Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

My computer-programmer friend Akintunde used to spend his Sunday afternoons with Pennie and me. When my audio-book Thought Particles: Binary Code of the Mind was released, Akintunde took home a copy and listened to it several times. We had long talks about it. Then he was whisked away to Kyoto, Japan, to create the next generation of video games for some of the world's most powerful game companies. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't. Akintunde is sworn to deep secrecy.Akintunde is the essential Outsider.Tiny protons, neutrons, and electrons are generally considered to be the building blocks of matter. In a similar fashion, I believe Thought Particles – the smallest units of thought – to be the building blocks of communication. Learn how to skillfully stack them and you will communicate with greater power.Last week I wrote about Pandora.com because music is the oldest example of Thought Particle technology. “If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws. Ancient legislators knew they could not reform the manners of a city without the help of a songwriter and a poet.” – Andrew Fletcher, to Scottish Parliament in 1704A radio is essentially a mood selection device. How do you want to feel? Just press the appropriate button.Likewise, visual artists arrange lines and colors, using shape and ratio, position and juxtaposition to compose nonverbal “statements.” They provide us with light-wave, rather than sound wave, examples of carefully stacked Thought Particles. My friend David Freeman explains exactly how to craft visual statements in his outsider book, Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering. When that book was released, David, like Akintunde, was immediately flown to Japan.If Akintunde and David ever get together, they'll probably take over the world. I suspect the Japanese game companies know this, too.Another team of Wizard Academy graduates is currently investigating the science of using of shape and color to make nonverbal statements in corporate logos. Think of it as visual Pandora.Additionally, the Academy is studying the statements made to customers through a business owner's choices in landscaping, signage, flooring, lighting, etc. A Beta version of the resulting Customer Experience Index will be released in Summer '06.We're in the throes of tumultuous change in the world of marketing. We're being tossed topsy-turvy, tumbled by technology. New techniques are being introduced that sharply reduce the need for creative talent, intuition, and gut feel.Have you ever seen one of those little Bluetooth earpieces that hooks around your ear and becomes a wireless headset for your cell phone? Now imagine marrying one of those to a next generation lie detector and using it to measure the raw, unfiltered responses of people to various ads.Bye-bye, Focus Groups.Using this new application of Thought Particle technology, you'll no longer need to ask people how they feel about a particular ad. Just hook the earpiece around their ear, tape the lead wire to their temple, play the ad for them and then you can tell them how they feel about it. Or let the person flip through a series of proposed magazine ads. The earpiece will clearly tell you which ad would be most effective. I imagine there'll soon be auditoriums full of people with earpieces listening to spec radio ads, watching spec TV spots and reading spec magazine ads.How do I know about this?Sigh.Shortly after Thought Particles: Binary Code of the Mind was released, a student arrived from the Pentagon to attend the 3-day Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. Then came the engineers and astrophysicists from NASA. And then a series of doctors signed up, including one winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry. One recent student was a department head from the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Lab.Evidently, scientists found Thought Particles fascinating. And so did a lot of musicians, journalists, ministers, artists and educators. What did all of them have in common? They were Outsiders, one and all.“Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.” – Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, to Edward Nawotka in an interview.Azar Nafisi is obviously an Outsider. Her comment was aimed at the blindness that comes from living in that hard-edged little box Insiders call home, a dreary existence known as “The Status Quo.”My friend Akintunde speaks of Japanese society as being “group-based.” He says they have a saying in Japan, “The nail that sticks out is hammered back in.” “Or worse,” he adds, “if not hammered back in, is left out to dry, a fish out of water.”Birds, in my opinion, are fish out of water. Singing fish, swimming in the sky.Would you like to come sing with us?That last bit probably caused a few of you to recoil, “Sing like a fish? Uh-oh, now he's just talkin' crazy.”Interestingly, Japanese executives are smart enough to realize their need to overcome the limitations of group-think. So they seek out the brightest and best of the western Outsiders to help them see what had previously been invisible.Is it possible that important ideas are hiding just outside your peripheral vision?I'm betting we'll see a few executives from the big videogame companies at Jeff and Bryan's unveiling event on May 9-10. If not, you can be certain the amazing Eisenbrothers will be whisked away to Japan as soon as their new book is released.I'm planning to be in Tuscan Hall with Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg for their unveiling event on May 9-10, 2006.Are you?Roy H. Williams

