The sequel became a New York Times bestseller and was ranked as the #1 Business Book in America by the Wall Street Journal. The third book in the trilogy was also a bestseller. That’s when Goober agreed to start a business school for Am

Once a year I allow myself to ramble a bit in the insane delusion that someone out there might actually want to know what’s happening in my life.Deep in my heart I know the only people who really care about my private trivia are my wife and my mom. My wife, of course, lives with me so I’ll address the rest of today’s Memo to my mom.You can eavesdrop if you like.Dear Mom,The tower is finally finished. Everyone who has seen it so far has been big-eyed and breathless. Classes are 10 times as much fun there as when they were in Tuscan Hall.The only things left to be completed on the campus are the Chris and Dave Windmill Theater, Bilbo Baggins’ home in the hillside and some landscaping. We should have all this done in less than a year and then I’ll be stepping down as Chancellor to let someone with better organizational skills take the Academy to the next level.Can you believe I’ve got to raise $40,000 to pay for another big bronze statue? It’s the final piece in the master design of the interlinked symbols on the campus. The Academy is, of course, completely without funds but that’s what always happens in the summer. I try not to worry.Due to the Academy’s predictable lack of summertime revenue, Pennie and I have moved the construction crew to our private property next door to the campus to build a spectacular new Welcome Center right at the property line where our property borders the Academy’s property. Pennie has been saving up the money to do this so the Academy will be able to catch its breath financially for the next few months.The location of the Welcome Center lets my staff greet the Academy’s visitors to the campus since the Academy doesn’t yet have the money to hire its own full-time people. When the Academy completes the final few construction projects I mentioned earlier, it should easily be able to afford to hire its own people. Till then, my staff will continue to work for the Academy for free as necessary.Sean Taylor has decided that I should teach a 1-hour class each month by streaming video. People will send in their questions and I’ll answer the best questions for everyone present in the electronic classroom and maybe throw in a few valuable tips along the way. We’ve done this for a number of companies in recent months and it’s been hugely successful, so Sean wants to start a class for anyone who is willing to pay the tuition. The whole world is invited to sit in on the first class for free next Monday, July 18, to see if they want to enroll.I’m sending the manuscript of Pendulum to the publisher this week. Like the tower, it turned out profoundly better than I had imagined. Here’s what the reader will find on the front page of the book when it hits the bookstores next spring:  “If you will see into the heart of a people, look closely at what they create. Examine the inventions to which they pay attention. Read their bestselling books.Listen to their popular music.This is how you will know them.”  – Roy H. Williams Having made my 90-minute presentation on Society’s 40-Year Pendulum to 241 auditoriums full of people in the past 8 years, I began this book by trying to disprove my own 40-year hypothesis.My friend Dr. Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said,“Roy, there are few, true scientists left in the world. Too often, a scientist will develop a hypothesis and then look for supporting evidence. They identify with their hypothesis and they want it to be correct. This is bad science. When you have a hypothesis, your job is to try to disprove it. No one knows more about your hypothesis than you do. No one else is as qualified to discover its flaws. When you believe a thing to be true, your first responsibility is to do everything you can to disprove it.”As I attacked my hypothesis to disprove it, I found 3 major loopholes:1. I had chosen the examples in my presentation after I developed my theory.2. My presentation was America-centric. I was using the Billboard charts to follow patterns in music and the New York Times bestseller list to follow patterns in literature.3. All my examples came from the past 120 years. My original motive in this was that my audience needed to be familiar with the events. But if my 40-year hypothesis was true, it should be observable in any century.With Kary’s voice ringing in my head, I decided to:A. throw out all the familiar data in my 90-minute presentation.B. begin a new investigation using completely new data whose patterns and connections I would have no way of knowing in advance. C. gather this new data from persons who had never seen my presentation.D. use the international hit-tracking website, TsorT, instead of Billboard.E. use the Publishers Weekly list instead of the New York TimesF. examine every 40-year window for

Chronic problems in business are usually the result of binary thinking. “It’s either this way or that way. It can’t be both.”Strangely, the answer is almost always “both.”“Should I try to attract the price-driven (transactional) customer, or should I go for the (relational) customer who cares about something other than price?”Both.  Create and schedule ads that speak convincingly to the question of price. Create and schedule other ads that speak of important matters beyond price. Just don’t try to do both in the same ad.“Should I manage with strict policies, procedures, methods and systems, or should I empower my employees to make decisions on their own?”Both. Systematize the 90 percent of your company’s activities that are recurrent so that your employees have the freedom to humanize and customize the 10 percent of your activities that are ever-changing and unusual. A company without freedoms is a sweatshop. A company without policies, procedures, methods and systems is a country club for unproductive employees.“Should I promote an exclusive brand and risk the manufacturer betraying me by allowing my competitor to sell that brand for which I’ve created all the demand, or should I create my own in-house brand so that I can remain in control of it?”Both. You need the credibility of established brands to lend strength to the new brand you will introduce. Advertise both, but never in the same ad.“Won’t this make me seem unfocused?”No. You must get on board with proven procedures. You must also do your own thing and go your own direction. It’s not only possible that you do both, it is essential.Mechanics across Europe began building cars in 1886 and each time they built a car it was different. More than 2,000 different garages built and sold cars one-at-a-time before Henry Ford’s 1913 introduction of the first moving assembly line employing conveyor belts. Henry popularized the concept of interchangeable parts. It was efficient. It also made him the richest man in the world. By 1923 Henry Ford was personally earning $264,000 a day. He was declared a billionaire by the Associated Press.More than 17,000,000 Model T’s rolled off Henry’s assembly line and you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. The inefficiency of building cars one-at-a-time forced the other 2,000 garages to sell their cars at about $2,500 apiece while the price of a reliable, new Model T was only $849.Soon the other carmakers got on board and America became an automotive Wonderland.But we always take a good thing too far. Fifty years later, General Motors decided to take this idea to the next level. “Instead of designing 5 different brands each year and retooling our machinery to build Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs, why not just put a different interior package and grille and taillights in the same, basic car and sell that car under 5 different names?”A Chevy Cavalier is a Pontiac Sunbird is an Oldsmobile Firenza is a Buick Skyhawk is a Cadillac Cimarron.A Chevy Nova is a Pontiac Ventura is an Oldsmobile Omega is a Buick Apollo is a Cadillac Seville.A Chevy Caprice is a Pontiac Catalina is an Olds 98 is a Buick Electra is a Cadillac DeVille.On the surface, this looks like exactly the same idea that made Henry Ford rich. The problem with the “platform engineering” introduced by GM in the late 1970s is that it eroded the distinctiveness of their brands. Two decades later GM was forced to close Oldsmobile and a few years after that, Pontiac fell as well. Analysts speculate whether Buick or Cadillac will be next.Conformity is essential or you will not be efficient. Differentiation is essential or you will not be special.Differentiate the 10 percent the public sees and experiences. Manage the 90 percent that happens behind the scenes with the efficiency of systems and procedures.It’s never one or the other. The answer is always “both.”Systematize the 90. Humanize the 10.Roy H. Williams 

PROVED: Technique Beats Inspiration Wizard Academy completed an experiment last Thursday and we’re prepared to share the results of it.Amateur musicians were gathered from across North America. We refused to allow them to create music in the manner they preferred. Instead, we showed them video clips of Bob Dylan, Elton John, Richard Carpenter and other musicians explaining the tricks they used to create the greatest hits the world has ever known. Our musicians were required to do as they had been instructed.The objective of this experiment was to determine if success in the arts might be less dependent on talent, sincerity and inspiration than we have previously assumed. This is not to say the amateur musicians who volunteered to be the objects of our experiment were untalented, insincere or lacked inspiration. They simply weren’t allowed to access these traits and characteristics.Instead, they were given specific techniques, narrow guidelines, insufficient instruments and not nearly enough time.  The 17 spent the morning of the first day in training and instruction. Four of the 17 were writers. At lunchtime, the musicians were sent to the banquet hall while Trisha Sylvestre, Ashley Leroux, Mark Forrester and Scott Broderick were asked to randomly choose 4 strong emotions apiece and write a dozen short lines about each emotion. They were given a total of 28 minutes to do all of this. Their 7-minute writings were later distributed randomly to the musicians who were told these “song lyrics” could not be altered in any way.  Each musician’s assignment was to write music that expressed whatever emotion was precisely opposite the lyrics they had been given. They were then told to sing those lyrics to the music they had written. Words of rage were sung joyfully. Words of hatred were sung lovingly. Words of happiness were sung sadly. Words of anxiety were sung calmly. Deep thoughts were sung as shallow little ditties. This first exercise taught the musicians the techniques of random entry and contradiction.The songs they created were shockingly interesting.On Day Two the writers presented the musicians with a second set of lyrics that employed additional techniques they had learned. And instead of 7 minutes, the writers were allowed a luxurious 20 minutes per song.Did I mention the only instruments the musicians were allowed to use were conga drums, a violin, a flute, a bass clarinet, a harmonica, an acoustic guitar, a melodeon, an electric keyboard and an electric bass? In other words they were given instruments that could not possibly be combined to create what had been demanded of them.And yet they did it anyway.On Day Three all the songs were recorded live. No corrections or alterations were made in post-production. And just to keep things fair, the writers were each told they had to write and deliver a spoken word performance.Want to hear the results?Wizard Academy is a business school where big things are taught quickly. Come. You belong here.We think you might be our brand of crazy.Roy H. Williams 

