Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The Tinkerbell Effect describes things that exist only because people believe in them. Remember Tinkerbell, the fairy in Peter Pan who is revived from near death by the belief of the audience?[Tinkerbell has drunk the poison meant for Peter Pan.]PETER PAN: Her light is growing faint, and if it goes out, that means she is dead! Her voice is so low I can scarcely tell what she is saying. She says—she says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies! [He rises and throws out his arms to the audience.] Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!And all over the world, children clapped with all their might.The Tinkerbell Effect is responsible for the rule of law. If enough of us quit believing in it, the rule of law would cease to exist. Likewise, the value of money. A dollar has value only because we believe it does. Without our belief, dollars would be scraps of paper.Much of who and what we are is owed to the Tinkerbell Effect.Tinkerbell would be proud of Tommy.Tommy is a young man who sees possibilities. Few people understand him. His home is littered with his strange inventions.When Tommy is 28, he writes a letter to his friend, Robert Skipwith, about The History and Adventures of the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, a book that has captured his imagination.In that book, Alonso Quixano sees beauty where others see only dust and grime. Then, like a little boy tying a bath towel around his neck and pretending to be Superman, Alsonso dresses himself as a knight and pretends to be Don Quixote, setting out to right all the wrongs of his day.Tommy, too, becomes a sort of Don Quixote, seeing always a world that could be, should be, ought to be. His fascination with Don Quixote will continue throughout his life and he will mention Quixote in dozens of letters to his friends. Finally, when Tommy is 78 years old and looking back across the years, he writes to Benjamin Waterhouse, “Don Quixote undertook to redress the bodily wrongs of the world…”Inspired by Quixote, Tommy likewise undertook to redress the wrongs of the world.It was a single, glittering statement for which there was no evidence in all the world: 32 year-old Tommy, that incurable dreamer, flung the Tinkerbell Effect hundreds of years into the future and across millions of lives with 14 words full of pixie dust, “We Hold these Truths to be Self-evident, that All Men are Created Equal…”And a nation sprang into existence.Do you have an impossible dream? Come to Wizard Academy. The Cognoscenti will believe it with you and together, we'll make it happen.Roy H. Williams

A year before the birth of Barack Obama, John Steinbeck bought a pickup truck, named it “Rocinante” and went looking for America. His final book, Travels with Charley (1962,) is a journal of his thoughts and memories as he drove that pickup 10,000 miles across 38 states looking back across the years of a lifetime.Steinbeck remembers an incident that happened during the 1940s:“I lived then in a small brick house in Manhattan, and, being for the moment solvent, employed a Negro. Across the street and on the corner there was a bar and restaurant. One winter dusk when the sidewalks were iced I stood in my window looking out and saw a tipsy woman come out of the bar, slip on the ice, and fall flat. She tried to struggle up but slipped and fell again and lay there screaming maudlinly. At that moment the Negro who worked for me came around the corner, saw the woman, and instantly crossed the street, keeping as far from her as possible.When he came in I said, 'I saw you duck. Why didn't you give that woman a hand?''Well, sir, she's drunk and I'm Negro. If I touched her she could easy scream rape, and then it's a crowd, and who believes me?''It took quick thinking to duck that fast.''Oh, no sir!' he said. 'I've been practicing to be a Negro a long time.'”Ten months ago, Wizard Academy's Dr. Oz Jaxxon gathered a dozen unlikely candidates in Tuscan Hall to begin a 2-year discussion on Racism. Is it a continuing problem or a distant memory? If it exists, what can be done about it? Is racial tension the white man's burden to bear alone, or do whites have legitimate complaints of their own?It may have been the most insane thing we've ever done as an organization. The group was Black, White and Latino, Gay and Straight, Liberal and Conservative, Religious and Agnostic, Bombastic and Shy, Streetwise and Embarrassingly Naïve. There were moments during those 3 days when I was tempted to stick the key in the ignition of my own Rocinante and drive quickly and quietly away.Whose idiotic idea was this, anyway?Miraculously (and with no help or encouragement from me, I must confess,) the group stayed in touch with each other and worked through dozens of technical and budgetary problems to launch a blog, InsideFromTheInside.com.I'm extremely proud of these alumni. You should take a look at what they're doing.Roy H. Williams

As you know, I’ve been trying to get one of my favorite business authors to the Academy to host a 2-day event.Today I’m pleased to announce that July 28-29 you can meet and be mentored by the great Jon Spoelstra.Jon is going to teach you how to thrill the public and rock your bank account. He’s going to teach you how to Market Outrageously.Marketing Outrageously is fun.Marketing Outrageously is politically incorrect.Marketing Outrageously is using your imagination.Marketing Outrageously is being willing to be laughed at.Marketing Outrageously is putting revenue first and everything else second.Marketing Outrageously is dropping your assumptions and starting all over with a fresh point of view.Marketing Outrageously is the opposite of marketing safely – but it may be the only truly safe way to market in 2009.A half-hearted marketing strategy is like buying a ticket halfway to Europe. Don’t do things halfway. Jon Spoelstra doesn’t believe in small ideas, small plans or small results. And after attending this class, neither will you.One of my favorite Jon Spoelstra stories happened when Jon worked with the New Jersey Nets back when that team was at the very bottom of the NBA roster. The Nets had no star players, no up-and-comers and no loyal fans, but he made them the most profitable franchise in all of basketball. And he did it without winning games.Jon says, “I’ve got a warped perspective on advertising: I think advertising should get results you can feel. Don’t give me any of that image or identity stuff; I want revenue that I can track to the ad. Anything less is, to me, like throwing money into a tornado and hoping for the best.”In just three seasons, the revenues from paid ticket sales went up from $5 million to $17 million. Local sponsorships ballooned from $400,000 to $7 million. And the market value of the team grew from $40 million to $120 million.Read the course description. This class is going to be amazing.This 1-time-only event will be strictly limited to 100 attendees, all of whom should expect a significant jump in revenues upon returning back to work.Could you use a significant jump in revenues?Roy H. Williams

Your unconscious writing style is how you write when you’re simply being yourself. You also have a formal style and you might even have a whimsical style. But three styles is usually as good as it gets.Language, however, is extraordinarily plastic. You can make it do anything you want. With a little conscious effort, you can speak and write in a thousand voices. The possibilities are intoxicating.I’m going to give you 10 ways to expand your literary voice. But please, I’m begging you, don’t get legalistic or analytical with this stuff. Style is like a frog; you can dissect the thing, but it dies in the process.Let’s begin with a sentence in ordinary language: “The optional ingredients available for your omelet are mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, jalapenos and cheese.”1. Add.Now let’s add the word “and” between each of the ingredients. Notice how the list gains rhythm and length: “The optional ingredients available for your omelet are mushrooms and tomatoes and onions and broccoli and jalapenos and cheese.”Adding conjunctions slows a list down. And depending on how the list is intoned, adding conjunctions can (1.) give it greater dignity or (2.) convey the author’s own impatience by signaling that he, too, thinks the list is long.2. Subtract.Next we’ll subtract words from the original sentence, including the standard “and” that usually appears between the next-to-last and last items in a list: “Optional ingredients: mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, jalapenos, cheese.”Subtraction adds authority, accelerates the pace, says more in fewer words.3. Substitute.Engage the imagination by substituting an unexpected adjective or verb for the one you would normally write: “Personalize your omelet with Splash! into the bubbling butter: mushrooms or tomatoes, onions or broccoli, jalapenos or cheese or all-of-them all at once.”Okay, I confess, I not only substituted jazzy verbs for boring ones, I repeated “or” four times and “all” twice. On purpose. For Style.4. Rearrange.I might have said, “I purposefully repeated ‘or’ and ‘all’ for the sake of style.” Instead, I rearranged the sentence to create multiple false endings like the multiple punch lines at the end of a Steven Wright joke.You can also rearrange chronology: “We will buy, and rush into the mall.”5. Disconnected Lists.Combine wildly disconnected things in a list, then connect them together in the closing fragment of the sentence.“A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer’s leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.” – Marcel Proust“Sparkling eyes, laughter, sunshine and speed come with every Nissan 370Z Convertible.”6. Personification.Give human attributes to inanimate objects.The shattered water made a misty din.Great waves looked over others coming in,And thought of doing something to the shoreThat water never did to land before…   – Robert Frost, Once By the Pacific“The gas pedal of this car throbs with hot impatience.”7. Break the rules of logic.Tease the imagination by stating things that don’t make immediate sense.“In two words, im possible.”“But I can't be out of money, I still have checks!”8. Break the rules of grammar.Slip the handcuffs, seize attention.When Winston Churchill was reprimanded for ending a sentence in a preposition, he apologized, then added, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” No one remembers the rest of the conversation.Gertrude Stein is remembered for saying, late in life, “There ain’t any answer. There ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer.” Were she to have said, “Life doesn’t make any sense,” would her thoughts today be quoted? (That was another little trick of rearrangement. Common language would be, “would her thoughts be quoted today?”)9. Use Calculated Repetition.Arthur Quinn cheerfully points out, “Scarcely a guidebook on writing does not contain an admonition such as the following: ‘Be brief. Do not repeat yourself. Say what you have to say in as few words as possible. To belabor your point is to risk boring your reader – even insulting his intelligence.’”Quinn then wryly says, “We could easily point out that the author of this advice thought it so important that he was not brief, did repeat himself, used as many words as he dared, and insulted our intelligence by contradicting his own advice in the process of giving it.”There is a time for repetition. Amplification is a worthy goal:“A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.” – Shakespeare, Love’s Labors Lost, 1.1.263“At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.”– King James Bible, Judges 5:27There is no correct or incorrect style. “Purely subjective, it is.”(That’s a little rearrangement trick Chris Maddock calls Yoda-Speak.)10. Expand Your Reading.The easiest way to augment your style is to fill your ear with sentences strange. Reach for the author unre

Minor key life is the mournful echo of a hollowed-out gourd, bleached in the sun, hard and empty. Life should be lived in a major key, drenched in the colors of nature, quivering with energy, throbbing with purpose.Last week I showed you how to extract liquid color pallettes from famous paintings. This week I’ll show you a similar technique using words. It’s the one taught by Christopher J. Maddock* in Accidental Magic, chapter 15, “How to Color Your Writing.” Master this technique and you’ll wring vivid dictionaries from a single word.Here’s Professor Maddock’s instruction:“First, choose an emotion or feeling to communicate, such as nervous excitement. Think of some words or phrases you associate with that feeling: anxious, waiting, white-knuckled, hesitant, cold sweat. Now incorporate these into your writing:You step into your waiting car, failing to ward off the thought: ‘My first house.’ The seatbelt clutching your shoulder: ‘My first house.’ Engine hesitant, tires chirping, you drive white-knuckled through a cold sweat of rain toward a place you’ve been waiting to come home to your entire life.Voilà! Color your ads with emotions. Enliven them with words fat with association. Don’t just paint pictures – give rides.”In the opening paragraph of today’s memo I gave you a series of words I associate with minor key music. But rather than say the obvious, “sad, melancholy, and pale,” I went one level deeper and gave you my associations with those words: “mournful, hollowed-out, bleached in the sun.”Maddock's technique helps you to avoid clichés and surprise your audience with unexpected combinations and layers of meaning. Listeners and readers love it.I’ve often said to the students of writing at Wizard Academy, “A willingness to write badly is the key to writing well.” When writing descriptions, the first words to pop into your head will be the ones you hear most often, the ones that are overused. Capture these words on paper, then think of what you associate with each of them.Don’t use the obvious words. Use the associations. Don’t worry that your audience won’t understand. Write colorfully and you, too, might be nominated to become president of Chile.“Julian once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind, p. 444 Pablo Neruda was never afraid that his audience wouldn’t understand. That’s what made his writing so colorful:“Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a grave invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who had never tasted peaches. He would be quietly getting sadder, noticeably paler, and probably little by little, he would lose his hair. I don't want those things to happen to me, and so I greedily devour all the fabrications, myths, contradictions, and mortal games of the great Julio Cortázar.” – Pablo Neruda, poet, nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency in 1970.You’ve tasted a peach, haven’t you?Write colorfully. If you don’t, you’ll lose your hair.Roy H. Williams

How to Choose ColorsApril 13, 2009ListenAWe learned last week that numbers are a language.Things communicated in numbers can be spoken in no other language. And because numbers are language, numbers can lie.Color, too, is a language.We use the language of color to reinforce – and contradict – statements made in the languages of shape and symbol, illumination and proximity. Hues, shades, tints, and intensities of color work together to create a mood, an ambience, an attitude.Yes, color is a language and I am fascinated by it.Colors are chosen for websites, logos, furniture, offices and art.The question is, “How do you choose?”Wizard Academy studies what gifted people do when they are feeling inspired. We investigate the greatest accomplishments of great men and women so that we may reverse engineer their unconscious methods.We teach you how to do consciously what a gifted person does unconsciously when they are feeling inspired.How would you like to be able to say, “The color palette of this website was selected by Claude Monet?”Imagine the impact of a color scheme that was the basis of a Gustav Klimt painting that sold for more than 100 million dollars.“The colors in this church were chosen to match the mood of ‘The Last Supper’ by Leonardo DaVinci.”Do you suppose the color scheme of ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch might create a similar mood of disquiet even when separated from the painting? After all, Munch chose the colors to reinforce the scene. We can safely assume the colors are saying the same thing as the painting.Colors sing most eloquently in chorus. Rarely does one color say much alone.I have said enough today in the language of words. It's time to let the colors do the talking.Just click the beagle at the top of today's memo to begin your instructional journey down the rabbit hole. Each painting clicked will take you one step deeper. There are also a couple of strange side tunnels. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of each page.What colors might one find in a minor key rainbow?I'll tell you next week.Roy H. Williams