Thought Particle Technology has ArrivedI consider Pandora.com to be the first commercial application of Thought Particle technology. Have you allowed Pandora to read your mind yet?Pandora.com is a streaming music service crafted by a couple of hundred really serious music experts whose ideas about music are much bigger and more divergent than the mere idea of “format” or “genre.” Tell Pandora what songs you like and she'll soon figure out what all those songs have in common that you never realized. Pandora also learns from the songs you tell her you don't like.I fed Pandora everything from James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett to the blistering rage of Bone Thugs and System of a Down. I even admitted a fondness for certain songs of Janice Ian and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.Pandora says I tend to like songs with a subtle blues or country influence, Likewise, I'm a sucker for paired harmony, a syncopated rhythm, interesting part writing and strong melodies. And that's just a few of the characteristics my songs tend to have in common. But you've got to tell her what you like.The benefit of all this back-and-forth interaction with Pandora is that she will soon begin playing songs you never knew existed, songs that make you say, “Wow! This is the coolest music I've ever heard in my life!” Even as I write this, I've got Pandora playing through my laptop. A moment ago I heard, I Concentrate on You, by Steve Tyrell. Never heard it before in my life. Loved it. Right now Pandora is playing It's Alright by Big Head Todd & The Monsters. Who the heck is Big Head Todd?Pretty soon Pandora will change the tempo and take me in another of my favorite directions. Wow. What a coincidence. Just as I typed “another of my favorite directions,” the mellow mumblings of Big Head Todd segued into the bee-sting guitars of Ten Years After playing another song I've never heard in my life, When It All Falls Down.Click the image that appears on your monitor while a song is playing and Pandora will let you give it a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. She'll link you to iTunes to buy the mp3 or to Amazon to buy the CD. She'll even explain why she chose that song for you.Yes, Pandora has leaped light-years beyond Amazon's suggestion of “People who bought this CD also bought…..”No, I'm not making a penny off any of this. I'm suggesting that you meet Pandora for your benefit, not hers.You need her a lot more than she needs you.Next week I'll tell you about a few other soon-to-be-released technologies built on Thought Particles, the simple but practical application of a bizarre pattern-recognition system that is easily encoded into software to create powerfully convincing artificial intelligences.The day of Thought Particles has arrived.Roy H. Williams

I like to think God said, “Let there be…” and then paused to think for a moment. Suddenly it came to him, “Light!”If you accept the book of Genesis, then God is a creator by nature. And he created us in his image, little miniatures of himself. That means we're creators by nature, too. Creativity is our heritage. It's in our DNA. When we create, we're being Godlike. We're doing what we're supposed to do. Musicians, inventors, landscapers, cooks, beauticians and actors and writers of books are just following the call of a creative plan and fulfilling the destiny of a thing called Man.What do you create?In the fifty-fifth chapter of his book, Isaiah reports God as saying, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”Now back to the nature of God for a moment. When he said, “Let there be light,” we can be sure he didn't use vocal cords to create vibrations that traveled through air. The fourth part of the letter to the Hebrews tells us “the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”Did you catch that first part, about how God's statements are “living,” alive?John's gospel skips Bethlehem and the begats. John takes us back to the big bang, “Let there be… Light!” Here's how he puts it: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him [the Word,] and without Him nothing was made that was made… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”Writers, like God, speak worlds into existence. Likewise, every artist takes visitors to a world that isn't there. Photographers take us to long-ago moments by freezing a frame in this filmstrip we call