How to Become Self-Selected, Part TwoMonday Morning, One Week Ago – “Honey, I liked this week’s memo but you never really told us how to become self-selected. You just gave us examples of other people who have done it.”I took another look at that memo and said, “You’re right, Princess. I intended the reader to read the line that says, ‘The self-selected are those who take action, the ones who participate, the ones who don’t go away,’ and understand that you select yourself for leadership when you take action, participate, and don’t go away. But now that I look at it again, I can see that I didn’t connect those attributes to the reader nearly so clearly as I thought.”Self-selection is an important life skill, so I’ve decided to make another run at explaining it:Leaders aren’t appointed or selected so much as they’re simply acknowledged.Let’s look at the example of Peter, James and John. People assume Jesus chose these three above the other nine. But I’m convinced Jesus was merely reacting to the fact that they chose him more strongly than the other nine. Anytime Jesus stood up, they stood up. When he walked to a different spot, they followed him to that spot, even if it meant getting out of the boat. They were the ones who were always with him.  Every time Jesus looked up from what he was doing, Peter, James and John were there. This is what it means to be self-selected.To be self-selected is to volunteer. No, that’s not it. To volunteer is to say that you’d be willing to take action if it were asked of you. But self-selection doesn’t wait to be asked. E.W. Howe (1853-1937) understood self-selection perfectly, I think. “When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”The world is full of educated people waiting for an opportunity to demonstrate their competence. Most of these people will go to their graves having never gotten “their big break.”Education is one thing. Recognition is another. Education is what you receive when you choose to become informed. Recognition is what you receive when other people see the value of your expertise. Education without recognition has very little value in the marketplace.Wizard Academy is a business school. Is this beginning to make sense to you?Do you want to be a published author? Take the advice of Mark Twain, “Write without pay until someone offers to pay.” Write intelligent, clearly worded letters to the editor. Submit feature stories and op-ed pieces to magazines and websites. Write a blog on whatever subject you’d like to become known as an expert. If you have something to say worth hearing, people will tell other people and soon your readership will begin to grow. It may take a few years but if you self-select and don’t go away, you’ll someday have a book in print.Wizard Academy is a business school. Is this beginning to make sense to you?Do you want to be a public speaker? Talk constantly about your subject. Talk to the crowd that gathers at the water cooler. Talk to Ms. Johnson’s seventh grade class on career day. Talk to a breakfast club. Talk to the Rotary Club. Find 100 different opportunities to talk about your subject for free, no matter how small and insignificant your audience. Prepare for each of these audiences as if you were being highly paid. You’ll be a highly paid public speaker before you reach venue 150. The myth of a “big break” is what keeps the average person from becoming successful. They keep waiting on someone else to do something instead of simply selecting themselves and taking action. The self-selected person is not the average person. When Willie Nelson was asked what it felt like to be an overnight success, he answered, “Overnight success feels great after playing 10 years in honky-tonks behind chicken wire.” What do you want to see happen in your life? Are you willing to select yourself for it? Wizard Academy is a business school.Select yourself.Pick a class and come.Roy H. Williams

he Secret of Peter, James and John Dewey Jenkins is a self-made man, the sort of person every parent hopes their child will become. Like many of us, Dewey started with nothing, nada, zip, zero. He worked hard, was focused and patient, always tried to do the right thing, accepted his setbacks with grace and his victories with humility. In this, he is not unique. You and I have met many successful people with those qualities.I was sitting in a private auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Dewey repairs and installs heat and air conditioning systems. I was eavesdropping on the training session Dewey conducts each month with his several dozen senior managers.“If it doesn’t add value for the customer, don’t do it.” This is Dewey’s criterion for decision-making. It’s a good one, but I’ve heard customer-focused mandates like this one before and so have you. Excellent companies are always customer-focused.The surprising statement, the one that crossed my eyes, was this one: “The job of management is to focus its energies on its best people.”That statement startled me because this is not what managers do. Managers put out fires. Managers plead and threaten and cajole employees to do what they’ve been trained to do. Managers usually ignore their best and brightest people, thankful that they, at least, can be counted on.I asked Dewey to tell me more about this philosophy.“Roy, if a baseball coach has a left-fielder who is a great batter, but barely acceptable as a left-fielder, it’s tempting to work with that player on his fielding. But it’s always a mistake. No matter how hard the player tries, his fielding is likely to improve only slightly. But if that same player is coached on how to become an even better batter, he’s likely to become the League Batting Champion, a real superstar.”Just then a young man walked past. Dewey touched his arm to stop him. “Roy, this is Dennis, he’s one of our very best people. People often say, ‘Put me in, Coach, let me show you what I can do,’ but then when you put them in, they don’t do much. Dennis isn’t like that. Every time he asks to be given a chance, Dennis delivers exactly what we wanted.” Dewey then looked Dennis in the eyes and said, “Thanks for doing such a great job.” Dennis walked away with a smile. “Roy, managers should invest their time where it will give the company the highest return on investment.”“But who puts out all the little fires that spring up every day?”Instead of answering me directly, Dewey took me on a little tour. During the next 10 minutes, he introduced me to a series of different employees, not managers, whose job is to respond to all the predictable crisis that happen each day. Dewey Jenkins has a smooth-running operation with an extremely high customer satisfaction index. The employees solve the problems. The managers build the employees, focusing their highest energies on the ones who rise above average.There we have it, “the ones who rise above average.” The self-selected are those who take action, the ones who participate, the ones who don’t go away.My conversation with Dewey caused me to remember something my business partner, Manley Miller, said during a class he taught recently on Fund Raising:“A non-profit is not a democracy where everyone is equal. Non-profits have inner circles. When Jesus taught in Israel, he had thousands of observers. Among those observers were followers. Among the followers were disciples. Among the disciples were the twelve. And among the twelve were Peter, James and John. Can you imagine the scene when those three came down from the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus and saw the rest of the twelve? ‘Wow! You’ll never believe what just happened!’ You gotta know the other nine were saying, ‘Hey! Why didn’t we get to go?’”The inner circle that surrounds you will always be a self-selected group of insiders. It’s counterintuitive, I know, but the job of management is to focus its energies on these, its best people.Where have you been focusing your energies?Roy H. Williams

Curves are difficult to create in bodies, buildings and furniture. But they always attract attention.Curves are good. All the best stories have them.Good movies, plays and books curve one way then another, taking us in directions we did not anticipate. We can never see what’s around the corner.Curves are the mark of a master.Only a true craftsman can build furniture with elegant curves. A building with curves is the mark of a talented architect. Bodies with curves are maintained by exercise and a disciplined diet. DNA alone is not enough to keep sensuous curves in place.Great storytellers rarely take the onramp to the Interstate. They prefer to take the scenic route that curves through the countryside of the mind.Writing straight, flat and smooth is easy. Writing lumpy is even easier. But to write a message with curves, elegant, sculpted curves, requires time, determination and commitment.Straight, flat writing sounds like this:Early one morning I crawled onto the roof to read a book and I noticed a fox in the yard. We looked at each other and then he trotted away.Lumpy writing sounds like this:Sometimes I get up early to read and sometimes I do it on the roof. One morning I was reading up there but I can’t remember what it was, though. Doesn’t matter. That’s not really important. The point I wanted to make is that I saw a fox and it was really cool but it trotted off.Add a few elegant curves and this simple story of a girl and a fox becomes a winding road full of scenery and surprises:This one day, I got up before anyone, went up on roof with me book and something made me look up. And there he was. Staring at me. A young todd fox, full grown. The cheek of ‘im. He wasn’t scared. His eyes said, “Look at me. I’m all fox, me. I’m perfect. I’m the fancyman fox and I’ll bet you wish you were me.” I could see the dewdrops on his whiskers. He was so bright. His eyes said, “Look at me. I’m more alive than you. I do what I like and no one stops me.” But I felt alive, too. I could feel my heart bumping and something tight in my throat. And I wanted to pull up my skirts and dance for ’im, something daft like that. But what happened was, we just looked at each other like that. And then he turned and trotted away and I could see the dark marks in the grass where he put his feet.– Lydia Holly, in South Riding, a Masterpiece Theater series based on the novel by Winifred Holtby. A story can be so full of curves that it can only be described as twisted. Alice in Wonderland was such a story. Likewise, Inception was a movie whose twists required our focused attention. Advertising can be twisty, too. One of my favorite twisted ads was written by the great Steve McKenzie as an exercise during the second day of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. There it is. Again. The angh-angh, buzz-buzz alarm that crowbars my eyes, loudly. Is this dream or real? What day is it? Am I still employed? Where is that button of snooze? To-do, to-do, so much doo-doo. It’s sweat and Daytimers, soap-on-a-roap, aftershave, mousse with no grunts in my hair. Gotta go-go, I’m driving, I’m driven to the machine that I love, muchly. And there you are, all ground up, waiting to waterfall in my cup. It’s you and your big, red eye. It’s me and my five-gallon travel mug. It’s a marriage made in a paper filter. Sip-sip, yum-yum. I’m zooming. Awake with visions of flying pigs and everything’s possible. You did it! The roasting, the grinding, magical. Who? What? How? Hey! Stewart’s Coffee. Redeye. I’m in love.The hidden danger of twisty ads is this: they can leave the reader behind. Drive too fast through a series of tight corners and those who are following will lose sight of you. Steve took this ad right to the limit. We were able to keep up with him, but barely. At the end of the ad we knew that Steve was talking about coffee but we wanted to hear the ad again because we knew that some of it had slipped past us. Like I said earlier, the ability to navigate curves skillfully is the mark of a master. Steve McKenzie is one of those great ones.Me? I’m doing all I can just to keep it between the yellow lines.Thanks for riding along with me. I enjoy these little drives together.Roy H. Williams