Activity Based Accounting, Part TwoThe key to Activity-Based Accounting is never to separate the numbers from the activities of the people represented by the numbers. When numbers in a business lose their connection to people and their actions, the numbers are no longer trustworthy.Never forget these 3 things:1. Not all facts are helpful.2. You lose sight of the big picture when you get too close.3. It’s easy to tell lies in the language of numbers because most people believe numbers never lie.Here are a couple of facts taken from the 2000 Census:The average American family size is 3.14 persons.The average number of children per household is .90 children.Problem: Let’s say you want to move to a “family” town, a place where lots of people are married with children still living at home. You’ll need to find a city with more than nine-tenths of a child per household, right?Using the logic of traditional Cost-Based Accounting, you’ve narrowed your search to 3 towns with 50% more children than the national average of .90 per household. Riverview, Prairieville and Mountaintop each have 1.35 children per household. On paper, the 3 towns look equal.But Activity-Based Accounting would reject the 1.35 children per household average and look at the raw data behind the numbers. Here’s what Activity-Based Accounting would discover:The people of Riverview dislike children. That’s why90 percent of all Riverview households have no kids.But Riverview has a Polygamous religious group, so5 percent of Riverview families have 13 children each and5 percent have 14 children each. Welcome to Riverview, where tension hangs thick in the air.Prairieville is composed largely of immigrants from an overpopulated nation. Consequently, the people of Prairieville believe it’s immoral to have more than one child.8 percent of Prairieville households have no children.74 percent of Prairieville households have 1 child.5 percent have 2 kids.5 percent have 3 kids.4 percent have 4 kids.4 percent have 5 kids.In Prairieville, 82 percent of the population looks down on the 18 percent with more than one child. “Breeder” families like yours are social outcasts. You and your 2 kids are just going to love it here.The people of Mountaintop are happy to be alive. The town motto, “Live and Let Live,” is painted on the water towers and the police cars.33 percent of all households in Mountaintop have no children.22 percent have 1 child.33 percent have 2 children.7 percent have 3 children.2 percent have 4 children.1 percent has 5 children,1 percent has 6 children,1 percent has 7 children.Did you notice in the raw data that none of the children were fractioned? In Activity-Based Accounting, any step that creates a fractional person is a false step.Although it’s true that each of these 3 towns has 1.35 children per household, it’s a completely irrelevant fact and(1.) Not all facts are helpful.We took one step too many when we calculated the number of children in the average household. This illustrates the fact that(2.) You lose sight of the big picture when you get too close.I’m sure you would agree that we learned more about Prairieville, Riverview and Mountaintop from the raw data than from their identical averages of 1.35 children per household. Now that you've taken a step back from the misleading “average” and looked at the raw data, Mountaintop is obviously your best choice.Advertising professionals, you realize I’m talking about Gross Rating Points, don’t you?Reach (the number of different people being reached)times Frequency (repetition)equals Gross Impressions.Gross Impressions expressed as a percentage of population equals Gross Rating Points. (One million Gross Impressions in a city of one million people equals 100 Gross Rating Points.)The Cost-Based Accounting logic that created Gross Rating Points isn’t just plain stupid; it’s fancy stupid. (Stupid with raisins on it.)An advertiser is considering 5 different plans. All he knows is that each plan delivers 100 Gross Rating Points. An Activity-Based study of the raw data tells us Plan One will reach 100 percent of the population once. Plan Two will reach 50 percent of the population twice. Plan Three reaches 10 percent of the population 10 times. Plan Four reaches 5 percent 20 times. Plan Five reaches 1 percent of the population 100 times. But with “100 Gross Rating Points” hovering before his eyes, there’s no way for the advertiser to see the varying effectiveness of these schedules because when he multiplied reach times frequency he took one step too many.Gross Rating Points are valid only if you accept the false premise that reach and frequency are interchangeable.Do you believe reach and frequency are interchangeable? If so, you’d be just as happy in Prairieville or Riverview as in Mountaintop. After all, they each have 50 percent more children than the average American town.And real estate is so much cheaper in the first two tow

How Wal Mart Killed K Mart and Best Buy Beat Circuit CityI spoke to a small auditorium full of business school grad students at the University of Texas last month.They were fascinated by my case study of Transactional vs. Relational customers. I saw their eyes widen and their heads move up and down slowly as I explained how the Relational shopping mode is the foundation of all branding. But then they all dropped their heads and started taking notes like crazy when I began to talk about Activity Based Accounting.I was startled by their reaction. I paused, then said, “You guys have heard about this, right?” They shook their heads no. These young men and women will receive their MBAs in May.I stared at them in disbelief.A man from India spoke up, “For a moment I thought you were talking about activity-based costing but then you took it a whole different direction.”I was incredulous. “You’ve never heard of Activity-Based Accounting?” Again they shook their heads no. Then it hit me. Joe Romano invented this and taught it to his students 20 years ago without ever mentioning that it was his own invention.I smiled. Joe has always been like that.As the years have passed, I’ve seen countless real-life examples of Activity-Based Accounting in action. I just always assumed it was common knowledge and that everyone else was seeing what Joe taught me to see.In a nutshell, Activity-Based Accounting is highly sensitive to trends in customer behavior. It sees the people behind the numbers.Traditional cost-based accounting reduces customers and their behaviors to an “average” or a “percentage.”If a hole is 12 inches deep, how deep is half a hole? Cost-based accounting will answer “6 inches.” Activity-Based Accounting will answer, “There’s no such thing as half a hole.”Have you ever met the family with 2.3 children?Analysts who study Wal-Mart will tell you that the secret to their success is inventory management. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that Wal-Mart’s inventory management is highly responsive to the activities of the customer.Wal-Mart has a men’s clothing department. So does K-Mart. Let’s assume they sell exactly the same clothing. K-Mart can tell you that the month started strong, then slowed down, so they pulled out their little stainless steel cart and the store manager got on the intercom and announced “a flashing blue light special.”Wal-Mart, on the other hand, knows it sold 5 Dave Hogan sport shirts within the first 8 hours they were on display and that all of them were blue. The red ones aren’t selling. The next day they sell 4 more blue ones and only 2 red. Wal-Mart’s sales aren’t going to slow down like K-Mart’s, because Wal-Mart is going to make sure they don’t run out of blue, Dave Hogan sport shirts.K-Mart went bankrupt. Wal-Mart became the most successful retailer in the history of the world. That’s the power of Activity-Based Accounting.Likewise, Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson implemented a decision-making technique back in 2004 that I immediately recognized as Activity-Based Accounting. One year later the success of his endeavor was trumpeted in the Wall Street Journal. Four years after that, rival Circuit City was driven into liquidation because they never quite caught on to what Best Buy was doing.Would you like to talk more about it?Activity-Based Accounting dovetails nicely into the principles taught by women’s marketing expert Michele Miller, so I’ve asked her to give me a couple of hours during her upcoming Wonder Branding class April 15-16 at Wizard Academy. You don’t mind a little extra class time, do you?Rooms are still available at no charge in Engelbrecht House. I’d snag one right now if I was you. A couple of days in Austin will make 2009 turn out a whole lot better for you. Just look at Wal-Mart and Best Buy. (Best Buy retained Michele Miller. Those guys aren’t stupid.)“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”– Sir Claus MoserThe Wizard Academy campus is beautiful this time of year. Come.Roy H. Williams

1. Never promise everything you plan to deliver.Leave something to become the delight factor. That unexpected, extra bit you deliver “because we love you” will go a long way toward helping the customer forgive and forget any areas where you may have fallen short. Great ads are written in three steps: (1.) How to End. What will be the Last Mental Image your ad presents to your customer? Begin with the end in mind. (2.) Where to Begin. A clear but interesting angle of approach will gain the customer’s attention. (3.) What to Leave Out. Surprise is the foundation of delight. What will you intentionally leave out of your ad so that you can deliver a delightful surprise? What will you leave out so that the imagination of the customer is engaged?2. Never begin a sentence with the word, “Imagine…”If you’re planning to take your customer on a journey of imagination, plunge them into it. “The wheels of your airplane touch down, but not in the city you were promised…” “You must now choose between two good things…” “If you had more enemies like these, you wouldn’t need friends…”3. Never include your name in an ad more often than it would be spoken in normal conversation.Cramming your name where it doesn’t belong is AdSpeak. Back when Americans encountered one thirtieth as many ads each day, the rule was to repeat the name of the advertiser as often as possible. Do this today and your ads will sound like they were written in the 1940s.4. Never conjure an unpleasant mental image.Fear and disgust work face-to-face, but they often backfire when used in mass media. Conjure these unpleasant emotions in the minds of the masses and you’ll leave your listeners with a vaguely bad feeling attached to your name. They’ll want to avoid you, but they won’t be able to recall exactly why.5. Never respond to a challenge from a competitor smaller than you. Drawing attention to a smaller competitor makes them larger in the eyes of the public. Conversely, if someone bigger than you is foolish enough to shine their spotlight on you, dance in it.6. Never claim to have exceptional service.Most people won’t believe you. And those who do believe you will expect more from your staff than they can possibly deliver. It’s a lose/lose proposition. Rather than promise exceptional service in your ads, tell the public something objective, factual and verifiable that causes them to say, “Wow. Those people really serve their customers.” Never praise yourself. Do things that make the customer praise you.7. Never mention the recession.I understand how tempting it is to say, “In order to help you combat the recession we’re offering…” But all that really does is remind the customer that now is not a good time to be spending money.8. Never make a claim you don’t immediately support with evidence.Unsubstantiated claims are the worst form of AdSpeak. Give the customer facts, details and objective proof if you want to win their confidence. Specifics are more believable than generalities.9. Never use humor that doesn’t reinforce the principal point of your ad.Here’s the litmus test: If remembering the humor forces you to recall the message of the ad, the humor is motivated. Good job. But if recalling the humor doesn’t put you in memory of the ad’s main point, the humor is unmotivated and will make your ad less effective. Sure, people will like the ad. They just won’t buy what you’re selling.10. Never say things in the usual way.From billboards to storefronts to packaging to messages on T-shirts, ads whisper and wheedle and cajole and shout to win our attention. A 1978 Yankelovich study reported that the average American was confronted with more than 2,000 advertising messages per day. But that was 30 years ago. When Yankelovich revisited the study in 2008, the number had jumped to more than 5,000 messages per day. The mundane, the predictable and the usual are filtered and rejected from our consciousness. Win the customer’s attention with words and phrases that are new, surprising and different.Come to Wizard Academy. We’ll teach you how.Roy H. Williams

I am reminded of what Michel Eyquem De Montaigne said with tongue in cheek during the French Renaissance 450 years ago, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”As expected, we received a firestorm of email 2 weeks ago as a result of the Monday Morning Memo of March 2 in which I said I had chosen not to be fearful about the future. It seems that a lot of people take pleasure in fretting and they want me to get on board.But a frightened person frightens other people. And these newly frightened people will frighten still more people until finally no one is spending any money. Fear is the fuel of recession. I understand perfectly what’s happening in the world. I simply choose not to be afraid.You can choose, too. We are worth more than many sparrows.Warren Buffett agrees with this outlook.“Fear is very contagious. You can get fearful in 5 minutes, but you don’t get confident in 5 minutes.” – Warren Buffett on CNBC, Monday, March 9, 2009CNBC: “We’ve been getting thousands and thousands of emails from our viewers. Warren, we’d like to start with one that echoes a theme we heard again and again. This one comes from Terry in San Antonio, Texas, who asks, ‘Will everything be all right?’”BUFFETT: “Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created. We started with 4 million people back in 1790 and look where we’ve come. And it wasn’t because we were smarter than other people. It wasn’t because our land was more fertile or we had more minerals or our climate was more favorable. We had a system that worked. It unleashed the human potential. It didn’t work every year. We had 6 ‘panics’ in the 19th century. In the 20th century we had the Great Depression, World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system – largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity – all of those things that cause the potential of humans to get unleashed. And we’re far from done. Your kids will live better than mine. Your grandchildren will live better than your kids. There’s no question about that. But the machine gets gummed up from time to time. If you take the bulk of those centuries, probably 15 years were bad years. But we go forward.”Did you notice the quote the twitchy news people of America lifted from Buffett’s very upbeat, 3-hour interview? They filtered out all kinds of affirming, positive statements (such as the one above) to create the headline, “Warren Buffett Says ‘The Economy Fell Off a Cliff.”Slippery Wall-Streeters triggered this recession but the twitchy news media seems committed to making sure it progresses.And now for happier news: Wizard Academy has contacted the person I consider to be the best in America at making BIG things happen quickly. Within the next few weeks I hope to announce the dates of a special, 2-day workshop that will allow you to interact with this marketing giant in person. I’ve never met him but I’ve read his books and I look forward to having him on campus. Are there any big things you'd like to make happen quickly?When that announcement is made, you’ll want to act quickly. There are only 100 seats available in Tuscan Hall and many more than that will want to attend this event. It will likely be the most profitable thing any of us do in 2009.And now for a final thought: Fear is contagious. Don’t spread it. And if you meet any twitchy, fear mongering news weasels, slap them and say, “Stop it. Stop it right now.”They’ll know what it’s for.Roy H. Williams