the space-time continuum. Painters take us to places we've never been. Actors introduce us to people that don't exist. Landscapers create moods and feelings we didn't have before, as do musicians and interior decorators. Video games create emotion in us by allowing us to star in our very own movie. They are an art form like every other.What is the form of your art? Into what moist clay are you leaving your fingerprints? Are you molding the minds of young men and women? Are you, like Alberto Mendieta, causing buildings to rise from piles of materials? Are you able to swing his hammer?Please don't insult God by telling me you aren't creative. You are creative. And every creative effort brings a rich reward.Read the first chapter of Genesis. And then create something. Do it so the thing will exist. Fling it into existence from the fingertips of your mind.And then watch what happens.Roy H. Williams

Having Arrived at the Endand Forgotten to Live2005 was an amazingly bad year for Pennie and me. Her mother died, my father died, and then we were brought horribly low by a financial surprise with two commas to the left of the decimal point. There was a period of weeks when it looked like all would be lost. The business, the school, our home, the cars, everything. For days at a time my eyes wouldn't focus. I walked around wanting to fall to my knees and throw up.But a strange scrap of paper kept everything in perspective. I found it on my father's kitchen table after the police told me he had been found dead in his recliner. In his unique handwriting, it read, “All the little things in life add up to your life. If you don't get it right then nothing else matters. It gets lonely in the promised land by yourself.”That was it. Nothing else.Things are fine now. God rescued Pennie and me from the belly of the fish. But that scrap of paper floated in front of blurry eyes again last week.During the construction of Chapel Dulcinea I took several photos of her small crew at work. Daniel Denny had carefully selected these young men to help him accomplish the impossible. The five of them built Tuscan Hall and The House of Ten Doors and Chapel Dulcinea and the first half of Engelbrecht House in less time than is humanly possible. They did what can't be done.I was far too busy with emergencies and tragedies and the needs of my clients to take photos in 2005 but “All the little things in life add up to your life,” so I took the photos anyway, thinking, “Someday these will be important.”A few weeks ago Ed Valdez translated for us what 22 year-old Alberto was saying. “I have been sending all my money home to buy young cattle during my time in America and now my parents tell me that I must return and take care of my cows.” He smiled. “My herd now numbers more than 40.” Alberto had quietly refused to learn English during his time in America, saying, “I will remain here only long enough to buy young cattle, then I will return to Mexico and marry a beautiful girl and be a rancher.” Every day Alberto's softness and simplicity reminded me of Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.David Mendieta called a few days ago to tell us that his little brother Alberto had been stabbed and killed by a nut. I fell to my knees and threw up.But then I remembered the photographs.They cannot patch the hole punched into the heart of Alberto's mother by the knife that killed her son. But I sent her seven photos that show her boy working happily during his last days on earth, building a thing that will bring joy to the lives of thousands of young couples for decades and centuries to come.“All the little things in life add up to your life. If you don't get it right then nothing else matters.”Alberto Mendieta got all the little things right. Nothing else matters.Roy H. Williams

Can you be in Austin on Saturday, April 22?SEMINAR: We're planning a writer's seminar in palatial Tuscan Hall featuring Chris Maddock, the rarely seen teacher of Advanced Wordsmithing, and Jeff Sexton, the instructor of that always sold-out curriculum, How to Write Powerfully and Clearly. Also joining us will be David Freeman, teacher of Beyond Structure, L.A.'s most popular screenwriting and fiction workshop. (It would be worth ten times the price of this conference just to hear David Freeman talk about character diamonds. We're going to hear him for 2 full hours, PLUS he's staying for the party. Woo-hoo!) I was also able to convince Ray Bard – America's most successful publisher of business books – to give you some fast track insights into publishing your own first book. This is going to be one incredible day.Lunch and Dinner will be provided.I can't promise you any instructors beyond those four and me, but I do plan to ask my multimillion bestselling book-friends Keith Miller and Russell Friedman if they might grant us a few words of instruction and encouragement as well.Considering that he recently bought the house directly across the street from the entrance to the Academy, I'm fairly certain I can get Wizard Acadgrad Michael