Once a month my partners and I have a videoconference. We solve problems together and I share a few stories of things I learned the hard way. Craig Arthur, director of Wizard of Ads – Australia, tells me these stories are his favorite parts of our time together. Listening to my silly stories, he sees how to sidestep predictable problems. Many years ago my friend John Young said to me, “Roy, do you know the difference between a smart man and a wise man?”“Say on, John.”“A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. A wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake altogether.”I play the role of smart man for my partners so that they can be better wise men. (Wise man. Wise-ard. Wisard. Wizard. You’ll find it in the Oxford English Dictionary. Hence, Wizards of Ads.)Solomon said,“There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth… Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”– Ecclesiastes, chapter 4The job of the consultant begins with an inventory of the client’s Limiting Factors. “What are the impediments that are tripping my client up and holding him back?”The client will always tell you the problem is “Not enough traffic. Not enough phone calls. Not enough selling opportunities.” But these are not Limiting Factors. A shortage of selling opportunities is merely the symptom of a Limiting Factor. The real question is, “Why do we have a shortage of selling opportunities?”A consultant probing for Limiting Factors is a bit like a doctor poking, prodding and asking, “Does this hurt?”About 20 years ago I was hired by a retailer who occupied a landmark location in his small town. His grandfather had opened that store 105 years earlier. My client’s problem was “not enough traffic.” My job, of course, was to increase traffic. But a question hovered in the air between us. That question quivered and glowed and throbbed until I finally blurted it out. “The people who don’t buy from us; is it because they don’t know about us? Or is it because they do?” That store had a reputation for being expensive. We solved the problem. The store began to thrive again. We did not lower prices.Sometimes the Limiting Factor isn’t the reputation but the Competitive Environment. This might be the high cost of media, a low-visibility location, the wrong inventory, or a strong competitor.When a business owner has a capable, highly motivated competitor, he or she will usually explain this Limiting Factor in one of 3 ways: 1.    “We don’t think about them. I believe we should focus on what we’re doing, not on what our competitors are doing.”2.    “Yes, they’re big, all right, but that’s not my customer. They sell to the type of customer we don’t really want. You can’t be all things to all people.” 3.   “They’re dishonest. Horrible liars and cheats. You just wouldn’t believe some of the things they do.”Every business owner has a blind spot. Do you know yours?That was a trick question. Of course you don’t know your blind spot. If you knew it was there, it wouldn’t be a blind spot.When a business owner can’t figure out how to take his company to the next level, it’s usually because the stairway that will take him there is hiding behind his blind spot.You can’t see your own blind spot because you’re on the inside, looking out. The first step of a good consultant is to be a friendly pair of eyes on the outside, looking in.A friendly pair of eyes to help you evaluate your limiting factors.A friendly pair of eyes to help you find the message you must shout to the world.A friendly pair of eyes to show you the opportunity that hides behind your blind spot.I’m very proud of my Wizard of Ads partners. They’re doing a lot of good for a lot of people.Roy H. Williams

For Traditional Retail and Service Businesses I feel a bit like the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, though I’m not nearly so brave as he. You remember, don’t you? Two weavers promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that will be invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a boy cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”The Internet is the parade we’re watching and Facebook is its emperor. I’ve seen “naked” and this emperor sure looks it, but I hesitate to shout it out loud because this would be tantamount to a confession of professional incompetence.Let’s face it. Those weavers have spun a pretty loud buzz with “Facebook and Twitter.”The first Internet buzzword was “eyeballs.” Any site that could generate a high number of unique visitors and page views was said to be overflowing with eyeballs and its creator was considered a genius. But eyeballs didn’t translate into dollars unless you delivered a message to the brain behind those eyeballs that was judged to be highly relevant and sufficiently credible.Next it was about “going viral.” My office was deluged with a river of advertisers asking, “How can we take our message viral? We want to go viral. Do you know the secret of going viral?” I told these advertisers, “Going viral is what happens when traditional word-of-mouth is empowered by digital technology. Do you have a relevant, credible message that contains at least one of the essential three word-of-mouth triggers?”“Eyeballs” and “going viral” faded away due to a lack of success stories. I breathed a sigh of relief.Now it’s “Facebook and Twitter.”Internet acolytes say “Facebook and Twitter” in hushed tones like they’re intoning a holy mantra. Gregarious extraverts say “Facebook and Twitter” like they’re sharing the location of a keg party. Hungry business owners say “Facebook and Twitter” like they’re asking for directions on a road trip. Aspiring young consultants say “Facebook and Twitter” with an air of condescension, as though it were “Checkmate” in a chess match.This time I’m letting Lee Iacocca handle it:“Talk is cheap. Where I come from, in the auto industry, you were held brutally accountable for your programs and products. The response to any idea was, ‘Show me where it’s working.’”– Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? ch. 3 (2007)Lee is right, kids. Talk is cheap. Show me where it’s working. Google “Facebook success stories.” I did. Prepare to be underwhelmed.Facebook promises hypertargeting but this has been the promise of every media since the invention of advertising. Newspapers have been divided into sections for nearly a century. “Do you want to target men in the Sports section, women in the Lifestyle section, or businesspeople in the Business section?” Magazines were invented to allow us to target micro-groups that shared a common interest. Television and radio stations promise psychographic targeting through specific programming. Billboards promise tightly controlled geographic targeting. And each of these media is hampered by the same limiting factor as Facebook and Twitter. It is an inescapable truth: Response to your message will be dictated by its relevance and credibility, not by the vehicle of its delivery.There is benefit to be had through a presence on Facebook. Twitter is a quick way to blurt 140 characters to whomever will give you a moment’s attention. If you enjoy these things, do them. Your business will certainly derive some benefit.But they are not the highest and best use of your time and energy.This whole “Facebook and Twitter” thing reminds me of a conversation I had with a client 14 years ago in Milwaukee.  Working together we had grown his business 10-fold in just 5 years. That’s right, one thousand percent growth. He was swimming in cash because he was tenacious, hard-working, had excellent judgment and his employees loved him. All I had done was help him focus his message and his ad budget. When he arrived in Austin for his annual marketing retreat, he said, “This year I want to spend 20 thousand dollars of the ad budget for a country club membership. I really believe I can sell some product on the golf course.”Knowing my client loved to golf, I said, “Sounds like a great idea. How often do you plan to golf?”“Every Tuesday,” he answered.“I’m okay with this plan as long as we agree that you’re going to be the one responsible for selling on the golf course, not me. If you can’t make it work, it’s your fault, not mine. You okay with that?”He was okay with it. He bought the country club membership, began playing golf every Tuesday, sold a little product on the golf course and he’s still a client today. But his business is now more than 50 times the size it was when we first began working together. My c

1. You have something to sell and2. You want to tell the world about it.These are my first questions:1. Are people already looking for it?2. Can you deliver your message in 8 words or less?If the answer to both questions is yes,Put up a big, intrusive sign.The world may be a little uglier for it, but you’ll sell a lot of stuff. For the record, 8 is the number of words a driver can read before they feel compelled to look back at the road. Put more than 8 words on a sign and you’ll be advertising to the passenger seat.A high-visibility location for your business is usually the cheapest advertising you can buy. But don’t be fooled by traffic numbers. High traffic doesn’t always mean high visibility. These are the pivotal questions:1. How many people drive past here each day?2. Are they mostly the same people each day driving to and from work, or is this a twice-a-month artery for a much larger population?3. Could a person drive past here and not notice this business? If the answer is, “No, they would definitely notice it,” then acquire the location. It’s a landmark that will serve you faithfully for many years to come.The Internet is electronic print, instantly updatable and deliverable on demand. As such, it has effectively replaced the newspaper, the telephone book, the encyclopedia and the dictionary and it is rapidly replacing the bookstore. Product brochures and catalogues are becoming “virtual,” existing only as backlit images on a screen. Lost your instruction manual? Go online. You can download it as a pdf file.Slash your Yellow Page budget and get serious about your web presence. Are your business hours and phone number easy to find on your home page? Jeffrey Eisenberg told me recently that a high percentage of visitors to the web sites of local businesses are looking for exactly that information. Don’t frustrate these customers. Put your phone number and your store hours on your home page. Do it.To think of the Internet as electronic media like television and radio is a huge mistake. Online streaming video was popularized by Youtube but the experience of it requires continual decision-making and physical participation, much like a video game. Television, on the other hand, is passive. Sit and stare. The biggest threat to the effectiveness of television commercials isn’t the Internet, but the DVR.  Gone are the days when television networks could corner us and force us to watch a sales pitch. God bless TiVo.My friend “Other Roy” Laughlin is piercingly insightful when it comes to our consumption of media. “What’s the difference between a country club and a municipal golf course?” he asked. He looked at my blank face a moment then answered his question, “The price of admission. Traditional broadcast TV commercials won’t away, they’ll just reach people who can’t afford DVRs. People with money use technology to shield themselves from commercials.” These observations might seem self-evident today but Other Roy said these things 7 years ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the land. Like I said, he’s piercingly insightful.Texting while driving is more dangerous than a loaded gun. It’s more dangerous than drugs, tobacco and alcohol combined. Your car’s lack of a built-in, hands-free device for listening to the internet is what keeps internet radio from being an immediate threat to broadcast radio.*Few people listened to FM radio until auto manufacturers began installing FM receivers as standard equipment in the 1970s. The trickle-down of new cars to used car buyers takes almost 7 years, so we’re at least that many years away from radio’s effectiveness being seriously eroded by the Internet.Yes, I am a huge proponent of radio for growing local businesses. I’ve found it to be an amazing tool for turning little businesses into big ones. But radio is often misunderstood and misused by advertisers, leaving them to say with conviction, “I tried radio and it didn’t work.”Be at Wizard Academy June 29 and 30 and I’ll tell you what you did wrong. Pay attention, correct this problem and soon your banker will commission a portrait of you to hang above his desk.The little brass plaque on its frame will read, “Our Largest Depositor.”I’m going to teach this class only once and seating is limited.A lot of people will wait to register and find themselves facing a little banner than says, “SOLD OUT.”  Many of these fine people – some of them dear friends of ours – will call Kristin or Becke or Corrine and say, “Can’t you please add just one more seat?” It is for Kristin and Becke and Corrine that I’m writing this closing paragraph. They will remember it and feel better when they are forced to say, “I really wish I could, but no, I can’t. I simply can’t. I’m sorry.”Attend this class and I promise you’ll say to yourself more than once, “Wow. How did I not know that? It’s