8,000 years before Stonehenge and the PyramidsThe rocks of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) are a curiosity, and curiosity rocks.Travel with me to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Turkey.A shepherd wandering on the hillside where grows a solitary Mulberry tree, spies the top of an oblong rock that appears to have been shaped by human hands. He notices others like it in a pattern. He returns to the village and tells what he has seen. The digging begins. The year is 1994.“Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.”– David Lewis-Williams, Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg“Gobekli Tepe changes everything.”– Ian Hodder, Stanford University.Stonehenge was built 5000 years ago in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Carbon dating of organic matter adhering to the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe reveal it to be 12,000 years old, meaning it was built around 10,000–9,000 BC.“Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-wheel, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant.” – Tom CoxPerhaps the strangest part of the Gobekli story is that around 8,000 BC, its inhabitants entombed their temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which the unnamed shepherd walked in 1994. It was a task of unspeakable labor.No one knows why Gobekli was buried.“The modern history of Gobekli Tepe begins in 1964, when a team of American archaeologists combed this remote province of southeast Turkey. The archaeologists noted that several odd-looking hills were blanketed with thousands of broken flints, a sure sign of ancient human activity. Despite this, the US scientists drifted away and did no excavating. Today, they must feel like the publisher who rejected the first Harry Potter manuscript.” – Sean ThomasThirty years later, a shepherd saw a pattern of rocks peeking through the soil and said, “I wonder…”Google Gobekli Tepe and you’ll find that everyone mentions the shepherd but none can name him.I want to locate that shepherd and bring him to Wizard Academy. For it’s people like him – men and women without credentials, funding or permission – who notice the daily miracles that surround us and point them out for all to see. Galileo,Da Vinci,Buckminster Fuller,and the shepherd of Gobekli Tepe;to these servants of Curiosity,I give my highest Salute.Roy H. Williams

The Beagle Sings with BubleMy staff can hardly get any work done. It seems the whole world is calling to ask what I think will happen with our economy.The President of the United States made a primetime speech last week. The press is an interesting animal. The Chicago Tribune predicted the president’s speech would “live among the annals of man,” while its competitor, the Chicago Times, editorialized that “the cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the president.” Those papers were talking about Abraham Lincoln. The speech was the Gettysburg Address.Before I go any further, let me acknowledge that I’m aware of how dangerous it is to speak of politics or religion. No matter what I say on either subject, I’m going to get a firestorm of emails correcting me.Even so…All indications are that President Obama’s speech lifted the mood of the nation.When the mood of the nation is optimistic, our economy sings like Michael Bublé and money flows like water in the street.More than one friend has told me that Obama’s plan will end in disaster. I choose to believe otherwise.I choose to believe.I choose.A jet is low over New York City. Both engines have failed. Any idiot can see that everyone on the plane is going to die. The pilot can fly into a building and kill all the people inside, or he can line up on a street and kill unsuspecting motorists instead. These are his only options.Well, I’m on that jet and I say this pilot is going to land on the Hudson River and the plane is going to float long enough for everyone to get out safely and then we’re all going to hop onto some big passenger ferries that will be exactly where we need them to be.Don’t laugh. It could happen.By the way, you’re on this jet, too.I bought a book at the airport the other day. Barack Obama wrote Dreams From My Father fifteen years ago. As a writer, I was deeply impressed. If a man can be judged by what he writes when he is young, we have an extremely intelligent president.A history book of ancient Israel tells of a starving city surrounded by an enemy army. “Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”That story ends happily. Not just for the lepers, but for everyone in the city. Well, not quite everyone. There was one man who insisted that God himself couldn’t save the city. Interestingly, everyone made it safely onto the ferryboats except for that guy. He was the moron screaming hysterically ‘We’re all going to die!’ while the pilot was trying to land the plane on the Hudson.It’s really an interesting story. You ought to read it.Roy H. Williams

of the Wizard of AdsTen years ago I taught you how to create relational ads that target the right hemisphere of the customer’s brain. Advertisers who learned this technique made a lot of money.Five years ago I taught you that 2008 would be the final year in a series of 40-year cycles and that the position and direction of society’s pendulum meant 2009 would likely be 1929 all over again. If you haven’t been a little freaked out by the accuracy of that prediction, then you haven’t been paying attention.Today I’m offering you another chunk of glittering gold:A high percentage of relational customershave shifted to a transactional frame of mind.In other words, the rules of marketing are changing.What I teach about writing ads today is quite different from what I taught as recently as 1 year ago. Today, in addition to giving your customer a feeling of connectedness, you must infuse your ads with facts, details, logic and information.NOTE TO THE COGNOSCENTIOF THE MAGICAL WORLDSCOMMUNICATIONS WORKSHOP:The buying mode and mood of the general public has moved from Intuitive and Feeling (NF, right brain/right brain, pattern recognition) to Sensing and Thinking (ST, left brain/left brain, sequential reasoning.) Frosted Frank, not Monet, will win the heart today. Abandon fuzzy angles of approach. Be direct, clear, concise. Clarity is more important than creativity. But it’s also more difficult to achieve.ConsiderThe Economy,accelerated byAccess to Information (Google,)moving in unison withThe Direction of Society’s Pendulumand you’ll understand why consumers have begun buying with their heads instead of their hearts.The irrational right-brain remains powerful, but the logical left is winning the tug-of-war more often than ever before. Impulse purchases are becoming more restrained. We crave romance but we do not trust it.Ad writers, you’re going to have to work harder than ever but so are your clients.Money is tight.Unemployment is rising.People aren't shopping.Traffic is King.To drive traffic,select – in unison with your client – an exciting item or service at apopular price point. Selecting the right item is critical.feature that product or service with a vivid ad full of details and benefits.Q: How is a “featured product” ad different from the price-and-item ads of yesteryear?A: Price-and-item advertising was about offering the lowest price on a common commodity. Featured product ads require new and surprising information. A featured product is an exciting, uncommon item at a popular price point. The ads cannot be hype. Many businesses will resort to Sale! Sale! Sale! Resist the temptation of this cocaine. Featured product ads must contain new information your customer will be glad to know. The selection of what to feature is critical. This is where the business owner is going to need help from the ad writer. Use logic, details, facts to entice the customer to “come and take a look.”We live in exciting times.Wizard Academy awaits.Roy H. Williams

Magic Words to Penetrate the Filter,Erase Suspicion and Lower the Guard It was exactly 10 years ago. I was on the telephone with an 87 year-old man I had been hunting for several weeks. I needed this man’s permission to publish a private letter he had written to America’s Chief of Naval Operations back in 1963. The man’s name was William Lederer.“Where you calling from young man?”“Austin, Texas.”“I was there recently. Nice town.”“What brought you to Austin sir?”“I was there to bury my best friend Jim.”“I’m sorry to hear that.”“You would have liked Jim. Everyone did. He once gave me some advice that changed my life.”“What was it?”“William,” he said, “the public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.”Mr. Lederer now had my full attention.Our bodies contain approximately 100 million sensory receptors that allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell physical reality. But the brain contains 10 thousand billion synapses. This means we’re roughly 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.The first step in persuasionis to entice your targetto imagine doing the thingyou want them to do.Four and a half years ago in the summer of 2004, a screenwriter named Eli Attie began creating a persona for a new fictional character that would appear on The West Wing. Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) would be a young congressman, new to Washington, a working-class member of an ethnic minority. Prior to running for public office, our fictional character Santos had been a community organizer in a major city (Houston.)Screenwriter Eli Attie admitted to The Guardian, a British newspaper, that he was inspired in 2004 by a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama, a community organizer from Chicago.As a result of Attie’s attraction to Obama, the 2006 television season showed us a glittering, fictional candidate for the presidency, a happily married, young minority male with 2 children who would run against a moderate Republican opponent from a western state.The imaginary Republican senator, Arnie Vinick (played by Alan Alda,) was unpopular with his conservative base due to his moderate views. His principal opponent in the fictional Republican primary was the Rev. Don Butler, a Christian preacher. Keep in mind these West Wing episodes aired 18 months before the nomination battle between John McCain and Mike Huckabee.But wait, it gets weirder.Ten years ago, Aaron Sorkin admitted that he based The West Wing’s Josh Lyman on Rahm Emanuel, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. Both Lyman and Emanuel are Jewish. Both are brilliant. Both mail dead fish to opponents who make them angry.In the 2006 season of The West Wing, seasoned White House staffer Josh Lyman serves as campaign manager for the long-shot, minority candidate. When his candidate wins, Lyman is named Chief of Staff.Two years later Rahm Emanuel, the real Josh Lyman, will become Barack Obama's Chief of Staff.Was it all a plot? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just an example of how we tend to act out the things we’ve seen in our mind. By the way, here’s the end of the Lederer story:“How did Jim’s advice change your life Mr. Lederer?”“Well, I had written a few books but none of them sold very well. So in 1958 I showed Jim the manuscript for my newest book and he told me to go back and fictionalize the name of the country, the characters, everything. ‘The public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.’”“How did it turn out for you?”“Well, that book, The Ugly American, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 78 straight weeks and sold more than 3 million copies in its first year. Marlon Brando starred in the movie. But of course that’s nothing compared to what Jim did.”“What do you mean?”“Jim wrote more than 40 books, sold more than 100 million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.”There was an awkward silence.“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t think of what Jim you might mean.”“I’m sorry, son. You probably knew him as James. James Michener.”Roy H. Williams

America, I think, is not a place. If another people lived here, the geography would be the same but it would not be our nation.America, I think, is not a government. Our pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and our politics are not unique.America, I think, is not an economy. Free markets exist in other nations and we hold no patent on capitalism.America is a people, an outlook and a family. (A dysfunctional family, yes, but aren’t they all?)Eighty-three years ago the American son was a swaggering youth with glinting eye, proud of his muscle and chin held high. Mark Twain wrote about his American strut in a 1926 letter from Europe to President Calvin Coolidge: “We, unfortunately, don't make a good impression collectively… There ought to be a law prohibiting over three Americans going anywhere abroad together.”Saul Bellow, in his Adventures of Augie March, gave our American boy a voice during the Great Depression: “I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make a record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”America. Land of Opportunity. A chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Hard work never killed anybody. Cream rises to the top. Second place is the first loser. You can do it.And we did. “Leaders of the free world, liberators of the oppressed,” we’re less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet consume 26 percent of its energy and 30 percent of its resources.A few years later Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of that ocean-crossing hero, began to worry that things were getting out of balance: “America, which has the most glorious present still existing in the world today, hardly stops to enjoy it, in her insatiable appetite for the future.”John Steinbeck echoed Anne’s words. “Then there is the kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents are thrown down and at the end the child says – ‘Is that all?’ Well it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedyand sick.”John Steinbeck was immediately accused of being a Communist sympathizer.America didn’t listen to Anne or John but became more intense in the pursuit of whatever it was we were chasing.“Go to college. Get good grades. Go to college. Rise to the top. Go to college. Enjoy the good life.”Eighteen years ago Faith Popcorn wrote in her famous Popcorn Report, “The trouble in corporate America is that too many people with too much power live in a box (their home), then travel the same road every day to another box (their office).”Charles Osgood spotlighted this disconnection on CBS Sunday Morning, March 30, 2008, “The average urban dwelling American sees up to 5,000 advertising 'messages' –from T-shirts to billboards – every day. That compares with 2,000 thirty years ago.” [Source: Yankelovich, Inc.]Wow. No wonder we’ve become a nation of consumers. With 5,000 messages hammering us every day, we hardly have time to think about anything else.And now it’s 2009. The whole planet waits to see whether America has the strength, the wit and the will to correct our mistakes. They wait because the economy of the world depends on whether we're able to buy the stuff they need to sell us.The solution appears to be that the world needs better ad writers.Roy H. Williams