Drew to give us some tips about what it takes to make a serious run at the bestseller lists. Michael is the young miracle worker who helped Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg put their first Wizard Academy Press hardback, Call to Action,on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Michael worked with me on my bestselling Wizard of Ads trilogy back when he was barely 20 years old.PARTY: The principal reason for this writer's seminar and party is to celebrate the release of a fat new book from Wizard Academy Press called People Stories: Inside the Outside. Each of the contributing authors is being granted a full-tuition scholarship to the event, but the rest of us are going to have to pay $350 each. (AcadGrads get 50 percent off, as always.)Each attendee will be given a first-edition copy of People Stories: Inside the Outside, allowing them to get the signatures of each of the contributing authors on their respective pages. Pretty cool, huh? The authors will be easy to spot because they'll be wearing special name badges with their page numbers prominently emblazed.The seminar is going to be unforgettable. The party is going to be front-page news. Seating is limited to only 200 (and 143 of those precious seats are reserved for the contributing authors.) I'd register quickly if I were you. There will be no free passes given other than the ones extended to the contributing authors.CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Want to get in on the next big Wizard Academy Press project? Poor Writer's Almanac will be a priceless compendium of methods, tips and secrets from hundreds of authors whose lives spanned hundreds of years. Our plan is to publish it in hardback since we believe it will become a highly regarded reference book in literary circles around the world. (I know that last part sounded like bigtalk, but I sincerely believe it's what's going to happen.) We've collected some truly amazing stuff for the guts of this book and we're soliciting submissions from AcadGrads and Monday Memo readers as well. Dr. Kevin Ryan, are you reading this?If you have a writing method, tip or secret that might be valuable to other writers, send it to JeffSexton@WizardofAds.com. Short is good. The fewer the words, the better, but make it as long as it needs to be. If your submission is included in Poor Writer's Almanac, your name will be published beneath the tip. No other compensation is offered. Please don't send quotes from any source other than yourself. We're looking for your own tips in your own words. If selected for inclusion, your name will appear among the great ones.Submissions deadline is March 17, 2006, at midnight Central Time. Multiple submissions are encouraged.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

How often are you conscious of the fact that Earth, only Earth, is buried beneath an ocean of air?We, the fleas that dance on the skin of Mother Earth, live in this dry ocean. We use it to hold our airplanes off the ground. We blow out candles with it. We suck it in and out of our lungs like a fish pulls water through its gills.And we almost never think about it.Akintunde, my friend from botanical green Nigeria, tells me his first impression of America was that everything here smelled burnt. He spent his first few days turning this way and that, ever looking for the fire. Finally he realized it was only the hydrocarbons of a hundred million cars.Things don't smell burnt to Akintunde any more. He's become acclimated.Things familiar often grow invisible. And that's bad news for business owners.There are identifiable elements in successful ads. Don't let these elements become invisible:1. SALIENCE. To persuade, we must speak to the customer about something the customer cares about. Our message must have relevance. Cognitive neuroscientists call this salience. Most ads have too little salience to be remembered just 5 minutes later. How many of the ads from this morning's paper do you recall? Name the ads that appeared in the last TV show you watched. The last radio station you heard? What were the last 3 banner ads that appeared on your computer monitor?     a. Targeting: One way of increasing salience is to find people who are already interested, people who are currently, consciously in the market for what you're trying to sell: BOOM. Yellow pages. Search Engine optimization. Direct mail. Reaching people who are currently, consciously in the market is the fundamental idea behind Targeting. But it's dangerous to wait until your customer is known to be in the market. You'll likely be just another face in an anxious crowd. One among many. Good luck.     b. Copy: Focused copy is the best way to increase salience. Long copy is better only when it has to be that long because you have so many good things to say. Abundant words wrapped around a small idea won't work. A thick layer of words obscures the salience of a message. The cognoscenti call these Black Words.2. REPETITION is the only cure for insufficient salience. How much repetition will be required to drive your message into memory is determined primarily by the salience of the message.     