I’ve never met a business owner whose advertising failed because they were reaching the wrong people.Let me say that again. I’ve never met a business owner whose advertising failed because they were reaching the wrong people.Advertising fails when people have   1. no knowledge of the offer. The ad is easily ignored.   2. no interest in the offer. The offer is (A.) irrelevant or (B.) misunderstood.   3. no trust in the offer. The claims made in the ad are not credible.These problems can be solved by   1. getting the attention of the people with words and phrases that are new, surprising and different.   2. offering the people what they want to buy (instead of trying to convince them to buy what you’d like to sell.)   3. supporting your claims with examples that agree with the experiences of your prospective customers.“But wait a minute, Mr. so-called Wizard of Ads. Your second point was that ads sometimes fail because the people who were reached had ‘no interest in the offer.’ Because I am an honorable advertising salesperson, I always begin by asking the advertiser, ‘Who is your customer?’  Now if I can offer this advertiser a higher concentration of those people, isn’t that a better value?”The foundation of your sales pitch rests on the assumption that an advertiser should be able to articulate their customer profile as a demographic cell. While this premise may seem reasonable to both you and the business owner, it’s almost never true.Let’s put this to the test. I will ask the questions. You will answer them honestly:   1. Do your friends tend to be male or female?   2. Do your friends tend to be under 30, 30 to 44, 45 to 59, or over 60?   3. Do your friends tend to be married or single?   4. Do your friends tend to be Republicans, Democrats, or Independents?These questions are perfectly reasonable, but you know in your heart that you have lots of male and female friends of all ages, married and single, and with political affiliations than span the spectrum. Am I right? But all of them bought the same product: you.If you say, “My friends tend to be male, 30 to 44, Republican and married,” the truth is this description fits no more than thirty percent of your friends. (Realistically, that number is probably closer to 20 percent.) Welcome to the world of demographic targeting.There is something deep in each of us that knows there has to be a right customer and that wishes we could find more of these “right people.”I believe that right customers exist. I do not believe they can be targeted according to income or demographic profile. If you target a demographic cell, it’s because you believe in your heart that persons of the same age, sex and marital status all think alike.Target the ‘right customer’ through your ad copy, not your media selection. Reach as many people as your budget will let you reach repetitiously, regardless of their age, sex, or income bracket. Choose words, phrases and points-of-view that will resonate with them. Do this and you will be amazed at how many different people suddenly become ‘your customer.’Next week I’ll tell you how to select your message delivery vehicle. If discussions about advertising bore you, next week’s memo will be a good one to skip.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

We stay too busy to think big thoughts. This frantic busyness, this voluntary slavery to the merely urgent is preferred, I think, because big thoughts make us realize that we are much smaller creatures than we like to pretend.“We often talk about Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 in terms of failures: failures of intelligence, failures of planning, failures of communication. But these catastrophes were first and foremost failures of imagination. Did we know that a major hurricane could destroy New Orleans? Yes: it was even part of the tour guides’ spiel. Did we know terrorists wanted to bring down the World Trade Center? Yes: they made a credible attempt in 1993. And what did we do with what we knew? Nothing. Some disasters, I think, are so big and so awful they are literally beyond our power to conceive. So, we dismiss them out of hand, retreat to the ‘knowledge’ that a thing can’t happen because, well, it just can’t.”– Leonard Pitts, July 6, 2006 America’s largest mortgage companies and accounting firms were engaged in fraud; such massive fraud that it nearly toppled our national economy; but the Justice Department and the SEC chose to look the other way and pretend that everything was fine.British Petroleum drilled deeper in the ocean than they could control and our safety inspectors just crossed their fingers and joined in the pretense that nothing would go wrong.A Japanese power company built a nuclear reactor on a known geological fault and their safety inspectors crossed their fingers as well.I agree with Leonard Pitts. We’re often foolish children, crossing our fingers and retreating to the ‘knowledge’ that a thing can’t happen because, well, “It just can’t.”When authorities tell us we’re being reckless, we cry out against “government interference” and vote the bastards out of office. Then, when finger crossing doesn’t shield us from disaster, we blame the government agency that “failed to do its job.”But those aren’t big thoughts. Those are just some of the little emergencies we talk about to avoid thinking big thoughts.Buckminster Fuller was a thinker of big thoughts. He called our planet Spaceship Earth because he was fully aware that seven billion of us are crammed on a tiny speck of dust circling an 11,000-degree fireball that flies at 252 times the speed of a bullet through a limitless vacuum. Bucky muttered, “Sometimes I think we’re alone (in the universe.) Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.”Bucky spoke truly. Intelligent life exists beyond our little planet or it does not. And either way, the thought is staggering.Will you take a few moments to be staggered by that thought or will you just turn up the volume of the television?Another big thought is the thought of God. If Charlie Darwin was right, our species resulted from the biological equivalent of spontaneous combustion. But Aiden Wilson Tozer pondered the same big thought and muttered, “All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.”Darwin was right or Tozer was right. Either way, the thought is staggering.Thousands of you are annoyed with me right now for bringing up these big thoughts.But in my defense I offer one last question: Doesn’t this annoyance prove my opening paragraph?Last week I wrote about me. This week, as promised, I wrote about you.Perhaps next week I’ll write about business and it will be valuable enough that you’ll choose to overlook the fact that I occasionally seem to have no feel for the boundaries of polite society.I probably ought to work on that.Roy H. Williams

See it. Believe it. Say it.These are the first steps.But be prepared; most people will think you’re an idiot. Or delusional.Or full of yourself. Maybe they’re right. The outcome is all that separates confidence from hubris.You saw it in your mind. You believed it could happen. You spoke about it as though it were, in fact, going to happen. People laughed at you, made fun of you, sneered at you.But then it happened.  And now everyone talks about your confidence, your vision, your dream come true. The possibility of failure exists, even when you pretend it doesn’t. FAILURE: Because sometimes “your very best” just isn’t good enough.You saw it in your mind. You believed it could happen. You spoke about it as though it were, in fact, going to happen. And it never happened.And now people talk about where you went wrong. They think of you as delusional, egotistical, full of yourself. “Who did you think you were?”Can you live with that egg on your face?Count the cost, dreamer. Are you willing to pay the price? You are? Read on!“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”– Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935)“Every man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds… 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.”– Mark Twain (1835-1910)“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”– Earl Nightingale  A person would have to be pretty dense not to realize that today’s memo is the result of my contemplating the past 7 years of campus construction and the recent opening of our landmark tower.You can be sure there have been many times during these past 7 years when I thought, “You can keep the cheese. Just let me out of the trap.” But somehow we endured. You have Pennie to thank for that.As I contemplate the existence of this campus for dreamers, entrepreneurs and business owners, I cannot help but think of another tower many years ago: “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” – Genesis, chapter 11In that original tower story, God scattered the tower builders from Babel because they had forgotten Him. They turned their thoughts toward other things and their project was abandoned.Each reader will take something different from that tale. Some will see it as a warning of impending doom for Wizard Academy. Others will see it as a fairy tale. I am of two reactions: the dark, earthy part of me remembers the words of Edward Gorey:“Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. It almost never does; that’s what makes it so boring.”Simultaneously, the better, more spiritual part of me sings the lyrics of a song made famous in 1978:“He didn’t bring us this far to leave us.He didn’t teach us to swim to let us drown.He didn’t build His home in us to move away.He didn’t lift us up to let us down.” Let each reader take what he will from today’s rambling, self-indulgent thoughts.Next week I will write about you. Roy H. Williams