How to Advertise in a Recession“If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez,winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in LiteratureAh, the power of details.Every ad has style and substance, cheese and meat. Most ads are cheese because ad writers are rarely given meat. Style cheese includes layout, angle, tone of voice and hyperbole. Substance meat is provable fact and concrete detail.My success as a writer is due to the fact that I demand meat from the business owners I serve. I'd much rather fight over meat to put in their ads than apologize to them for their ads not working.Style affects how people feel. Cheese.Substance changes what they know. Meat.Is your advertising meaty or cheesy?Here's an example of a 146-word, cheese-filled ad:Pearls have always been off-white, but not anymore! [STORE] has just received a shipment of colored freshwater pearls. We have a whole panorama of colors to choose from! Come and see these wonderful new fashion items that have arrived just in time for the Spring Season. Come early and shop while the selection is best. Don't be left out in the cold! Step into Spring with a spring in your step with fashionable, colored freshwater pearls. You’ll always find the newest thing in cutting-edge fashion at [STORE] where we’ve been serving the good people of [TOWN] since [YEAR.] Colored pearls are hot! Colored pearls are cool. And you won't believe the price. Get yours before they’re all gone at [STORE] where you can see them from 9AM to 6:30PM Monday through Saturday. Colored, freshwater pearls, exclusively at [STORE, LOCATION] or online at [WEBSITE.COM] or call 555-5555.Here's another 146-word ad, but with accelerated style and a few chunks of meat:MALE: When a painting has gentle colors and a soft glow, it’s usually a watercolor. I love watercolors. I like their optimism. I like the way they make me feel. So when I saw the Watercolor Pearls from the town of Wen-chow on the coast of the East China Sea, I ordered a hundred strands for the women of [TOWN].FEMALE: Wait till you see the colors!MALE: Silky black,FEMALE: Blushing pink,MALE: Supple green,FEMALE: Wet blueMALE: Smooth whiteFEMALE: Moonglow silverMALE: Translucent apricotFEMALE: Dripping chocolateMALE: Each strand is 16 inches long.FEMALE: Some strands are all one color.MALE: Others are multiple colors, a pastel rainbow of freshwater pearls.FEMALE: At just 79 dollars a strand, 100 strands won’t last long.MALE: And the East China Sea is a loooooong way from here.FEMALE: Take a look right now at ____________.comMALE: Or try them on up-close and personal at [LOCATION.]FEMALE: Watercolor pearls, exclusively at [STORE.]Meat chunks:1. the town of Wen-chow2. a hundred strands3. black, pink, green, blue, white, silver, apricot, chocolate4. Some strands are all one color5. Others are multiple colors6. 16 inches long7. 79 dollars a strand.8. East China SeaSpecifics are more powerful than generalities, even when those specifics merely accelerate your style:1. Rainbow is more specific than panorama and is therefore more easily visualized.2. In his first appearance, the MALE voice says “…make me feel.”3. Each specific color name is then accelerated by the use of a modifier that might also describe a woman's skin: gentle, soft, silky, supple, wet, smooth, translucent, dripping.4. And most of those tactile words follow the phrase, “the women of [TOWN].”Any questions?Roy H. Williams

As We Look at the Business Climate of 2009:A new generation of entrepreneurs is emerging from the shadows. None of these is well funded but they are focused, relevant, and in step with the public. Some of them will grow to become business icons by mid-2012. (Three and a half years from now I’ll give you a hyperlink back to this column so that you can see how right I was.)Yes, I know that sounded horribly egotistical.The air is cold, the sky is clear, these are my trend predictions:Cheap Thrills“If it feels good, do it.”Sales of alcohol, movie tickets and ice cream will increase. This happens during every recession. How might you offer your customer an altered consciousness, an alternative reality, an escape from the merely mundane? Think about it.Repair Instead of Replace“Instead of buying a new one, I’ll hold on to the one I’ve got.”Sellers of new houses, new cars, clothing and jewelry are going to have to get creative. Repair businesses will trend magically upward. Expensive items will find their way to eBay as we liquidate the luxuries we bought in better days. Resale shops will appear in nicer parts of town. How might your business participate in this trend?Tightrope Budgeting“Should I shepherd my resources or push harder than ever?”Market share is up for grabs because your competitors have slashed their ad budgets. Should you hunker down and try to hang on, or push harder than ever while your competitors hibernate? Some businesses will quit advertising and go broke as a direct result. Other businesses will advertise aggressively and go broke because they lacked financial staying power. Your correct course of action depends on your competitive environment. Do you know how to read your competitive environment or do you need help?Fewer Competitors“If the economy stays tough and fewer businesses occupy my category, won’t that leave more for me?” (1.) What was the sales volume of the failed competitor? (2.) How much has your category shrunk? If the competitor’s volume exceeded the shrinkage of your category, you might see some benefit. But if your competitor was a minor player, the shrinkage of your category will erase any good you might have experienced. You’ll get a larger slice, but of a smaller pie.Media Makeover“I walk to the end of the driveway each morning to retrieve a newspaper telling me things I’ve known for 24 hours.” Very few newspapers are healthy. The New York Times, that standard bearer of journalism, would have collapsed but for last week’s infusion of $250 million by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. With that newspaper’s $1 billion in debt recently reduced to junk-bond status and only $46 million in cash reserves, the Times would have failed in May, 2009. In the past, “columnists” and “reporters” were merely people who had access to a publishing pipeline. But in an Internet-connected world, isn’t every blogger both columnist and reporter? Last week MSNBC.com said, “Got some good photos of the inauguration? Send them to us.” How many more months will pass before newspapers are published digitally and round-the-clock from volunteer reports submitted from around the world?Websites are EssentialHillary Clinton and John McCain underestimated the power of the Internet. Barack Obama did not. Now tell the truth, don’t be embarrassed: Was your website designed by an acquaintance who “is really good with computers?” Someone who “knows all about the internet?” Then why isn’t it doing more for you? This is the year to get serious about your website. Your webmaster is learning by trial and error. You should buy him or her some expert guidance.You’re About to Read an Ad:Call to Action, a book about the internet published by Wizard Academy Press, became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2005. It was the first book ever to reach bestseller status without brick-and-mortar distribution. Call to Action by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg is a landmark in the publishing hall of fame. Its sequel, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? hit all four bestseller lists, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and BusinessWeek.The world’s most successful online companies pay the Eisenberg brothers lavishly for their advice. Their consulting company, Future Now, is currently traded on NASDAQ.And they were students at Wizard Academy long before they became famous.Would you like Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg to:1. monitor your website 24/72. analyze the actions of all your online visitors, and then3. suggest specific changes you should make to your website?This new service from Future Now is available for as little as $1,000/mo. Detailed feedback with specific recommendations for you to implement. Tested, proven, productive. No more trial-and-error.Roy H. Williams

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. *We’re living in a time of tumultuous change.A misinformed president declares a war. The value of homes – which were never supposed to fall – fell. The SEC can’t make Wall Street color between the lines and 700 billion dollars goes missing. A 50 billion-dollar Ponzi scheme is perpetrated by one of the most respected men on Wall Street. A governor tries to sell a seat in the Senate. I saw gasoline sell for a dollar a quart and watched General Motors become insolvent.But I’m not worried. I was born in a briar patch.Pennie and I began our lives together during the term of another president who wasn’t quite up to the job.It’s 1976. Mortgage interest rates are 18 percent and jobs are scarce. If you see a line of cars at a gas station, get in it. Gas stations don’t always have gas. The middle-eastern boogeyman of that era, the Ayatollah Khomeini, brazenly invades a U.S. embassy and kidnaps 52 U.S. diplomats. Newscasters remind us nightly of our shame. When we send our best and brightest soldiers to rescue our diplomats, we crash two of our aircraft, eight soldiers die and we return home empty-handed. The Ayatollah holds us hostage for 444 days.“Elected largely on his promise to never lie to the American people, Carter soon seemed out of place in the vastness of the presidency. Events conspired to further impede his progress: rising energy costs, high unemployment, Americans held hostage in Iran, Soviets in Afghanistan. A man of peace who took pride in bringing together age-old antagonists, Carter was finally viewed by his countrymen as lacking presidential stature.” – American Experience, PBSAnd the whole time, it seems the only thing we needed was a head cheerleader with a more beautiful dream. Ronald Reagan took office with a sparkling smile. “Things are fine. Expand your business. All is well. Go out to dinner. Life is good.” And we believed him.Economy rebounded, cold war ended, Mary Lou Retton vaulted a perfect 10 and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.Barack Obama has a good smile, too. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.In defiance of the current recession, Wizard Academy is moving forward with the construction of its new classroom tower. Perhaps we’re being foolish. Maybe the right thing would be to hunker down and cover our heads with our hands. But did you ever notice how “hunker” sounds like clunker, junker, lunker and dunker? I prefer “dream,” as in team, gleam in the eye, beaming smile and cream of the crop.“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.” – T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)Hunker down or dream. It's your call.The 7 Steps to Hunkering Down:1. Stay scared. Call it “street smart.”2. Cultivate cynicism. Call it “straight talk.”3. Praise pessimism. Call it a “reality check.”4. Believe you are wiser than everyone else.5. Feel secretly superior.6. Take no action that might improve your condition.7. Crow “I told you so” when things get worse.The 7 Steps to Pursuing Your Dream:1. Know what you're trying to make happen.2. Expect good things to happen for you.3. Plant seeds of good things daily.4. Trust that some of your seeds will grow.5. Measure success by your own criteria.6. Make progress daily without fail.7. Believe in the power of the Elbs. (Exponential Little Bits)Do you believe in your dream, or do you think it's only a fantasy?Moving forward with just a thousand dollars:I showed today's memo to 5 of my most successful friends and said, “Talk is cheap and I don't want to be seen as one of those pollyanna happy-talk motivational goobers without substance. Action makes things happen, but not everyone is free to attend classes at Wizard Academy. If a business person is ready to begin taking action, what would you be willing to do for just a thousand dollars to help them make progress toward their goal?” I was blown away by their generous offers.Would you like to see what they said they'd be willing to do?Good thingshappen to dreamerswho remain standingwith open eyes.Stand up.Roy H. Williams

Turn It Upside Down. Do It Backwards.TRIZ is the Russian acronym for a string of words that mean “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving,” an innovation matrix of the late Genrich Altshuller, a Soviet scientist who proved:1. there are only about 1,500 basic problems in life and2. implementing one or more of 40 archetypal answers can solve each of these problems. These “archetypal answers” are known as the 40 Principles of TRIZ.Mark Fox is1. a rocket scientist,2. the youngest Chief Engineer in the history of the Space Shuttle project, and3. a director on the board of Wizard Academy.Mark co-teaches a class with me called DaVinci and the 40 Answers in which we teach students how to use the Principles of TRIZ as lenses that allow them to see their limiting factors from a new perspective.New perspectives yield new answers.New answers produce new outcomes.Today we’ll aim one of these Principles at a common problem:“How can I get more customers?”Would you like to hear an innovative new answer to that question?I’ve selected Principle 13, “Do It Backwards,” to be our solution stimulator. But before we can solve the problem backwards, we must first understand how the question is usually solved.QUESTION“How can I get more customers?”USUAL ANSWERClassic marketing revolves around the question, “Who is your customer?” Marketers study surveys, evaluate data and observe customer characteristics in the hope of more narrowly defining your “core customer” and thereby increasing your ability to more efficiently target these people. The assumption is that if you can clearly identify who is buying from you, you can find efficient ways of reaching out to other people just like them.BACKWARDS ANSWERInstead of looking at who you’re getting and why, take a look at who you’re not getting and why you’re not getting them.1.   Who isn’t coming to you?2.   Why are these people not coming to you?3.   Are you prepared to broaden your message to appeal to people who haven’t been attracted to you in the past?Gosh. That little window of insight reveals a whole new horizon of possibilities, doesn’t it?The marketplace pie is shrinking for most business categories.If, in fact, fewer customers spend fewer dollars in your category in 2009 than they did in 2008, doesn’t it make sense that you enact a plan to increase the size of your slice?Wizard Academycame into beingfor such a time as this.Our mission: to help people accomplish their dreams.What’s yours?Roy H. Williams

Tiny, Reliable Indicators are Clockwork AngelsA successful consultant uses small indicators to make big decisions. If he explains his methods to data-worshippers, he sounds like an idiot. When it later turns out that he was right, the doubters claim he was lucky, saying, “You can’t possibly extrapolate that outcome from that data.”Consider the following:A large group of 4-year old children are led into a room, one at a time. The room is equipped with a two-way mirror. Each child is seated and given a marshmallow. “You can eat the marshmallow right now if you want. But if you wait until I come back to eat your marshmallow, I’ll give you a second marshmallow to go with it.” The giver of marshmallows then leaves the child alone in the room.Is there anything we could learn from such a test? Could it tell us anything important about a child’s future?One third of the children ate the marshmallow immediately.One third held out for a short time, then ate the marshmallow.One third waited 15 to 20 minutes until the giver of marshmallows returned with the promised, second marshmallow.Small indicators are valuable to a savvy consultant, just as they were valuable to Walter Mischel*, a scientist at Stanford 40 years ago.Fourteen years later, at the age of eighteen, each of the original 216 children was located. Those who didn’t eat the marshmallow scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT (610 verbal and 652 math versus 524 verbal and 528 math.)At age 40, the group that didn’t eat their marshmallows had more successful marriages, higher incomes, greater career satisfaction and better health than the marshmallow eaters.   The 4 year-old who eats the marshmallow is oriented toward the present.The 4 year-old who waits is oriented toward the future.Yes, we can learn big things from small indicators.Six years ago I sent you a Monday Morning Memo that linked your ability to accumulate wealth to your orientation toward the future. Do you remember it?2009 is going to be a year of upheaval.Will you be oriented toward the future?Or are you trapped in the present?Before you eat that marshmallow, let’s talk.Roy H. Williams