a. Sleep is the enemy of advertising. It erases the noise of yesterday, especially the sights and sounds of selling. Therefore, when you desire a person to take quick action, the challenge is to reach them with maximum repetition, allowing minimal sleep between hits. This calls for vertical, rather than horizontal, ad scheduling.     b. Branding is essentially involuntary, automatic recall, a product of salience x repetition. A shortage on one side of the “x” can be supplemented by a surplus on the other side. Low salience requires high repetition. High salience requires low repetition. When using mass media, an opportunity exists to implant your brand as an associative memory in the minds of persons not currently in the market, so that your name becomes the first remembered – and the one the customer feels best about – when they finally need what you sell. Will your message have sufficient salience and repetition? Branding requires horizontal scheduling, repetition over time.Salience is determined by the Central Executive of Working Memory, located in the dorsolateral prefrontal association area of the brain. Working Memory is conscious awareness, imagination, the attention of your customer, and all Creation is shouting for it. Your competition isn't limited to your business category. Every stimulus under the sun is demanding your customer's attention. Every sight, sound, smell, taste and memory are screaming for the spotlight. Your prospect will pay attention to your message only as long as it's the most interesting thing happening in their world. Attention will switch the moment something more interesting peeks over the horizon. The spotlight will then move off you. Whether or not you'll be remembered in the future is determined by salience x repetition.But salience and repetition assume your message has successfully entered Working Memory. Most messages never get there. They fail because they were predictable. Want to lose a person's attention in a hurry? Just say and do what they expect you to say and do.Predictability is the silent assassin of advertising, the quiet cancer that pulls you under.“We often imagine our memories faithfully storing everything we do. But there is no mechanism in our heads that stores sensory perceptions as a permanent, unchangeable form. Instead, our minds use a complex system to convert a small percentage of what we experience into nothing more than a pattern of connections between nerve cells. Human memory is not at all like videotape.” – Matt Crenson, science writer for The Associated Press, Dec. 10, 2000Surprise carries its own salience and is the foundation of delight.Most ads never arrive at the Emerald City of Working Memory because they were dragged under by the poppy field of Broca's Area. Remember that field of poppies in The Wizard of Oz? After a long journey, Dorothy and her friends finally catch a glimpse of their desination. The Emerald City is in view. They need only to cross a field of flowers and then they'll enter the city and meet the mighty Wizard. But the poppies cause them to fall asleep halfway across the field.The Emerald City is Working Memory, conscious awareness. If we do not reach it, we cannot speak to the wizard.The Wizard is the prefrontal cortex of your customer's brain, that center of decision-making, planning and judgment.Dorothy and her entourage are your message.The Poppy Field is Broca's Area of the brain, ignoring – subduing – erasing every sensory stimuli that was predictable.The Snow that re-invigorates your message is any element of the elegant unexpected… the chilling delight of surprise… particle conflict… elemental dissonance… incongruence… It's the last thing Broca would ever suspect…And the last thing most advertisers would ever consider.Are you beginning to understand why effective advertising is so rare?Roy H. Williams

Do you remember when America watched awards shows?If you were somehow unplugged and didn't receive the newsflash, the combined strength of Paul McCartney, Madonna, U2, Mariah Carey, Coldplay, Faith Hill and Jay-Z wasn't enough to swing the hammer and ring the bell during this year's Grammy Awards. A frail 17 million watched these legends read their cue cards while a muscular 28.3 million cheered hopeful, nameless kids singing their hearts out on American Idol.It was just one more indication of how we're moving away from the vertical hero-worship of Idealism to establish the horizontal links that mark an emerging Civic generation.Grandpa Jagger during halftime at the Superbowl, surrounded by people doing their best to act like cheering fans… I'm sorry, but that was just sad.I'm not trying to be catty, I'm trying to make a point: Plastic posing bores us. We have no desire to hear another Miss America contestant talk about her dream of world peace. Just once, wouldn't you like to hear the interviewer say, “And how is walking around in high heels and a swimsuit going