You open your mailbox and grab a handful of paper. How long does it take you to sort that mail? Do you open each envelope and consider its message, or do some of them get tossed into the trashcan unopened? More than 71 billion dollars were spent on direct mail marketing last year according to the US Postal Service and each of these dollars was spent in the hope that:1. your attention would be gained by the advertiser’s message and2. you would spend time – at least a moment – considering it. Less than one fourth the amount spent on direct mail – 17.3 billion dollars to be exact – was spent on radio advertising in 2010 according to the Radio Advertising Bureau and each of these dollars was spent in the hope that:1. your attention would be gained by the advertiser’s message and2. you would spend time – at least a moment – considering it. More than 131 billion dollars was spent on television advertising in 2010 – not quite twice the amount spent on direct mail, but nearly 8 times as much as was spent on radio – and each of these dollars was spent in the hope that:1. your attention would be gained by the advertiser’s message and2. you would spend time – at least a moment – considering it. Business owners are excited about Facebook and Twitter because these social media outlets offer them potential access to – wait for it – your time and attention.Are you beginning to see a pattern here?Time and attention are currency. Shoppers today are confronted with an unprecedented number of possibilities. Welcome to the 21st century, where shoppers carry the world in their pockets, giving them instant access to everything they want to know. Now what were you saying?A 1978 consumer behavior study by Yankelovich indicated the average American of that time was confronted by more than 2,000 selling messages per day. These “selling messages” included the signage in front of strip centers, posters in windows, point-of-purchase displays in convenience stores, product packaging on shelves, stickers on gas pumps and all the major media, of course. Yankelovich revisited that study in 2008: today’s shopper is confronted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day.Shoppers don’t buy things until they know about them. And they have far too little time to consider all their options. This is why the value of time and attention has risen to unprecedented heights.And it’s also why clarity is the new creativity.If today’s advertisers want to ring the bell, win the prize and cash the check, they must:1. Gain attention2. Speak with impact and3. Prove what they say4. In the fewest possible words. A few final thoughts:1. Radio has weathered the techno-storm better than any other media.2. Following a brief flirtation with the iPod, Americans returned en masse to broadcast radio for exposure to new music and breaking news.3. You can close your eyes, but you cannot close your ears.4. How many hours a week do you spend driving?5. World-class radio ads are cheap to produce.6. It costs big bucks to look good on TV.7. A modest budget for a national advertiser to produce a 30-second TV ad is $350,000. Your TV ads, by comparison, will always look “homemade.”8. But national advertisers have no advantage over local advertisers on radio.9. Advertising agencies can’t pay the bills by producing radio ads. Their profitability – indeed their very existence – depends on their ability to steer advertisers into high production-cost ventures: television and direct mail.10. The smart place for local advertising is usually on the radio.According to the US Census, America is home to 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees. My life’s work is to help these businesses achieve greater success.Hence, the Monday Morning Memo, 52 weeks a year since 1994.Hence, three New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.Hence, Wizard Academy, a 501c3 nonprofit business school.And now, a new class at Wizard Academy: June 29-30, How to Grow Your Business Using Radio.I’ve spent 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to learn what does and doesn’t work. For you, I will compress all of this into 2 days.If someone had done this for me 30 years ago, I could have taken over the world.Come, if you want to make money.Roy H. Williams

Brands are extensions of belief systems. You are attracted to a brand when it stands for something you believe in.We buy what we buy – most of it, anyway –1. to remind ourselves and2. tell the world around us    who we are.Brands are identity reinforcement, just like art and architecture and music. Brands are a way of shouting “This is me!”Does it make you uncomfortable for me to suggest that we are such shallow and uncertain creatures that we feel the need to anchor our identities through purchases and acquisitions?I’m sorry. I’ll change the subject.Let’s talk about art.Art is a language. When you control the art in a room, you lead its viewers to where you want them to go in their minds.Have you ever noticed the high percentage of wall posters that celebrate cultural icons? Marilyn Monroe, The Statue of Liberty, Jimi Hendrix, Corvette.Cultural icons are modern archetypes. Each of them stands for something we believe in. They’re just another way of shouting, “This is what I believe in! This is me.”But art communicates a belief system even when it contains no cultural icon.A painting of cows grazing contentedly on a hillside, or of small fishing boats floating quietly offshore whispers to the viewer, “I believe in tranquility, nature, and the outdoors.”A painting of Renaissance royalty or of a castle on a mountaintop says, “I believe in pageantry and romance and I’m intrigued by the grand adventure of privilege.”A painting of young girls frolicking at a picnic says, “I believe in innocence and happiness and the togetherness of friendship.”The same person could own all three paintings, of course. Each of us wears many faces. Art is easy to sell when you understand that it’s never really about the artist, (although the artist often believes otherwise.) Art is ultimately about the person who buys it.You buy art when it looks you directly in the eye and says, “I echo something important that you hide in your heart. I am an extension of the real you.”Richard Grosbard, Richard Minsky and I were looking for a cab in Manhattan one night when Minsky muttered something so insightful that I scribbled it on the back of a receipt in my wallet:“Art has image, metaphor and surface.Image: What’s it a picture of?Metaphor: What does the picture stand for? What does it mean?Surface: What materials were used and how skillful was the artist’s execution?”“Decorative art is image first, metaphor second, and the surface doesn’t really matter. A poster is the same image and metaphor as the original painting but the surface is different.”“Fine art is surface first, metaphor second, and the image doesn’t really matter. Fine art is all about the skill of execution. It doesn’t really matter too much what it’s a picture of.”The thing Richard said next is something every artist needs to know if they want to sell a lot of art:“Commercial art is metaphor first: what does it say? Image second: what’s in the picture? Get these two things right and the skill of the artist doesn’t really matter.”Most of us buy art because we believe in what the art says.But then again, that’s what I was saying about brands, isn’t it?We seem to have gone full circle and now we’re back to where we started. I think I’ll jump off this merry-go-round and go see what Pennie is doing.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

You Can't Quit Knowing What You Know“My name is Natsu and I’ll be serving you today.”Pennie said, “Natsu… What a pretty name!”“Thank you. I was named after my grandmother. It means ‘summer’ in Japanese.”Thirty seconds earlier, Natsu had looked like any other waitress. But now that we knew her grandmother was Japanese, we couldn’t help but see the obvious signs of Japanese heritage in her face.“Obvious” knowledge such as this is the reason business owners are uniquely unqualified to write their own ads. Business owners are unable to put themselves in the shoes of their uninformed customers because they can’t quit knowing what they know.Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on this “curse of knowledge” while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent.The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?– Janet Rae-Dupree, The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2007Experts always answer questions that no one was asking. This is why they come across as tedious, boring and obsessed. When ads are written at the level of the public’s understanding and interest, business owners complain, “But I can’t say that! It’s not accurate!”No, the statement is accurate enough. It just feels woefully incomplete to a person who knows as much as you. But guess what? The public doesn’t know as much as you.And they don’t want to know as much as you. Here’s a 30-second radio ad created for a client of the Wizard of Ads office in Australia:MALE: Sometimes, bigger is better.FEMALE: Sometimes, bigger is definitely better.MALE: Electricity bills are an exception.FEMALE: No one needs big electricity bills.MALE: Sunshine is free.FEMALE: Sunshine is happy.MALE: Sunshine is natural.FEMALE: Country Solar turns sunshine into free electricity.MALE: Talk to Country Solar. No pressure, no commitment,FEMALE: just free electricity.MALE: Free electricity.FEMALE: Get your free electricity at Country Solar dot com dot au.If you knew a little too much about this subject, your ad would sound like this:Save money and save the planet! The wind doesn’t always blow, but the sun ALWAYS shines. This is why a solar energy solution from Lester’s Alternative Energy Systems is superior to wind energy. And a solar energy solution from Lester’s has no moving parts. More than 12,000 beautiful Australian birds are killed each year by the spinning blades of wind turbines. Be a friend to the birds! Be a friend to Mother Earth! Invest in a solar energy solution from Lester’s. Most investors recover their initial investments in less than 14 years. Don’t pay the electric company, pay yourself! A solar energy solution from Lester’s can reduce your electricity bill by as much as half. Call today and we’ll test your roof to see if it qualifies for a solar energy solution from Lester’s Alternative Energy Systems, the only area alternative energy provider with a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering. Call Lester’s today. The birds will thank you. Mother Earth will thank you. The only people who won’t thank you are those coal-burning polluters at the electric company. Call the Master! Call Lester’s Alternative Energy Systems.The second ad is more informative. The first ad would work better. Which ad do you suppose Lester will be more likely to use? You’re inside your company, looking out. The public is outside, looking in. This gives the public an entirely different perspective.Simple statements work best. But simple statements always feel “incomplete” to an expert.You are an expert in your business category.Are you beginning to see why someone else should write your ads?Roy H. Williams 