Albert Schweitzer. In background, clockwise from lower left: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ann Radcliffe, Horace Mann, J.M. Barrie, Marian Wright Edelman, Anne FrankAlbert Schweitzer was a musician and physician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. This is the message he left for us when he died: “I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”Now lest you think I’ve gone all touchy-feely, riding my unicorn over the rainbow as I sprinkle sparklies on the world below, I'll poke you with the pointed advice of Ann Radcliffe: “One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.” In other words, “No one wants to hear what you believe. We’re watching. Show us.”You go, Ann.Talk is cheap. Beautiful dreams are for rainbow riders. Small actions, relentless actions, committed actions are the signature of people who change the world.Are you a world changer?“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society – more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.” – Charlotte Perkins GilmanHave you found your real job? Are you doing it?No? (Don’t worry, if you’re not yet sure of your real job, Sid Lloyd will help you find it on March 13.)“You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day. A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back – but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.” – Marian Wright EdelmanIn the spirit of Marian Edelman, Horace Mann challenged the 1859 graduating class of Antioch University thusly: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”“Be ashamed to die.” It takes real teeth to say things like that. Horace had him some teeth.Remember the happiness promised to us by Albert Schweitzer? Jimmy James Barrie gave us Peter Pan, then said, “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.” I'm thinking he was right.I have confidence in the words of these 7 worthies because they agree with the Jewish rabbi we quoted last week. “Anyone who seeks his own happiness will not find it. But those who seek the happiness of others will find happiness in all they do.” – a transliteration of the words of Jesus from Mathew 16Hiding for her life in an attic, the irrepressible Anne Frank said, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”This was a buoyant attitude for a teenage girl hiding in an attic. But you're not hiding in an attic. You’re staring into the mirror of a brand new year, full of possibilities.Look into the eyes of that mirror.Who will you be in 2009?Roy H. Williams

First it gets dark, then the air slaps you from every direction and the ocean falls from the sky. Laws of gravity have been repealed. Your thoughts reach up like flowers for sunlight but the sun cannot be found.I am darkness. I am the storm. And the witch rides her broomstick across my sky and is silhouetted against the moon. Swirling at your feet is the storm fear, icy poverty in iron handcuffs stirred by the witch’s broom.I’ve been thinking a lot about storms of late; 2009 will be a stormy year.And growing stronger by the hour is the devil witch that stirs her icy brew. Turn on your television and take a sip and feel your blood run cold.But I bring you a different sort of news:The opposite of life isn’t death. The opposite of life is fear.A young rabbi once said, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”Do you want to learn to dance? Dancing is easy when you know your life’s purpose. Do you know yours? If not, Sid Lloyd can help you find it.Wizard Academy exists to help people accomplish what they set out to do. We are the strangers you meet in the forest, the ones who give you what you need to continue your quest. We show you the pathway that leads to your prize.That first step is always a big one. The student looks down at their feet, then over at us as they realize, “I’m really going to do this, aren’t I?”And thus begins the only dance that will carry you happily through the rain.James Thurber said, “All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.” Do you want to know the answers to Thurber’s questions?Let me be the stranger in the forest who gives you what you need. Are you ready to receive it?These 4 Common Fears are theIngredients in the Witch’s Brew:1. Fear of Decision.ANTIDOTE: Knowledge of Purpose“Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard ThurmanMark Twain said it more sharply: “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.”If Mark Twain were alive today he would teach at Wizard Academy. In Twain’s absence, we bring you Sid Lloyd.2. Fear of StruggleANTIDOTE: Commitment“Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies.” – Howard ThurmanShow me a person without commitment and I’ll show you a person bored out of their wits. “I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.” – John SteinbeckMost people think commitment is a consequence of passion. But it’s the other way around. Passion is a product of commitment. If your life is without passion, make a commitment.“When I hear somebody sigh that life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'” – Sydney J. Harris    3. Fear of FailureANTIDOTE: Laughter and a Sense of Wonder“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder… he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” – Rachel Carson    “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde    “Do not take life too seriously – you will never get out of it alive.” – Elbert Hubbard“But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?” – Jack Kerouac    4. Fear of DeathANTIDOTE: Celebrating the Ordinary“Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.” – Grace Hansen“It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.” – Terry Pratchett“And here's a secret I learned six summers ago, lying in a ditch beside the road, covered in my own blood and thinking I was going to die: you go out broke. Everything's on loan, anyway. You're not an owner, you're only a steward. So pass some of it on.” – author Stephen King, speaking to the graduating class of the University of Maine, May 7, 2005The young rabbi who spoke about dancing in the rain originally said it this way,“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble (storms.) But be of good cheer; (learn to dance in the rain,) for I have overcome the world.”Read it for yourself in the sixteenth chapter of John.Merry Christmas,Roy H. Williams

Run the following ad in any newspaper:2006 Honda Civic DX 4dr, White, 63,000 miles, $8,100. Call 555-1212These are the questions you’ll be asked by nearly half your callers:“What year is that Honda Civic? Is it a 2-door or 4-door? What color? How many miles on it? How much are you asking?”I know this because I bought and sold an average of 3 cars a month for the first several years Pennie and I were married. I’ve answered these questions many hundreds of times and in every instance the information was in the newspaper ad.I always wanted to ask, “Where did you get this phone number?”Then a few years ago Dr. Richard D. Grant taught me the difference between introverts and extraverts.Introversion and extraversion don't refer to shyness and boldness. They refer only to how you charge your emotional batteries. Introverts gain energy from internal contemplation, centering, and quiet time. Extraverts gain energy from external people, places, and things.I’m an introvert. Those car questions were asked by extraverts. Contrary to what introverts like to think, extraverts aren’t stupid. They simply prefer the spoken word to the written.Books are written for introverts. Audiobooks are recorded for extraverts.Introverts rarely say what they are thinking.They say only what they have thought. Introverts think to talk.Extraverts talk to think.When introverts get stuck, they close the door, turn off the radio, take the phone off the hook and go deep inside themselves to find the answer. When extraverts get stuck they strike up a conversation with someone. This gets the mental flywheel spinning again and sure enough, within moments, out pops an idea. Extraverts get their best ideas during conversation.Although nearly half our population is introverted, the US maintains a strongly extraverted social etiquette:Focus groups measure the opinions of extraverts.Churches plan social events for extraverts.Companies hand out promotions to extravertsand sales trainers teach us how to sell to extraverts. Do you remember the old sales adage, “close early, close hard and close often?” This may be a sure way to keep your extraverted customer engaged in conversation and “flush out” their true objection, but you’ll just as surely alienate your introverted customers. Good luck with that.Extraverts think introverts are socially inept.Introverts think extraverts are noisy.What extraverts call “reaching out to someone,” introverts call an invasion of privacy. Extraverts prefer to work in teams. Introverts do their best work alone.Given their polar opposite preferences, can introverts and extraverts work well together, become partners, be happily married?Absolutely.The key to showing courtesy to an extravert is to listen to them more than you think is necessary. Maintain eye contact, nod your head and smile.The key to showing courtesy to an introvert is to give them time and space for reflection and processing. Don’t bombard them with questions or subject them to a barrage of jabber when they’re “all peopled out.” Give them an uninterrupted hour to read the mail and they’ll soon be ready to hear about your day.Do it however works best for you,but keep your emotional batteries charged.Happy Holidays.Roy H. Williams

Ready to Play Leapfrog?The coming year will be fun, adventure-filled and profitable for people who have their wits about them.A number of small business owners are positioning themselves to overtake their much larger rivals.Will one of these companies be yours?Not many years ago, General Motors and Circuit City were the dominant players in their categories. Today they’re both on their knees, having made the same mistakes:1. They took their fingers off the pulse of the customer.When you believe your marketing pipeline will allow you to dictate what the customer will buy, you’re in danger of being leapfrogged. In 1960, General Motors sold nearly 60 percent of all new cars. Today, even though Chevrolet maintains 4,200 dealerships, Toyota sells more cars than all 5 GM brands combined through just 1,400 locations. LESSON: Having the right product is more important than heritage and convenience.2. They quit taking risks.When companies achieve success, they usually quit innovating and become guardians of the status quo. But yesterday’s perfect processes are obsolete tomorrow. Vinyl records were replaced by 8-track tapes. 8-tracks were replaced by cassettes. Cassettes were replaced by CDs. And now CD’s are being replaced by MP3 players. The same is happening with business practices. LESSON: Success, like failure, is a temporary condition. Never assume you've arrived.The leaders are going into hunker-down mode. They’re cutting back their advertising, assuming that everyone else will cut back as well.When a leapfrogger sees a leader’s brake lights, he hits the accelerator. Are you beginning to see what I meant when I said, “fun, adventure-filled and profitable?”Here are the trends to watch in 2009:1. Frivolous purchases are being delayed.We’re wearing our clothes longer and keeping the cars we’ve got. We'll buy what we need, but only after asking whether we really need it.2. We're buying fewer things, but better things.More attention is being paid to quality. Only the poorest are choosing by price alone. Information is king. Details are power. This is good news for makers of better products.3. “Sustainable” is a concept that will grow in power for at least 10 years.The lifestyle of the 80's and 90's was “upwardly mobile” and its leaders were marked by “conspicuous consumption.” But the chosen lifestyle of the next generation will be “sustainable,” meaning that we'll strive to live within our means and embrace practices that are environmentally responsible.Want to be a leapfrogger?Become one of the Magnificent Seven. I'll see you when you arrive on campus.Roy H. Williams

Chapter six in John’s story about the life of Jesus tells us how he fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 small fishes.I have no problem reconciling God and science, so the miracle bit doesn’t stumble me in the least. The thing that fascinates me – the piece I woke up thinking about – is what Jesus said when the meal was over. “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”Consider. This was a person of unlimited resources, a man who could create abundance from nothingness, yet he said to his followers, “Gather up the fragments.”Have you ever stopped to “gather up the fragments” of your life?We find ourselves at Thanksgiving and Christmas confronted with life-fragments we’ve been trying hard to forget. Encounters with uncomfortable relatives bring sharp fragments to the surface. Memories of past failures and embarrassments, hard times and weird relationships emerge from conversations with people who remember us differently than we are today. And then we have to visit places we’ve been trying to forget and recall events from which we’re still recovering.Am I the only person who goes into the holiday season with mixed emotions?“Gather up the fragments.”Unresolved fragments are shrapnel, cutting us deeply.Handled fragments are sandpaper, wearing off our rough edges.Softened fragments are building blocks, giving us insights to get things done.Celebrated fragments are nutrition, remembering past miracles in our lives.Bright mosaics are made from gathered fragments.Broken. Colorful. Unique.Just like the pattern of your life.Negotiate your broken places.They allow for new connections.Appreciate the weirdness of your past.It adds color to your future.Celebrate your personal heritage.It beats the hell out of whining.Happy Holidays.Roy H. Williams

Tom Wanek believes credibility can be “purchased” by risking one or more of six currencies. The more you put at risk, the more believable your message.Currencies that Buy Credibility:1. Material WealthOf the six currencies, we see material wealth risked most frequently in money-back guarantees and statements like, “Find a lower price anywhere and we’ll refund the difference plus 10 percent.” Can you think of a better way to increase credibility by increasing the customer’s perception of your risk?2. Time & Energy   Are you in a business that provides an in-home service? Imagine the power of an ad that says, “If we’re not there when we promised, we do the job for free. Unlike other companies, we would never waste your time, then ask you to pay for ours.” Variations of this classic example of risking time and energy to increase credibility have been used by the Clockworks group to build a number of America’s most successful in-home service franchises. How else might you risk time and energy to increase credibility?3. OpportunityLadies, when a man claims to love you but continues to date other women, is his statement credible? A self-imposed restriction on opportunity – dating you exclusively – adds credibility to his statement, does it not? Likewise, the manufacturer who gives access to just one retailer in an area is perceived as committed to that retailer’s success. Is there a way your business might risk opportunity to strengthen credibility?4. Power & ControlThe original purpose of Amazon.com was to sell books. But by choosing to allow visitors to write negative reviews, they increased the credibility of the positive reviews and quickly became one of the internet giants. Likewise, your company can gain power by giving it away and you can increase your credibility by giving up control. How many ways might you do this?5. Reputation & PrestigeIn a report released two weeks ago by CNN/Opinion Research, George W. Bush had an approval rating of just 24 percent. In a press conference held the following week, the President said he regretted saying he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” and that he had urged the Iraqi insurgents in 2003, “bring ‘em on.” He said he was sorry such language made the world believe he was “not a man of peace.” By putting his prestige at risk and eating a slice of humble pie, George W. Bush regained some of his lost credibility, don’t you think?6. Safety and Well-BeingYou're 12 years old. Your stepfather says he loves you as much as if you were his own, but you’re not sure you believe him. But when you fall through the ice while skating on a frozen lake your stepfather dives through the hole into the freezing water to rescue you. Do you believe him now? The president of Lifelock, an identity-theft protection program, runs ads that say, “My name is Todd Davis. My social security number is 457-55-5462. So why publish my social security number? Because I’m absolutely confident LifeLock is protecting my good name and personal information, just like it will yours. And we guarantee our service up to $1 million dollars.” By risking his personal well-being through the publication of his Social Security number and risking his company’s material wealth by reimbursing up to $1 million in identity-theft losses, Todd Davis has built Lifelock into the dominant player in its category. Are you beginning to see how embracing risk increases credibility?Fight the Big Boys and Win is a class taught by Tom Wanek, the discoverer of the Six Currencies of Credibility, and Mike Dandridge, the director of The American Small Business Peer Groups, a division of Wizard of Ads, Inc.If you own a business, this 2-day class is how you should begin 2009.We're looking at a brand new day.Are you up for it?Roy H. Williams