to help bring about world peace?”Unfiltered authenticity is the new cool. And volunteerism is on the rise.We don't listen to big talkers anymore. Our collective silence toward them is our way of saying, “Talk is cheap. Now get off your idealistic ass and do something.”Tom Hanks is the new John Wayne. Remember Hanks' portrayal of the dutiful but reluctant English-teacher-turned-soldier in Saving Private Ryan? He was just a regular guy, doing the best he could, trying to make the best of a bad situation. Kind of like you and me.Struggling, flawed, tormented Jason Bourne is the new James Bond.Lost in Translation is the new Love Story.I'm not trying to depress you. I'm just trying to open your eyes to the realities of the new marketplace.Hype is dead.In 2004 – the first year following the shift away from Idealism – the Grammys scored a respectable 26.3 million viewers. The next year they fell to just 18.8 million. So this year's 17 million should have come as no surprise.Anyone taking bets on next year's audience?If you're a business owner needing advice about marketing in the new millennia, here's all you really need to know:Say it straight. Say it real. You'll do fine.Roy H. Williams

This week I didn't feel like writing about advertising or business or leadership or anything else an ambitious soul might find useful. So if you're in a vibrating hurry with far too much to do, right here would be the place to stop reading. The DELETE button is sitting there, twitching, anxious for you to bang it. There's nothing in today's note that would do a busy person like you any good.Unless, of course, you're in a major, world-class bigtime really extreme hurry. Then you should by all means keep reading.Would you like to have a secret retreat from the buzzing noise of daily life in the 21st century? Are you prepared to take a journey that will move your mind to another place, another time? Today I'm going to tell you about four non-fiction books and not one of them has a plot.But don't let that fool you.Sea Room, by Adam Nicolson.True to my custom, I opened this book to a random page (141) and began to read: ” …Something of the sense of holiness on islands comes, I think, from this strange, elastic geography. Islands are made larger, paradoxically, by the scale of the sea that surrounds them. The element which might reduce them, which might be thought to besiege them, has the opposite effect. The sea elevates these few acres into something they would never be if hidden in the mass of the mainland. The sea makes islands significant.” Impressed, I turned to chapter one where I was greeted, “For the last twenty years I have owned some islands. They are called the Shiants: one definite, softened syllable, 'the Shant Isles', like a sea shanty but with the 'y' trimmed away. The rest of the world thinks there is nothing much to them. Even on a map of the Hebrides the tip of your little finger would blot them out…” I bought hard-to-find copies for several of my friends.The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto.My partner Jeffrey Eisenberg shares my taste in books, so when I told him this book was “the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America,” he wasn't worried. Read it anyway. Later Jeff called me to say, “I think it may be one of the most interesting books I've ever read. Definitely the best-written history book. Almost reads like a novel.” But then again Jeff is strange. Might there be a chance that you, too, are Jeff's and my brand of crazy?Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck.In 1961, a year prior to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck bought a camper and set out with his dog, Charley, to see America through the windshield of a pickup truck. This book is the story of that 3-month journey. Most people associate Steinbeck with Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, or East of Eden. Worthy books, to be sure. But this, his odd collection of experiences and observations is, I think, my favorite Steinbeck of them all. Travels with Charley is a celebration of the Ordinary, the disjointed thoughts and notes of a highly accomplished man looking quietly at the world around him. It is perhaps the most underlined, dog-eared, footnoted book I own.In tribute to Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, we're going to publish – in a 380-page book – all the essays we received in response to the challenge I issued 5 weeks ago. This book will have an ISBN number and a barcode and will be registered with the Library of Congress – the works. It will be called People Stories: Inside the Outside, and a free copy of it will be the special “gift of initiation” I promised to send everyone who dared to join our bleary-eyed fraternity. When the book arrives from the printer, (hopefully by late April,) it will be released with considerable fanfare during a huge party at Wizard Academy's Tuscan Hall. Following the party, it will be made available for sale at major online booksellers. Details when we know them. Stay tuned.This Noble Land, by James Michener.On October 8, 1996, just a year before he died at the age of 90, this giant of literature chose to publish his highest thoughts and deepest fears about our nation. Steinbeck took us on a physical journey down roads of asphalt, but Michener takes us down paths of memory. You'll love it or hate it.I have no way of knowing which.Be well.Roy H. Williams