Ken and Barbie are perfect.Ken and Barbie are plastic.Ken and Barbie are hollow.I do not prefer them.True friends are flawed in endearing ways. Quirky.I’ll never forget the morning when I asked a roomful of newly arrived Wizard Academy students to tell a little about themselves. The last to stand was a tall, silver-haired patriarch who said, “As I sat and listened to you people, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Never in my life have I been surrounded by as many weirdos, misfits, mavericks and renegades.’”The silence throbbed as the old gentleman slowly surveyed the room, meeting the eyes of every student, “It’s as if the Wizard sent out the mating call of the albino monkey, and this room contains the rag-tag rabble who answered.”No one was breathing.“I just can’t tell you what an honor it is to be counted here among you!” The walls flexed outward from the shockwaves of spontaneous, thunderous applause.That patrician gentleman was Keith Miller, the bestselling author of The Taste of New Wine, a revolution-triggering book that sold multiple millions of copies as it rocked religious America back in 1965.Interesting people are nonconformists, swimming tirelessly against the flow of the cultural norm.Only dead fish go with the current. “We all know bad things are happening to our political and social universe; we know that business is colonizing ever larger chunks of American culture; and we know that advertising tells lies. We are all sick to death of the consumer culture. We all want to resist conformity. We all want to be our own dog.”– Thomas Frank, Conglomerates and the Media, 1997A few months ago, Pink wrote an anthem to nonconformity, a paean to society’s outcasts, weirdos, mavericks and renegades:“Raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways, all my underdogs!”Raise Your Glass rocketed to the top of the charts. But we shouldn’t have been surprised. Pink’s song recalls the original American anthem found at the foot of a statue that raises not a glass, but a torch. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”“We will never be, never be anything but loud and nitty-gritty, dirty little freaks.”– Pink, Raise Your Glass, Oct. 2010Have you done any traveling lately? During their 40-year reign as the king and queen of American culture, Ken and Barbie littered our nation with identical power centers hosting the same tenants in every village, town and city.Come to Austin and we’ll proudly show you 6th Street, a few blocks in our city that are unique to our wonderful town. New Orleans has the French Quarter. Atlanta has Buckhead. Your town has its special district, too. You know where it is.But outside these highly-prized districts where we enshrine the last shreds of our uniqueness, your town and mine have precisely the same stores and restaurants as every other; perfect, plastic, and hollow.Does that make you angry? Do you want shake things up a little? Are you eager for your business to fire a shot that will be heard around the world?[I’m whispering now.] Go to Wizard Academy. You’ve got people there.Roy H. Williams

As you do or don’t know, I make my living as an advertising consultant. My income is directly tied to the growth of my clients’ businesses, so you can be sure I keep a close eye on their income trends.Although my office works with only a few dozen of America’s 5.91 million businesses, these small business clients are spread across the US and Canada and span several retail and service categories. Additionally, my Wizard of Ads partner offices work with dozens of scattered clients, as well.We keep our finger on the pulse of small business America.The media keeps its finger on the pulse of big business America and unemployment statistics and the value of the dollar and a variety of other things they like to package as news about the economy.Don’t be fooled by it.  Big business is affected by Wall Street, an insular world of fast-walking men and women who live in Manhattan and wear formal business attire and pretend they know far more than they do.Meet these people. Spend time with them. You’ll soon quit taking them seriously. This is the same crowd who thought Bernie Madoff was a profoundly insightful financial guru, remember? They even made him chairman of Nasdaq.Big business is subject to Wall Street.Wall Street is subject to the mood of traders who buy and sell a lot of securities. Small businesses like yours are subject only to the mood of the public.I’ve known for years that the mood of the public is not directly linked to Wall Street. Trends in small business America don’t always mirror the trends in big business America.The American public began to relax a bit in October. We saw it across every business category in every state. The news media didn’t seem to notice. We saw this trend continue through November and December. Most of our clients finished the 4th quarter 10 percent ahead of the same quarter the previous year.This uptick continued through January and February; not a sweeping “whoosh” back into prosperity, but an obvious collective decision among regular Americans to start spending a bit of money again. The deep fear is gone.My friend Jeff Haley is the CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau, a vital trade association of America’s 11,000 commercial radio stations, each of whom sells advertising to several hundred local businesses. When Jeff came to visit recently, he said he’d noticed the same thing my partners and I had noticed. During the first 3 quarters of 2010, ad spending among local advertisers was dead flat against the previous year. No change. Then it jumped by exactly 10 percent in the 4th quarter.The American public relaxed a little and America’s local advertisers did, too.Donations to Wizard Academy rebounded, classes started selling out again and the weddings at Chapel Dulcinea are more lavish and festive than we’ve seen in a couple of years.The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. Grass is greening, birds are flirting, spring is here.Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.Roy H. Williams

Most people believe advertising is scalable. These people are right.And they are wrong.SCALABLE: When a large-scale problem can be solved by the straight-line, linear expansion of a small-scale solution, that solution is scalable. Example: You want to put a box of loose snapshots into photo albums. One album holds exactly 50 snapshots. This problem is scalable. Count the snapshots, divide by fifty, then buy that many photo albums. Direct Response ads – those high-impact ads crafted to hit a target with maximum impact and trigger a purchase with a single exposure – are scalable. Reach 10 times as many targets and you’ll make 10 times as many sales. But most ads are not scalable, due to the vagaries of relevance, sleep and time. Non-scalable ads must be repeated until you reach a threshold called “breakthrough.” BREAKTHROUGH: The best way to understand breakthrough and how it differs from scalability is to consider the following statistic: There will be exactly 20 traffic fatalities for each 100 cars that try to navigate a particular corner at 100 MPH. We have the data. It is conclusive. Numbers don’t lie. Apply scalability to this data and you’ll wrongly predict there will be 2 fatalities for each 100 cars that try to navigate the corner at 10 MPH. Breakthrough is best understood as the speed-threshold at which a car becomes dangerously unstable in the corner. Breakthrough is that moment when the rules of the equation change dramatically. Q: “So how long will it be before my advertising reaches breakthrough? How many repetitions will be required before my customer finally takes action?”A: Your moment of breakthrough will be determined by 2 variables. The first of these is relevance.RELEVANCE: Does the target need the product or can a desire be stimulated for it? Direct response ads perform poorly for categories that have “moments of need” that are well defined. It’s hard to sell an engagement ring to a person who has no interest in getting engaged. Likewise, how do you convince a person to buy new tires when the car simply doesn’t need them, or a new hot water heater when the old one is working fine? When your product or service category doesn’t have the requisites for direct response marketing, your best option is to become the solution-provider the customer remembers immediately when their moment of need finally arises. “Sounds great. But how much time is that going to take?” We can answer that question only after we’ve answered this one: How memorable was your message? We’re back to that issue of relevance again.Involuntary, automatic recall is known as procedural memory among cognitive neuroscientists and the rules of its creation are simple: Relevance x Repetition = Procedural Memory. In other words, the amount of repetition your message will need will be determined by its relevance and one last thing… SLEEP: the second variable. Sleep erases advertising. This is why 12 repetitions spread over 12 months don’t have the same effect as 12 repetitions in 1 month. Becoming a household word in the mind of your public is like climbing a muddy mountain. Three steps forward and you slide 2 steps back during the night. Three steps forward, two steps back. But don’t despair. Breakthrough is on the horizon. Can you see it sparkling there in the distance? Cross that threshold and everything around you will come alive. You can do it. I have faith in you.Need some help?Come to Wizard Academy.(Sigh.) I’m sorry for that sneaky little sales pitch. In the end, I just can’t quit being an ad guy.Roy H. Williams  

What makes us America?If you were to name a single incident in American history that you feel was America’s finest hour, what would it be?Would it be a moment of patriotic sacrifice? “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”– Nathan Hale, [Sept. 22, 1776]A moment of relentless determination?“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”– Admiral David Farragut [Aug. 5, 1864]A moment of far-flung vision, an impossible dream?“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”– JFK [May 25, 1961] “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”– MLK, Jr. [Aug. 28, 1963]A moment of come-from-behind-to-win?“…twenty-eight seconds. The crowd going insane. Kharlamov. Shooting it into the American end again. Morrow is back there. Now Johnson. Nineteen seconds. Johnson over to Ramsey. Bilyaletdinov gets checked by Ramsey. McClanahan is there. The puck is still loose. Eleven seconds. You’ve got ten seconds. The countdown going on right now. Morrow up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?Yes!”– Al Michaels, [Feb. 22, 1980]Pennie and I were having lunch with our friend Rich Mann when he made a casual comment that sent such tremors through me that I wondered if Austin was having an earthquake. I never told Rich about the impact of his 4 littlewords on me that day, but he opened my eyes to an American greatness that had previously been hiding in my blind spot.The moment that defines America for me – the moment I’ll be proud of forever – was December 12, 2000, when no one started shooting.Remember The Month of the Hanging Chads? Al Gore won the popular vote of the nation on November 7, 2000, but George W. Bush won Florida’s 25 electoral votes by a storybook-thin margin to gain the Presidency, 271 votes to 266. But the state laws of Florida required a recount due to the microscopic margin of victory.On November 26, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified Florida’s voting results, declaring Bush to have won the state of Florida by 537 votes.Many people were upset by this because Katherine Harris had also served as co-chair of Bush’s election campaign.Gore’s team won a court hearing to challenge the Katherine Harris results. The American people were confused, nervous and anxious.On December 1, fully 3 weeks after Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the Florida Supreme Court had overstepped its authority in managing the recount. A week later, Florida’s high court upheld their previous position.Bush argued. Gore argued. And the leadership of our nation hung in the balance.Finally, on December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, effectively declaring Bush to be the winner. That Supreme Court vote was 5 to 4.And no one in America started shooting.How many nations on this earth can rest in the knowledge that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, even in moments of heated disagreement? “No one started shooting.” – Rich Mann, Shogun Sushi, Austin, TX [Feb. 2001]God Bless America.Roy H. Williams 