Most women can tell at least one funny story about a tragic first date. In most of these stories, a misguided man spends the entire evening saying,“Here's an example of how wonderful I am…”“Let me tell you what I can do…”“…and that's what makes me special.”Although we’re rarely drawn to people who begin all their sentences with “I,” “Me,” and “My,” this first-person perspective remains central to mainstream advertising.And it’s why most Americans detest mainstream advertising.“At [name of company,] we…”“Voted the number one…”“Why settle for second best?”This outdated language of self-promotion is known as “AdSpeak.”The new language of marketing is the language of Intimacy. Connectedness. Shared values. The sound of one friend talking to another. Intimate ads are believable because they confirm what the customer already knows. The fact that the advertiser knows it as well – and is willing to admit it – is what surprises and impresses the customer. Click. Connection.How to Avoid “AdSpeak” in Your Ads.1. Limit self-reference. Reduce the number of times you refer to your company or your product in your ads. (New York Times bestselling authors Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg offer a free, online analysis of ad copy at FutureNowInc.com. Their “We-We Calculator” scores ad copy instantly. Just copy and paste your ad into the text-block and the software does the rest.2. Don’t say it. Lead the customer to say it. Instead of saying, “We’re honest,” say something that only an honest person would say. Let the customer respond, “Wow. That’s honest.”3. Admit the downside. It makes the upside easier to believe. Imagine the impact of a jeweler saying, “A diamond is just a symbol. The important thing is not to forget what it symbolizes.”A behavioral scientist named Desmond Morris wondered why some couples stayed together for a lifetime while other couples divorced. What he found was that couples who stayed together had usually followed similar progressions of intimacy, allowing sufficient time before advancing to the next stage. His theory was that this allowed the couple to more deeply bond during the courtship phase of the relationship. Couples who rushed through these “stages of intimacy” usually didn't form as strong a bond and were far more likely to divorce.WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS:Customer courtship should begin long before your customer is in the market for what you sell. The customer won “quick and easy” will be lost just as quickly and easily.Let’s look at the 12 Stages of Intimacyas they relate to business:1. Eye to Body* general awareness.In Business: Name Recognition.2. Eye to Eye* each person knows the other has seen them.In Business: Targeted advertising is purchased to reach the customer.3. Voice to Voice* conversation. Can be one sided, or a dialogue.In Business: Your ads are read or heard by the customer.4. Hand to Hand* holding hands. Acknowledgement of possible relationship.In Business: the customer considers visiting your place of business.5. Arm to Shoulder* closer contact than holding hands.In Business: contact is made in person or by phone.6. Arm to Waist* indicates a growing familiarity and comfort level in the relationship.In Business: second contact, a repeat visit7. Mouth to Mouth* Kissing.In Business: a purchase is made8. Hand to Head* Touching a person’s head is highly intimate, a sign of deepening trust.In Business: contact through social media – MySpace, Facebook, Youtube, Blogs9. Hand to Body* This is the stage where foreplay begins.In Business: a repeat purchase. This person is becoming a real customer.10. Mouth to Breast* Foreplay continues, obviously.In Business: the customer begins to tell their friends about you. Referrals.11. Hand to GenitalsIn Business: the customer repeatedly sends business to you.12. SexIn Business: the customer becomes an insider, a trusted ally.The progression of courtship through these stages must be voluntary by both parties. Push too far, too fast, and you’re guilty of assault.A single stage may occasionally be skipped, but not more than one. You may go directly from stage 4 to 6, but not directly from 4 to 7. You might move from stage 7 directly to 9, but not from stage 7 to 10.If more than a single step is skipped, the recipient of your affection will feel rushed, hustled and pushed.Knock, knock. A salesman stands on the doorstep of your home, uninvited. He has skipped 4 stages and gone directly to stage 5. How rude!You’ve made your first purchase from a store (stage 7.) Now they’re leaping past 3 stages to offer you a reward for sending in your friends (stages 10-11.) How forward!The natural progression of human intimacy is well documented and easily observed. It is hardwired into our cultural DNA. Remember, the strongest relationships are those that allow sufficient time for each stage. The customer who moves quickly from first contact to first purchase is not

Peter Wenders chooses stories and illustrations for children’s books.It’s 1954, and today is a day like any other; Wenders sits innocently in his office, believing that people are who they claim to be.And he assumes they’ll do what they say they’ll do.But today a man with round glasses and a large nose walks into his office wearing an overcoat and a fedora. The man offers his hand, “Hello, my name is Harris Burdick.”Wenders rises to his feet and shakes the hand. “Peter Wenders.”“I’ve written 14 stories and drawn multiple illustrations for each. Would you be willing to take a look?”“That depends,” says Wenders, “on what your stories are about.” Wordlessly, Burdick hands Wenders an illustration titled The Seven Chairs.  The caption beneath it reads, “The fifth one ended up in France.” Wenders looks at Burdick with a smiling look of surprise.Burdick hands him another image. Then another. And another. One for each story. Fourteen in all.“Yes! Yes! I’d be delighted to read your stories. Can you bring them in tomorrow?”Burdick says he’ll be back, then reaches out to retrieve his 14 illustrations.Pulling back a little, Wenders says, “Leave these with me, won’t you? I’d like to show them to my colleagues.” And with a quick smile, a nod, and a tip of his hat, Burdick was gone.And was never seen again.Wenders searched for Burdick more than 20 years, but no trace was found. If not for those 14 images, Wenders might have become convinced it was all just a false memory.But what talent Burdick had!In 1982, Peter Wenders, now 73 years old, met another gifted children’s author. “Sit down, Chris. I want to show you something.”Chris Van Allsbury dropped into an old leather chair in Wenders’ living room. A minute later Wenders came in with a dusty cardboard box. “What do you think of these?”Wenders saw the same smiling look of surprise on the face of Chis Van Allsbury that Harris Burdick had seen on Wenders’ face 28 years earlier.Startled by the images and spellbound by the story of Wenders’ fruitless search for Burdick, Chris Van Allsbury said, “Mr. Wenders, we have to publish these. The images, the titles, the captions! This man deserves to be remembered.”And that’s the story of a thin book titled, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. Every home should have a copy.Like Peter Wenders, I, too, have met men and women whose stories deserve to be remembered. And like Chris Van Allsbury, I’ve said, “We have to publish these.”These special moments have resulted in Accidental Magic, People Stories, and now, just in time for Christmas, Dreams.Wizard Academy, high on a plateau at the southern edge of Austin, Texas, is an international gathering place for the talented, the brilliant, the unusual and the different.If Harris Burdick is alive, he’ll find his way to Wizard Academy.I know he will.Roy H. Williams

Humility and Simplicity are the New FrontierAmericans have always treasured independence and achievement. We’ve seen ourselves as fighters who stood tall after every victory, chin up, chest out, shoulders back. And to the victor go the spoils, right? Big houses, big cars, lavish vacations; these were the American dream.But we recently learned that America is not an only child. There is no American economy or American environment separate from the rest of the world. The wind blowing across Kansas today blew yesterday through Mongolia.Take a breath of Mongolian air. Clear your thoughts. Smile into the light. This story has a happy ending:We’re about to discover the joys of humility and simplicity. Smaller houses, smaller cars, a simpler lifestyle. We may even become the “kinder, gentler nation” Ronald Reagan's vice president believed we could be. (From the Republican National Convention acceptance address of George H. W. Bush, August 18, 1988.)Here’s an email I received last week from a friend who runs a hedge fund:This meltdown in our financial markets has been horrific. A friend of mine said, “The French invented democracy, the Americans perfected it and the CDOs killed it.”And that's how I feel. Our time as a nation has past and history will not be kind to us. The future now belongs to someone else, probably China. We privatize profits and then screw the tax payers with a bailout. Our corrupt politicians permitted an unregulated monster to grow out of control until it almost destroyed our financial system. So while Wall Street and Washington lined their pockets with cash, the American people got drunk on spending and spending and spending all the money they didn't have. Now those that enjoyed leverage are fucked, forever. Most people were broke to begin with, now they're really broke. Deleveraging hurts, ouch.Warren Buffet once said the only way to go broke is on borrowed money.For those that have heard your lesson on the pendulum of history, it would be an interesting time to have you revisit that lesson in light of current events. Thank you for your memos each week and for your perspective.Although I disagree with my friend’s statement that “the future now belongs to someone else,” I do understand how he feels. (My belief is that no one else can own your future. Your past and your future belong solely to you whether you take responsibility for them or not.)I first presented Society’s 40-year Pendulum in Stockholm, Sweden, in January, 2004. Since then, more than 100 trade associations and state governments have asked me to help them better understand the rumblings of societal change they feel beneath their feet. Perhaps you've felt it, too.Ten completed social cycles – 400 years of history – seem to indicate that in the 6 years following a 40-year tipping point, the majority of older consumers will choose to follow the younger consumers’ lead. Societal change during the next 34 years seems subtle and incremental when compared to the pace of change during the 6-year transition.The last tipping point occurred in 2003. You may recall that I wrote to you about it in December of that year. The memo was titled 1963 All Over Again:Forty years is how long a true ‘generation’ stays in power, during which time social change will be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. But in the waning years of each generation, ‘alpha voices’ ring out as prophets in the wilderness, providing a glimpse of the new generation that will soon emerge like a baby chick struggling to break out of its shell.Baby Boomer heroes were always bigger than life, perfect icons, brash and beautiful: Muhammad Ali… Elvis… James Bond. But the emerging generation holds a different view of what makes a hero.Boomers rejected Conformity and their attitude swept the land, changing even the mindset of their fuddy-duddy parents. But today's teens are rejecting Pretense. Born into a world of hype, their internal BS-meters are highly sensitive and blisteringly accurate. Words like ‘amazing,’ ‘astounding,’ and ‘spectacular’ are translated as ‘blah,’ ‘blah,’ and ‘blah.’ Consequently, tried and true selling methods that worked as recently as a year ago are working far less well today. The world is again changing stripe and color. We're at another tipping point. Can you feel it?Then, 4 years ago, (Nov. 1, 2004,) I wrote,The Age of The Baby Boomer ended in 2003. The torch has been handed to a new generation with new ideas and values. Sure, we Boomers still hold the power at the top, but the prevailing worldview that drives our nation is completely other than the one we grew up with. Businesses that don't get in step are going to find it increasingly difficult to succeed…Being a Baby Boomer isn't about when you were born. It's about how you see the world…Baby Boomers were idealists who worshipped heroes, perfect icons of beauty and success. Today these icons are seen as phony, posed a

Part Two: If You've Got the Nerve.“The brain has three natural roadblocks that stand in the way of truly innovative thinking:1.    flawed perception2.    fear of failure3.    the inability to persuade others.”– Dr. Gregory Berns, neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and Distinguished Chair of Neuroeconomics at Emory University.Need a fresh perspective? Want to alter your perception, think new thoughts, create a whole new paradigm?1.   Look at a map of your city. Choose an area unfamiliar to you. Drive there, then get out and walk for an hour. Call a friend to come and pick you up.2.   Go into a restaurant you suspect you won’t like. Order something weird.3.   Sit at a bus stop for 30 minutes. Talk with whomever sits down next to you.4.   Attend the worship services of a faith that is not your own.5.   Read out loud to someone else The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.6.   Watch How to Hype a Black and Mild on YouTube. (7 min., 38sec.)7.   Attend ESCAPE THE BOX, the advanced session of Free the Beagle at Wizard Academy.“It typically takes a novel stimulus – either a new piece of information or getting out of the environment in which an individual has become comfortable – to jolt attentional systems awake and reconfigure both perception and imagination. The more radical and novel the change, the greater the likelihood of new insights being generated.” – p.58, Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns.If you’re like most people, you read that quote from Greg Berns last week and said, “I get it,” but then you didn’t actually do anything.James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his book, Tales of the South Pacific. He went on to earn more than one hundred million dollars as the author of more than 40 novels.At age 88, Michener wrote, “When young people in my writing classes 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, chap.10But it's unlikely that any of his students ever took those classes. They just thought, “Form and freedom. I get it,” and carried on as they were, unchanged. But I'm convinced Michener meant what he said. His advice to his students was to push themselves to do things that didn't come naturally to them. He urged them to stir the deep waters of the unconscious mind.Transformation happens experientially, not intellectually. James Michener knew this. Dr. Gregory Berns knows this. Dr. Richard D. Grant knows this. And now you know it, too.Two and a half years ago I wrote, “Humans are peculiar creatures. We are capable of much, yet do little. Doubt, insecurity, fear and ambition blind our wide-open eyes to the colors of meaningful life. We hibernate, deep in the bellies of our comfort zones… Do you want to expand your world? Meet interesting people? Learn about different cultures? Then get on your hands and knees, drop to your belly and squirm under the fence that surrounds your insulated life.” – from the preface and back cover of People Stories, Inside the Outside.Cognoscenti Dave Lofranco came to me recently and said, “Let's actually do what Michener said. If you'll find a dance instructor and a pottery teacher, I'll donate the money to buy a commercial pottery-firing kiln.” I presented Dave's idea at the next meeting of the board of directors of Wizard Academy. Clinical psychologist Dr. Richard D. Grant was energized by the thought and a whole new class was born. Check it out.Will you do the deed, take the action, pull the trigger and ride the bullet? Or will you, like those students of Michener, think to yourself, “I get it,” and consider the lesson learned?Roy H. Williams