“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.”– Proverbs, ch. 22 Stand before kings? Sounds great! But how does one get “skilled in his work?” American children were taught for 100 years that all we had to do to be successful was listen, take notes, remember what we were told and repeat it accurately when asked. Americans call this silliness “education” and we guard the concept fiercely, obstinately and ridiculously.  “You’ve got the grades to get into college…”“Smart enough to get a scholarship…”“The first of my family to go to college…”“College educated…” The worship of college runs deep in American families. To question college or to criticize it is to brand yourself a heretic. But college is no longer a religion among employers. A comprehensive study released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education on February 2, 2011, suggests that America’s “college for all” mindset may be doing more harm than good. According to the study, Americans place too much emphasis on 4-year degree programs when 2-year occupational programs would better prepare students for today’s job market. Fifty years ago 30 percent of the jobs in America were “white collar.” The white collars enjoyed more prestige, had more opportunity and made more money than the 70 percent who were “blue collar” laborers. College, we were told, was the difference. Flash forward half a century; 30 percent of the jobs in America today are “white collar,” just as before. But only 15 percent of today’s jobs are “blue collar.” The remaining 50 percent are jobs that didn’t exist half a century ago; jobs that require specialized training but not a 4-year degree. And since there aren’t enough people trained to do these jobs, our skilled “no collars” are paid wonderfully high salaries because employers are begging to hire them. The no collars make higher salaries, in fact, than two-thirds of the 30 percent whose collars are white. “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.” And he will do it without a collar.Meanwhile, our universities graduate exactly 10 times more psychology majors each year than there are jobs for psychology majors. But these bright-eyed innocents are never told, “There will be a job for only 1 in every 10 of you. The rest of you will have to find some other way to make a living.” I’m betting you know at least a dozen young adults with college degrees who are struggling to find work today. Am I right? But the problem isn’t that there aren’t any jobs. There are plenty of jobs for people with the right skills. These “educated unemployed” simply chose a course of study for which there is no demand in today’s workplace. James Michener grew up poor, joined the Navy, earned more than 100 million dollars as a writer, was lavished with honorary degrees by the world’s most prestigious colleges and universities, then left us with a singular piercing observation shortly before he died in 1997: “If our military capacities were in as much peril as are our intellectual capacities, the nation would be taking gigantic and immediate steps to repair the deficiencies. It is scandalous that we are not taking equally huge steps to reverse the decline in our basic educational adequacy.” – This Noble Land, p. 99, (1996) But Michener wasn’t referring to traditional education. Michener understood what it takes to become “skilled in your work:” “I feel almost a blood relationship with all the artists in all the mediums, for I find that we face the same problems but solve them in our own ways. When young people in my writing classes, for example, ask what subjects they should study to become writers, I surprise them by replying: ‘Ceramics and eurhythmic dancing.’ When they look surprised I explain: ‘Ceramics so you can feel form evolving through your fingertips molding the moist clay, and eurhythmic dancing so you can experience the flow of motion through your body. You might develop a sense of freedom that way.’” – This Noble Land, p. 193 Michener – a man who stood before kings – believed form and freedom to be the factors that differentiated those who were skillful from those who were not. What form of education will you suggest to the young people who look up to you? Will you give them the freedom to do something other than “go to college?” Uh-oh. Did that question make me a heretic? Roy H. Williams

If you’re reading this sentence, it’s because the headline (A.) startled you by its intrusive, personal nature, (B.) irritated you by its assumption that God exists, (C.) intrigued you because you never really thought about it, or (D.) touched a pre-existing suspicion or belief that hides in your heart.Headlines – including the subject lines of emails and the opening sentences of speeches, sermons and radio ads – are vitally important. David Ogilvy said it best, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” The headline that pulled you into this story is interesting because it:1. is taboo, (by virtue of introducing the subject of deity.)2. is a question for which there is no “obvious” answer. You realize that I just taught you two techniques for creating good opening lines, right? (1.) Tickle a taboo. (2.) Ask a question with no obvious answer. Here’s another good headline:Four Out of Five People Think the Fifth is an Idiot That one is interesting because it:3. is funny4. says far more than it says.5. reminds you of things you already know about foolish statistics, public opinion polls and prejudices disguised as research, “Me and all my friends…” Fifteen years ago when I first began writing for Radio Ink magazine, Eric Rhoads said, “Make your readers want to cheer your name or make them want to tear you limb from limb, but never let them be bored.” That’s another useful tidbit:6. People would rather be angry than bored. One last thing about headlines:7. Never promise something in a headline that you don’t deliver in the story. Readers aren’t quick to forgive a bait-and-switch. So in the spirit of delivering what I promised in the headline, I’ll share with you the following thoughts: It is easy to believe God loves us. It is somewhat harder to believe that He likes us. You have certain people in your life that you love because they are “family.” But do you really like them? Even you-know-who? Would you have chosen that person to be your friend – the loved one you’re seeing in your mind right now – if they had not been thrust upon you by the genetic lottery? Wow. There’s #1 again. Taboo. “Do I really like all the people I love? What a question! How dare you! Have you no sense of propriety?”Calm down. Love requires a commitment that runs deeper than your feelings. This irrational, wonderful, life-giving commitment makes it possible for us to love people we don’t really like; people we would never have chosen for rational reasons.Love isn’t a feeling, it‘s something you do. Love is action. Love rolls up its sleeves and wades into messes it did not make. This is how we can love people we don’t like.But just for the record, God likes you. He actually likes you. I asked him if he was sure. He said, “Yeah, I’m sure.” Go figure. Roy H. Williams

How does one reconcile these two famous proverbs?“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”That first platitude would argue that pre-emptive action is a waste of time and resources; “Leave well-enough alone.” The second platitude says quite the opposite; “A stitch in time, saves nine.”Which is true?Stanislaw Lec said, “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”George Santayana said it more plainly. “Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”Nobel prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr said this isn’t just true in philosophy and art, but is true in science as well: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”It would seem that every great truth in our universe has its opposite. Little ideas can be right or wrong but big ideas are both right and wrong.Is your mind broad enough to hear the beauty of birdsong in the land of your enemy?Homophobes criticize me when I quote Oscar Wilde, “He was a homosexual, you know.”Religious people criticize me when I quote Voltaire, “He was an atheist, you know.”Republicans squint at me suspiciously when I say I like Obama.Democrats’ eyebrows jump when I say I admired Ronald Reagan.“According to our present conceptions, an atom of an element is built up of a nucleus that has a positive electrical charge… together with a number of electrons, all having the same negative charge….”– Niels Bohr, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speechOur universe exists because these equal-but-opposite bits – protons and electrons – come together and interact in a strained, divine tension. The important thing, for me, is that neither of these particles is compromised by the other. Protons are no less positively-charged because of their interaction with electrons, and electrons are never corrupted because of their close proximity to protons.If electrons and protons were ever to become alike, our universe would cease to exist. The solution is never “somewhere in the middle” as is constantly suggested by dullards and cowards and lovers of gray and beige. These flaccid proponents of “the middle ground” are like wet toilet paper.And I mean that, of course, in a spirit of love.Reality – indeed, the entirety of our physical universe – requires equals-but-opposites in their purest forms, forever attracting and repelling each other as they dance the dance of creation.“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”– F. Scott FitzgeraldDo you have a first-rate intelligence?I could easily craft a compelling counter-argument against everything I’ve written today and I know that you could, too.But I won’t. Because today I am feeling neither gray nor beige.Roy H. Williams

A Brief Examination Into the Health of Your MarketingSTEP 1: What percentage of your sales volume comes from repeat or referral customers? These customers are driven to you by past satisfaction.Don’t read any further until you’ve decided on a percentage. Give it your best guess.STEP 2: What percentage of your sales volume is triggered by your location and its exterior signage? These customers come to you because of your visibility.Again, write down a percentage, your best guess.STEP 3: Add those two percentages together, then deduct from 100.The remaining percentage is your “advertising driven” traffic, new customers who come to you solely because of your ads.I’m betting this percentage is a lot lower than you would have guessed. Am I right?STEP 4: How many unique customers have you served in the past 12 months? Write down a specific number. You’ll probably need to consult your records.STEP 5: Apply your “ad-driven traffic” percentage to the total number of unique customers you’ve sold in the past 12 months. This will tell you exactly how many new customers you’ve served in the past 12 months who came to you solely because of your advertising. [If your ad-driven traffic was 20 percent and your Unique Customer Count was 5,000, then you had 1,000 ad-driven customers.]STEP 6: Divide that number into your annual ad budget.The result of that division – the quotient – is your Cost of Customer Acquisition. It’s how much you’re spending on advertising to bring one new customer through your doors. (You may notice that our equation didn’t calculate the cost of referral customers. This is because referral customers don’t come at a direct cost, as do ad-driven customers, but at the indirect costs of customer service and relationship management.)STEP 7: Write your Cost of Customer Acquisition – the number of dollars you’re paying to bring one new customer into your business – LARGE on a sheet of paper, or put it on your computer screen in a 72-point font.Stare at it for a moment.Here are the obvious questions:1. With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, why advertise at all? 2. How can we drive this Cost of Customer Acquisition way, way down?Let’s answer the first question first:If a prospective customer doesn’t give you a chance to sell them, there can only be two possible reasons:A: They haven’t heard about you. (This problem can be solved by advertising.)B: They have heard about you and they don’t like what they’ve heard. These customers – based on information given to them by others – have made the decision not to do business with you. A good ad will give them new information that may lead them to a new decision. You may also need to invest more energy in customer service and relationship management.“With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, why advertise at all?The primary goal of advertising is to acquire new customers. Your future repeat and referral business depends on it. Good customers move to other towns, or die, and you never see them again. It happens to every business and it happens every year. Additionally, new people move into your town and have no idea where to shop. Approximately 20 percent of the average American community didn’t live there 1 year ago. How are you reaching out to these newbies? Are you crossing your fingers and hoping they’ll meet one of your loyal customers? Are you counting on the newbies noticing your sign, or perhaps finding you online? These things can happen, to be sure, but is this your growth plan for 2011?“Okay, so we have to advertise, but how can we drive the Cost of Customer Acquisition way, way down?”First, let me say that it can absolutely be done. We can drive that cost down, I guarantee it. But I’m going to save the details until you arrive at Wizard Academy. (Yes, I know that makes me a total rat bastard, but you’ve been meaning to make a trip down here anyway, right?)Customer Acquisition Workshop – Monday, March 14Each registrant will leave with a customized plan to attract new customers. You will learn a little, work a lot, guided every step of the way. Register early and save the cost of a hotel room. The first 14 to sign up will enjoy 1 day/2nights at no charge in exciting Engelbrecht House, Wizard Academy’s amazing student mansion. Additionally, although this 1-day class is only $750, it will qualify you as an Acadgrad and you’ll save 50 percent on all future classes. (Acadgrads, this class is just $375 for you.) Arrive Sunday afternoon, spend the night in Austin, work like a dog all day Monday, relax in Austin that night, then return home Tuesday the 15th with an incredible new plan for customer acquisition. Well, what are you waiting for?Roy H. Williams

If you’re a man, you will definitely have a midlife crisis. When it happens – and it can happen a number of times – you can let it lift you to the next level, or you can let it unravel your life. Wizard Academy’s Dr. Richard D. Grant, a clinical psychologist, was chatting with a group of adult students one day while his microphone was still recording. I transcribed a bit of what he said because it explains for me the relationship between Don Quixote and Dulcinea, the common village girl Quixote admired from afar.(In the book, Don Quixote never meets Dulcinea; she’s never even aware of his existence, though she has a profound effect on his life.)Here’s what Dr. Grant said that day:“One of the big things that Jung talked about that becomes more and more operative as a guy gets older is that he comes into contact with the deeper parts of himself which we call the unconscious. The trap door to the unconscious is actually a gate that is feminine.”“The feminine part of a man’s personality is called the anima, the Latin word for soul. It leads him to growth and assumes many faces.”“We should pay very close attention to what we find attractive, men, at mid-life, because that’s the roadmap of where we’re going to grow next. This is, a man’s encounters with females, especially at mid-life, tell him what he needs to connect with in himself to have more life. That is what the anima experience is all about.”“This is very important for guys to know because at mid-life they get re-sensitized to females, deeply, and it doesn’t have to do with their committed relationships. And it’s very confusing for many men, and they think that they’re supposed to question their committed relationships and that life itself is in a strand of that person’s hair that they would follow.”“Actually that person is a symbol, mirroring this profound feminine part of the man that is the gateway to what lies ahead for him. And the function of the anima – the internal feminine – is to lead the man to the next part of his life.”“The rules of relationship to the unconscious are the rules of chivalry, ‘pure and chaste from afar.’ If you decide to totally get engrossed in the idealized imagery of the feminine, you’ll lose yourself. There’s danger in that. But if you have a conscious relationship – feeling the power of that, but not getting seduced by it – you will come to awareness; you’ll learn things.”“That might sound wild but chastity is really the ability to relate to a female human being, for a man, and to the anima in all its power at the same time and in the right respect, both at once, without confounding the two.”“If you attribute to a woman the goddess-like qualities of the anima, a man just melts in front of her. But if you keep them separate – you know, one’s for growth and one is to have relationship with, in all the benefits of monogamy and commitment – then you can benefit from it. Chastity is the ability to do both at once and not confuse them. That is what chastity is, not wimpy abstinence.”“If you want to see the four parts of the masculine counterpart to this for a woman – the animus – go watch The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy has four masculine figures she deals with when she goes on an adventure into a different land, learns all kinds of lessons and then comes home after her journey. So that’s an alternative story…” Right now I find myself noticing women who are lighthearted and carefree. Thanks to Dr. Grant’s little chat that day, I realize this is because I’ve been carrying the weight of fund-raising and construction for Wizard Academy for seven long years. I’m noticing these women because I need to make time for frivolous relaxation and play. The anima within me is whispering. I need to listen.Men, what is your anima saying? Ladies, is the animus within you telling you where you need to grow? Make no mistake about it. Deep and revealing conversations happen here all the time. Come. Adventure. Engelbrecht House awaits you.Engelbrecht, by the way, means “Angel, broken” in German.Just a coincidence.Roy H. Williams

The Key to Getting Attention.A Guaranteed Cure for Writer's Block.In an over-communicated society, predictability is the enemy of effective writing. A recent Yankelovich study tells us that Americans are confronted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day – radio and television and magazines and newspapers and billboards floating on an ocean of store signage, posters, point-of-purchase displays and product packaging – each one hoping to gain our eyes, ears and attention.No wonder we’ve become so adept at filtering ads from our consciousness. Those time-consuming piranhas are out to eat us alive. And they do it so painfully predictably. I’m troubled when writers tell me they want to learn to “think outside the box.” I always want to ask, “Why do you climb into the box to begin with?”The box is a self-focused perspective. Predictable ads are spawned when you sit inside the box and begin asking predictable questions: “What makes us different and better than our competitors? What makes us special?” Having focused your approach inward, on yourself, instead of outward, on your customers, your thoughts will accelerate in an ever-tightening spiral as you circle the drain. Predictable opening statements are born inside the box. I have a love/hate relationship with a certain bit of stagecraft I use when speaking publicly. The bit is always a crowd pleaser; that’s the part I love. But most of the audience misses the point; that’s the part I hate. They gasp and laugh and clap and I say to them, “This looks like a magic trick, I know, but it’s really very easy. You can do it, I promise. Just give it a try.” But they never believe me. The stagecraft begins when I ask everyone in the room to write a statement that would catch the ear of any person who overheard it. “The statement doesn’t have to make sense,” I say, “It just needs to be larger than life, evocative, difficult to ignore. The kind of statement that would make a passing stranger turn and say, ‘Huh?’” I then ask 6 volunteers to bring their statements onto the stage. “I’m now going to craft real ads for real businesses using the statements written on those papers as theopening lines for the ads. Do I have any business owners in the room?” Six business owners take the stage. I randomly pair them up with the colorful statement-holders. I have no idea what businesses are on stage or what statements are written on those papers. I owe Tom Robbins (not to be confused with Tony) for this little bit of stagecraft. In a magazine interview that accompanied the release of his novel, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom said, “Everything in the universe is connected, of course. It’s a matter of using imagination to discover the links, and language to expand and enliven them.” “Business owner number one. Tell me about your business.”“I have a plumbing company.”“Name a profit center you’d like to improve.”“I’d like to get more calls for our 24-hour emergency service.”“Crazy person number one. What did you write on your paper?”“I came home and the dog was bald.” The room roars with laughter as I walk to the front of the stage and balance there – my toes hanging over the edge – as 2,000 people hold their breath.“I came home and the dog was bald. I haven’t been that surprised since I woke up at 2AM to pee and stepped out of bed into an inch of water. Thank god Martindale Plumbing never goes to sleep. At 2AM they were just sittin’ there, hoping someone would call. They fixed the problem while I made coffee. Great guys. Thank god for Martindale Plumbing, 24 hours a day. But I still got no idea what to do with a bald dog.”That would be a television or radio script.Here’s what it would look like as an email:SUBJECT:  I came home and the dog was bald.[Everyone who saw that headline in a magazine ad, a flyer or a brochure would pick it up and read it. Today’s other 4,999 messages be damned.]That whole exchange between me and the business owner smelled like a set-up, right? If you were in that audience, you’d probably suspect I had planted those people in the crowd. Like I said, I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this particular bit of stagecraft. Along with the fact that no one believes THEY can do it, half of them don’t believe I can do it, either.But not only can I do it, you can, too. “Everything in the universe is connected, of course. It’s a matter of using imagination to discover the links, and language to expand and enliven them.”The keys to Chaotic Ad Writing are:1. Randomly force upon yourself a colorful opening statement BEFORE you know what you’re going to write about.2. Look for the defining characteristic(s) of that statement.   “I came home and the dog was bald.” (surprise)   “I really need to fart.” (embarrassment)   “Her funeral was a day