On January 19, 1998, I wrote a Monday Morning Memo titled, Creativity is an Inert Gas. It was published as chapter 89 in The Wizard of Ads. These are a few of its paragraphs:     Moments of emotional recovery are the best times to think about problems you have not been able to solve. Great, creative insights follow times of great stress. It’s a law of the universe.Think of creativity as an inert gas, a substance unique. An inert gas cannot enter into compounds with other substances because, in each of its atoms, the outer ring of electrons is completely full. An inert gas is stable and cannot be changed.Unless you jolt it with too much stimulation.Pass a current through an inert gas and a single electron in the outer ring of each atom will be pushed into an orbit where it does not belong. But it cannot stay there. As the electron falls back into its proper place, the excess energy is released as light.This is a miracle witnessed nightly on ten million street corners in America. Without argon and mercury vapor streetlights, America would be a very dark place, indeed. Without the radiant beauty of neon, we would be a much less colorful people.Recovery from overstimulation is a magical moment. As each crisis dissipates and your emotional electrons return to their proper orbits, don’t close your eyes to the light.Use it for all it’s worth.Ten years after I wrote that memo, Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist, published the following:“Did you know that when you see the same thing over and over again, your brain uses less and less energy? Your mind already knows what it’s seeing, so it doesn’t make the effort to process the event again. Just putting yourself in new situations can make you see things differently and jump-start your creativity.” – inside front flap, Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns.Dr. Gregory Berns is a heavyweight: he’s a neuroscientist, a psychiatrist, and the Distinguished Chair of Neuroeconomics at Emory University. His research has been profiled in the New York Times, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal. His new book, Iconoclast, was published by Harvard Business School Press.According to Berns, the tendency of the brain is to take shortcuts through categorization. “Categories are death to imagination… Often the harder one tries to think differently, the more rigid the categories become. There is a better way, a path that jolts the brain out of preconceived notions of what it is seeing: bombard the brain with new experiences. Only then will it be forced out of efficiency mode and reconfigure its neural networks… The surest way to evoke the imagination is to confront the perceptual system with people, places and things it hasn’t seen before.” – condensed from pages 54 and 58Wizard Academy takes you by surprise.It’s a nonstop new experience. Aroooo!Do you remember how I was saying that moments of recovery from overstimulation are magical times for creative thinking? Now let’s look at Dr. Berns’ next statement:“It typically takes a novel stimulus – either a new piece of information or getting out of the environment in which an individual has become comfortable – to jolt attentional systems awake and reconfigure both perception and imagination. The more radical and novel the change, the greater the likelihood of new insights being generated.” – p.58, Iconoclast, by Gregory BernsLooking to make a change?Remember: transformation happens experientially, not intellectually.Come to Wizard Academy. Things happen here that can’t happen anywhere else.Or at least that’s what we’ve been told.Roy H. Williams

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

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

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

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

for Realtors, Used Cars and Free PuppiesReal estate is a business involving mountains of money. It’s also a business in crisis. Put these together and it means ka-ching if you know how to make the phone ring for realtors.You ought not be surprised that I know how to make phones ring. What should surprise you is that I’m willing to tell you… for free.Here’s how to Make Magic in real estate:1.   Ask the realtor to show you an unusual house. More often than not, you’ll want the house to be in the price range an average person could afford.2.   What makes this house quirky or weird or memorable isn’t really important. What matters is that it has something distinctive about it.3.   Visit the house. Ponder the distinctive feature until it triggers the memory of a cultural icon.4.   Pull the icon into your ad copy. Radio works best, but this technique also works well in newspaper classifieds.5.   Always mention the price of the house.6.   Never mention the square footage, the number of bedrooms, or the address.Let’s say it’s a white, frame house with a front porch, the kind that blanketed America during the first half of the 20th century. Older parts of every town are littered with these. The only thing this house has going for it is a giant tree in the front yard.ANOUNCER: Telling your friends how to find your new house will be easy.FEMALE ON PHONE:  “We’re the house with the giant tree in the yard. You can’t miss us.”ANNOUNCER: That big tree is begging for a tire swing. Will yours be the family that finally hangs one from that massive branch? Add a white picket fence and it’s the house of Tom Sawyer. Here comes Becky Thatcher down the sidewalk. This is the house of a Norman Rockwell image. In a minute you’ll see Andy and Barney cruise past in the patrol car. Aunt Bee is making a pie in the kitchen. This is a house for celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. A home to come home to. And just two hundred and nine thousand dollars makes it yours. Want to see it? Call Kathryn Nelson at 555-5555. She’s not one of those big hair, lots-of-jewelry realtors. She’s regular people.REALTOR: Kathryn Nelson. Small hair, modest jewelry. 555-5555Okay, that was easy. Let’s try again. This time it’s a house begging for a remodel. The appliances are a weird color, the sinks and bathtubs are pink porcelain and the bathroom tile is checkerboard black and white. The light fixtures are strange.ANNOUNCER: Did you ever see Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Distinctive. Avant-guarde. Sophisticated. Straight out of The New Yorker magazine. This is the house of Holly Golightly. Ridiculously retro. Definitely not for everyone. But absolutely adorable. And it has a driveway built for a sportscar. There’s only one and this is it. Two hundred and twenty-nine thousand. And the shrubbery! I’m not even going to try to describe it. Listed by Harvey Rich Realtors, of course. Harvey Rich has all the interesting houses.REALTOR: Boring houses are for boring people. Harvey Rich has interesting houses. And I’d love to show you this one. 555-5555 Harvey Rich.Now let me make this clear: The goal is to make the phone ring. Whether or not the caller buys the advertised house is unimportant. The realtor just wants to meet folks who are thinking of moving. He or she wants a shot at listing their current home. If the respondent doesn’t like the home you featured, the realtor will happily drive them to see some other ones.NOTE: If you yield to temptation and add any of the typical “3 bedroom, two bath” real estate language, it’ll kill response deader than a bag of hammers.The Cognoscenti will recognize this technique as a variation of Being Perfectly Robert Frank:1. Selected Details.2. Interesting Angle.3. What to Leave Out.This is a Wizard of Ads signature technique. Consequently, it requires an advertiser bold enough to believe that every other realtor is doing it wrong. These people are harder to find than you think. Most advertisers secretly believe in conformity to the norm.Jason Embleton is a Cognoscenti graduate of Wizard Academy and a used car dealer. Here are a couple of radio ads Jason wrote recently:A Chevy pick-up with a sunroof. Four doors. And the back seat along with the wall behind it folds down to create the longest, roomiest cargo space of any vehicle on the road. Yours for $19,995. It’s the Swiss Army knife of trucks. Jet black with dove grey leather. It’s a weird, cool truck for a weird, cool person. See it for yourself at Embleton Auto, where the only pressure is in the tires. Recognize the technique?It’s a car you’ll want to drive forever. Just nineteen thousand, nine hundred dollars. A limited-edition Mini-Cooper with a factory-supercharged BMW engine. Black with a charcoal hood scoop and wrap-around racing stripes. Six

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

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

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

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

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

It's as easy as A.B.C.You’re attracted to art1. when it stands for something you believe in,2. when it shows you a reflection of your own core values, or3. gives you a glimpse of your inner face.You're drawn to a brand for precisely the same reasons.A cultural icon is a contemporary archetype, mass-appeal public art, the symbol of a worldview. Cultural icons embody the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. They reveal the mind of the time.Learn to read the choices of your customers and you'll be able to better serve them.The cars your customers drive reflect choices they have made. Their clothing and accessories reflect additional choices. What do these choices tell you? They decorate their homes and offices with choices that virtually shout their innermost thoughts and feelings. Are you paying attention to any of this?“Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.” – Maggie Tufu, The Engines of God, page 398A well-served customer is not easily stolen.Bill Bernbach once said, “Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man you can touch him at the core of his being.”We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are.“I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance. I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW. I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I down a glass of extra strong lager. I am handsome, I say, as I don my Levi's jeans.” – John KayDo you want to write persuasive ads, speeches and sermons? Use words and phrases that reflect your customer's core values. Connect to his or her worldview.A knowledge of trends among your customers inart (music, hairstyle, clothing, jewelry, etc.)brands (cars, bikes, computers, magazines, etc.) andheroes (the cultural icons they admire)will be the only clues you need.Your business has only 3 or 4 customers living at thousands of different addresses. Your marketing should be crafted to reflect the preferences of each of them.The concepts I've shared today will help you better understandpersona-based ad writing, an important element in Persuasion Architecture®, the marketing technique perfected by New York Times bestselling authors Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg.Captain Jeff Sexton is a master of persona-based ad writing. He'll be one of your instructors when you come to Austin to learn how to Write for Radio and the Internet.That class, August 26-27, is just 4 weeks away. Are you coming?Business isn't going to get better until you get better at attracting it.Come.Aroo.Roy H. Williams

Mom’s off-white Formica table with wobbly metal legs had a charred circle on top where I once set a pan that was way too hot. Mom couldn’t afford a tablecloth to cover it, but whenever she suspected a person might have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving dinner, she’d always invite them to our house and have another hungry mouth to feed.Thanksgiving, for me, meant a house jammed with people I’d never seen before and would never see again. But each year I saw a whole other America through the eyes of the misfits who gathered around my charred little circle. And the stories I heard were amazing. It was magical.I miss those days.I watched Mom deny herself necessities during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Her emaciated paycheck couldn’t possibly feed a houseful of strangers, but she always did it anyway. And no guest ever had to worry they were taking more than their share. Mom’s opulence made us believe, at least for an hour, that we were royal.What I’ve written is the sort of thing a person usually writes when someone they love has died, but I’m delighted to report that Mom is alive and healthy and recently returned from a trip to China.I’m telling you about Sue Williams today because she taught me something else when I was young. She said we should give our roses to the living and not save them for the dead.“When a person dies, everyone who loved them will cancel their other obligations, send a big bouquet of flowers, jump on an airplane and fly across the country to look at their dead friend in a box.” Mom waited a moment for this to soak in. “If I’m going to cancel my plans, buy roses and travel because of friendship, I’m going to do it while my friend is alive to smell the flowers and enjoy the adventure with me. And if my friend passes before I do, I'll sit quietly at home and remember the trip we took together.”Once a year, Mom would treat a friend to a small adventure, a 3 or 4-day trip together to someplace interesting. Taos with Theresa. Santa Fe with Dee. A trip to Alaska to see Janice. West Virgina to see Velma. A trip to the Bahamas with Vicki. Spain with Cindy. These are the people my Mom cares about too much to attend their funerals.Stephen Levine poses a very interesting question: “If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”I’ve borrowed Stephen’s question for our weekly e-Poll. Your answer, when approved, will appear at the bottom of today’s Memo in the archives at MondayMorningMemo.com. (Approval usually happens within a few hours.)So tell us, who would you call?Roy H. Williams

(Uh oh, am I about to light an email fire I can't put out?)Traditional wisdom says, “Advertise in the newspaper. Everyone reads the newspaper. There are lots of radio stations but only one newspaper.”The problem with traditional wisdom is that it’s usually more tradition than wisdom.Take a look at the chart at the top of this page and you’ll see that the total, combined ad revenues for(1.) the internet with all its banners, pop-ups, co-registration schemes and Google Adwords accounts, plus(2.) the ad revenues from all the billboards sprinkled across the 3.54 million square miles of these United States, plus(3.) the combined revenues of all of America’s radio stationsis less than the combined ad revenues of America’s few hundred newspapers.I hid a big surprise for you in last week’s rabbit hole. Did you see it?Let me summarize for you what it said:If you(1.) make exactly the same offer on radio as in the newspaper, and(2.) spend exactly the same amount of money with each media,(3.) across precisely the same span of time,radio outperforms newspaper nearly14 to 1.As I explained in the detailed report, we fell into our discovery by accident. Our original plan was to buy newspaper ads since we assumed the newspaper would reach a larger percentage of our target than any other media.Our assumptions were based on a faulty perception. That’s traditional wisdom for you.When our test indicated that radio was outperforming newspaper nearly 14 to 1, I began to wonder, “With all the billions of dollars spent in media each year, why has no one ever comparison-tested the media in a series of controlled experiments?”There I go, assuming again. A bit of research led me to uncover a study conducted 37 years ago (1971) by the Research Committee of the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education. On page 155 I found, “For the test, the manufacturer of a shampoo selected territories in which his sales had been equal and satisfactory over a period of years. An advertising campaign with increased appropriations was prepared, and at the end of the test period, sales increases were used as the gauge of the merit of the medium. In territory No. 1, where newspaper advertising was used, the sales were increased by 3 percent; in territory No. 2, where radio only was used, they were increased 40 percent.”Gosh. 40 percent versus 3 percent is nearly 14 to 1, right?Why has there never been a scientifically controlled, nationwide test funded by the radio stations of America?Frankly, I was comforted to learn that my organization was the second, rather than the first entity to discover that radio outproduces newspaper nearly 14 to 1. If we had been the only people ever to discover that little nugget of information, I would have been plagued by doubt. I'm big enough to admit that my confidence was bolstered by the fact that another organization arrived at virtually the identical conclusion when I was just 13 years old.But the greater question remains,“Why has there been no scientifically controlled test?”I ask the advertising agencies spending all those billions,“Why has there been no scientifically controlled test?”I ask the major advertisers of America,“Why has there been no scientifically controlled test?”And I ask you the same question in this week’s e-Poll. We’re anxious to hear your theory.Philip Dusenberry once said, “I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.”If you want to write, but ransom notes is not your style, get yourself to Austin August 26-27 to learn how to Write for Radio and the Internet, (Yes, the two techniques are virtually identical.) This excellent class is taught by the incomparable Chris Maddock and Jeff Sexton. Tuscan Hall awaits you, friend.Also on the near horizon: The Wild Fiction Workshop will be remembered with fanfare by future generations. Every student who attends will be published in hardback before Christmas. Arooooooo!It's happening August 6th and David Freeman and me.And you?Yours,Roy H. Williams

The Monday Morning Memo for July 7, 2008I’ve known Richie Starkey since I was five. He turns 68 today.Richie said the only thing he wanted for his birthday was for you to pause today at noon, wherever you are in the world, make a peace sign with your fingers and say with a smile, “Peace and Love.”Will you do it?Yes, it’s ridiculous. But before you summarily dismiss his request, let me tell you a bit about Richie and why he might merit your cooperation.1.   People have made fun of his big nose his whole life.2.   He throws a great party.3.   He was dealt a bad hand as a kid.Richie’s dad was a dock worker who walked into a bakery one day to buy a donut and fell in love with the girl behind the counter.Richie was three years old when his parents divorced. At six, Richie was rushed to the hospital for a ruptured appendix which put him into a coma for 10 weeks. Then things went from bad to worse. Awakening from the coma, Richie was given 2 toys to play with in the hospital but the boy in the next bed didn’t have any. Richie leaned out of his bed to give his red bus to the other boy but lost his balance, hitting his head hard enough to throw him back into a coma.When Richie finally got out of the hospital, he’d missed more than a year of school so he was put into a class with much younger children. Richie struggled to get caught up in school but at 13 he caught a cold that turned into pleurisy. This put Richie back into the hospital for several months and threw him even further behind in his schoolwork. Finally, Richie said, “screw it” and dropped out. He could barely read and write.Richie went into business with three young partners and each of the others became incredibly successful. Richie was forever in their shadow.His lifelong dream, sadly, could never be realized. More than anything, Richie wanted to be in the audience during a Beatles concert.This is because the other toy they gave him was a drum. Richie taught himself to play it, began to wear a lot of Rings on his fingers, and dropped the “key” off the end of his name, “Starkey.”Do you have a moment to watch a short video of Richie asking for his birthday present?Peace and Love.Roy H. Williams

Beauty is impossibly thin.The thinnest human hair is half a million angstroms thick. Typing paper is a million angstroms. Yet the layer of quicksilver that turns plate glass into a mirror is only 700 angstroms thick. It would take 714 such layers to equal the thickness of a hair, yet it’s this impossibly thin layer that reflects a woman’s beauty.Beauty may only be skin deep, but the reflection of that beauty is one seven-hundredth of a hair.Spray a coat of varnish onto a globe of the earth and the thickness of that layer will accurately represent the blanket of air that surrounds our planet. Yet most of the beauty of life on earth is contained in that thin, outer skin.Likewise, the nutrition in most vegetables is contained in the outer surface. So don’t scrape your carrots. Don’t peel your potatoes or apples. The outer skin is where the vitamins hide.The outer layer of the brain, the cortex, is only a fraction of a centimeter thick. Yet all the higher functions happen there.Are you beginning to see a pattern? I’m not yet certain what this pattern might mean or how deep and wide it may go, but I’m certainly going to investigate it. What will I discover? Does value always ride close to the surface, or is that an oversimplification?Let the journey begin. Do you want to come along? If you can think of another example of how “value rides the surface,” respond to this week’s e-Poll through the hyperlink at the bottom of the page.Are you, like me, drawn to recurrent patterns? They seem to whisper, saying, “When a thing is true, it’s always true. What is true in marriage will also be true in agriculture and chemistry and architecture and banking. You’ll see it in the Bible and you’ll see it in the sky.”The purpose of Wizard Academy is to discover and document these reliable phenomena, to map their depths and chart their patterns so that we might harness their power to do good.Sigmund Freud, that early investigator of the human psyche, once said, “Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.” I think I know how he felt. As I ponder this question of whether value always rides the surface of its carrier, I suddenly recall what Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in 1905: “All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.”You were right, Sigmund. Robert Louis Stevenson already discovered that particular treasure on the island. He was the poet who got here before me.Is any of what I’ve written today useful or valuable? I don’t know. I haven’t finished pondering it. So for the moment I think I’ll quit talking and go back inside.Aroo.Roy H. Williams

“The fundamental shortcoming of most mission statements is that everyone expects them to be highfalutin and all-encompassing. The result is a long, boring, commonplace and pointless joke. Companies are all writing the same mediocre stuff.”– Guy KawasakiMost organizations try to define themselves by telling us what they believe in, what they stand for. But self-definition isn’t believable until you tell us what you stand against.Ever read the Declaration of Independence? Now there’s a mission statement.It says we believe “all men are created equal” and that God gave each of us the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But this famous statement is prefaced by our admission that these things are so obvious that we hold them to be “self evident.”In other words, “It goes without saying.” Who doesn't believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiess? Likewise, most mission statements proclaim things that every company believes in.Do you want your mission statement to be read, quoted, cussed and discussed? If so, don't tell us what your corporate culture includes. Tell us what it excludes. Tell us what you’re fighting against.After it lists the 4 things we feel to be self evident, America’s Declaration of Independence goes on to name 28 things we were against. The point of the document is that we felt strongly enough about these 28 things that we were willing to part company with England over them.Two weeks ago I revealed a bit of self-definition when I said that I didn’t agree with Marshall McLuhan’s statement, “The medium is the message.” In the interest of fairness, I linked my comment to the official, detailed explanation of McLuhan’s statement made by the Chief Strategist of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. But alas, this was not enough. My staff tells me that dozens of people sent emails of complaint and debate.God Bless America.We're definitely the Land of the Free. But are we still the Home of the Brave?Most mission statements are pointless for the same reason most ads are pointless:1. They're not written to provide focus or clarity.2. They're not written to separate you from the pack.3. They're not written to persuade.They're written not to offend.My first book, The Wizard of Ads, was named Business Book of the Year 10 years ago. Do you remember the subject of its very first chapter?Take a look.Roy H. Williams

The Wizard's Laws of the Universe, Lesson OneMy friend Kary Mullis once said, “Claims made by scientists… can be separated from the scientists who make them. It isn’t important to know who Isaac Newton was. He discovered that force is equal to mass times acceleration. He was an antisocial, crazy bastard who wanted to burn down his parents’ house. But force is still equal to mass times acceleration.”Antisocial crazy-bastard Newton published his famous Second Law of Motion in 1687 and got all the credit for it even though Shakespeare had made the same observation back in 1603. It was in Hamlet that he said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”In other words, impact is equal to mass times acceleration.Let me connect the dots for you:1.   The size of an idea is its mass.2.   The shorter the sentence that delivers the idea, the greater its acceleration.How big is your idea? How quickly can you express it? These are the factors that determine the impact of what you say.Capture a big idea and express it in few words.This is the opening paragraph of a famous website about persuasion:You want more revenue. More revenue requires more people taking action. But people only do what they want to do. You have to give them what they want in order to get what you want.That wasn’t badly written. It contained a big idea but let’s see if we can tighten the word count and accelerate the impact:Want more revenue?Revenue requires people taking action.But people only do what they want to do.Give them what they want.They'll give you what you want.All we did was:1. Eliminate 1 appearance of the word “you” to turn an assumptive statement into a question.2. Eliminate 2 appearances of the word “more.”3. Eliminate “You have to” to open with a verb, “Give.”4. Break the long, final sentence into 2 short sentences.Impact was accelerated by cutting seven words and trading five long sentences for six short ones.“Waste not, want not.”“Give me liberty or give me death.”“Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.”Ever notice how short phrases hit harder than long ones?In the spirit of today’s message, I think I’ll stop right here.Aroo.Roy H. Williams

The Medium is Not the MessageMarshall McLuhan’s famous line, “The medium is the message,” is at best a Japanese koan (ko-ahn.) You know, “What is the sound of one hand clapping,” and all that? I’m sure I’ll get a thousand ranting emails about this, but I’ve always felt koans to be a silly attempt to sound profound.McLuhan’s koan is at the top of my list. It was originally published in his 1964 book, Understanding Media. Nearly half a century later later, his disciples are still trying to explain what he meant.Enough.The medium is the medium.The message is the message.Ad campaigns don’t fail because someone chose the wrong media. Ad campaigns fail because someone chose the wrong message.The job of the media is to deliver your message.Your job is to give the media a message worth delivering.Each media has its own strengths and weaknesses. And because I’ve spent the last 20 years talking about message, today we’ll glance at media:Signage: Expensive signage at an intrusively visible business location is often the cheapest advertising your money can buy. Intrusive visibility is the quality that separates landmarks from scenery. You’re intrusively visible when the public sees you without looking for you. Do you have an intrusive location? Have you maximized your signage?Outdoor: Billboards reach more people for a dollar than any other media and they’re geographically targetable. In other words, you can reach specific pockets of your city with them. Their weakness is that they become invisible after just a few sightings in the same location, so be sure to move your boards every 30 days. Additionally, the average driver is unwilling to look away from the road for longer than eight words. So if you can’t sing your song in eight words or less, billboards aren’t your best bet.Direct Mail: Like billboards, direct mail lets you target geographically and in theory, psychographically as well, assuming the right member of the household sorts the mail. The problem with direct mail is that most of it gets thrown away unopened. And the costs of printing and delivery have skyrocketed.Television: Television delivers the highest impact of any media, but unpredictable viewer habits make it difficult to reach the same viewer a second or third time within seven nights sleep. If your message needs repetition, television is even trickier to schedule than radio. And the cost of production is extremely high for an ad that won’t embarrass you. But if you’ve got the cash and it’s not the off-season (summertime,) TV can be a powerful ally.Radio: Sound is neurologically intrusive and radio feels like a friend. The problem with radio is that most ads are written in such a way that they’re easily ignored, so your ad will need to be presented repeatedly to the same listener. This need for repetition makes scheduling easily botched. Most campaigns are scheduled to reach the largest possible number of people. Consequently, these schedules deliver too little repetition. Be careful you don’t make this mistake. The good news is that radio is the great equalizer. Unlike magazines, television and direct mail, radio ads don’t require a big budget to be world class; radio requires nothing but word skills and imagination.Newspaper: Newspaper ads need a visual trigger, a picture of your product. This trigger will attract the attention of customers who are consciously in the market for your product, but those who aren’t in the market will fail to see your ad. Consequently, newspaper ads often deliver immediately identifiable results, but these results fail to get better and better over time. In the short run, newspaper wins. In the long run, TV and radio win.Yellow Pages: Like newspaper, the yellow pages reach people who are consciously in the market. But while newspapers promote products, the yellow pages promote services. The highest goal of a service business is to be the name that immediately comes to mind when the public needs your services. This can be accomplished with Radio, Television, Signage or Billboards. But if your budget doesn't permit you to win customers before they need you, make sure you sing loud in the yellow pages.Magazines: Perhaps the ultimate tool for psychographic targeting, magazines ads tend to be expensive. Another downside is that most are delivered with very poor frequency, often just once a month. But when your message fits the readership, magazine ads can be awesome.Internet: The advantage of the internet is that it lets you reach the whole world. The disadvantage of the internet is that you’re competing with the whole world. How will you drive traffic to your site? If your small business has the ability to drive traffic through mass media, a website is often the perfect half step between your advertising and your store. Let your prospective cus

MAY 14, 1990 – The cover of Sports Illustrated showed a pistol being shoved into the back of a high school kid. Those were the days when an alarming trend swept this land of purple mountains, majesties, above the fruited plains.Kids were killing for tennis shoes. Remember?JUNE, 2008 – Retail in America is changing.We could blame it on the current recession, but the truth is much more interesting:Today’s young adults (18-34) spent their childhoods marinating in hype. The noise of Vegematic commercials and limited-time offers for Ginsu knives were the soundtrack of their lives. Cable TV was a friendly babysitter, shouting, “BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!” Upward mobility was the dominant religion. Out-of-control commercialism was an ocean that threatened to suffocate their souls.Britney Spears glittered when she walked.My sons were 7 and 10 years old when that issue of Sports Illustrated hit the newstand. Today they’re like a lot of other young men and women who grew up during the days of conspicuous consumption. They’ve quietly decided thatcheap is the new chic.Buying used clothing at a Goodwill thrift store is cool.Underpowered cars are cool.Craig’s List is cool.IKEA is cool.The new status…is not how much you spend, but how much you don't.– CBS Evening NewsCan this new trend toward minimalism and the conservation of resources be harnessed to make you money? Of course it can.But not in the way you think.You’ll find the answers you need in Austin. (Attend classes at Wizard Academy or book a day of private consulting with the Wizards of Ads.) Come.Was today's message a thinly-disguised ad for America's 21st Century Business School?Yes, it was. But doesn't the fact that I admit it make it a little easier to take?(The perceptive reader will realize that last sentence was the whole point of today's memo.)Understated fashion and transparent language are on the rise.THIS IS THE CONCLUSION OF LESSON ONERoy H. Williams