It's no secret that stronger ads generate faster growth. But with each higher level of awareness comes an increase in complaints:“I'm sick of hearing your ads.”TRANSLATION: “It makes me mad that I can't ignore you.”“Your ads don't sound professional. They're not polished and smooth.”TRANSLATION: “It makes me mad that your ads stand out.”“I'm offended by your ads and I'll never do business with you.”TRANSLATION: “Complaining is what I do to make me feel important.”Over the past two decades, my fastest-growing clients have always been the ones willing to run my ads exactly as I've written them. Clients who 'tweak' my ads to make them softer typically grow at a softer pace.If people complain about an ad, does that mean it isn't working?If people love an ad and compliment you on it, does that mean it's generating traffic and profits? “Yo Quiero Taco Bell.”Pepsico spent a couple hundred million dollars promoting that dog's endorsement and it didn't increase taco sales a dime. Seriously. But we all loved that little chihuahua, didn't we? If Pepsico's goal was to entertain America; mission accomplished. But if part of their plan was to increase the sale of tacos, well, that part didn't work out.You've got to decide once and for all how you're going to measure success. It doesn't matter what you consider to be success. It matters only that you have an objective way of measuring it, (and in the process, the effectiveness of your advertising.)Do you want people to say they love your ads? No problem, I can make that happen. Do you want to measure units sold and dollars collected? I can make the mercury rise on that thermometer, too. Just not on both.A professional ad writer is a person who has spent millions of dollars of other people's money to learn what doesn't work. Hang on to your hat: the worst ideas always make the most sense. Breakthrough ideas are always counter-intuitive.“If the big ad agencies are doing all the wrong things, is it because they're stupid?” I was asked that question last week by Karen Jonson, a magazine writer. My impulse was to answer fliply, “Yes,” but I choked it down, slowed my internal RPM, and listened to my heart. “No,” I told her, “the problem big agencies face is that they're never able to sit across the table from someone with unconditional authority to say 'absolutely yes.' When a creative person knows they must gain the approval of a group, he or she will instinctively play it safe and give the group what they want, rather than what they need.”Most ads aren't written to move anyone. They're written not to offend.The next time you're watching a really good TV show or listening to a funny comedian, ask yourself, “How much would this show be changed if a group of people were allowed to strip away everything in it that might offend?”No committee will ever approve a great ad, they'll castrate it. But in their minds they're merely “tweaking it, softening it, taking off the offensive edge.” Subject a talented ad writer to a lot of second-guessing and he or she will reward you with ads that all your friends and family are guaranteed to like.Congratulations. Now you've got ads that sound exactly like everyone else's.Roy H. Williams

The American DreamAmerica is a democracy and we believe in free enterprise.Let's look at that for a moment: Democracy is majority rule. Groupthink. “United we stand, divided we fall.” But the key to business – free enterprise – is to have an absolute dictator.In America's system of free enterprise, the person whose money is at risk is the person who gets to decide. Wrong or right, foolish or wise, whoever has the gold makes the rules. And that's the way it should be.So while America's social system is a democracy, individualized financial dictatorship is the foundation of our economy.Apply democratic principles to a business economy and what do you get? Socialism, if you do it softly. Do it for real and you've got Communism, the biggest economic disaster of the 20th century.Strange, isn't it? A democracy will have an economic system based on Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, “It's a dog eat dog world and I'm about to wolf your poodle, pal.” But a society ruled by a dictator will usually have an economic system of financial democracy, “Everyone will work for the good of all and everyone will share alike.”Strange, isn't it? Social democracies have financial dictators and social dictators have financial democracies.The American Dream requires that businesses be controlled by two financial dictators. One of these dictators is the business owner. The other is the customer.Employees: If you don't like the rules of your dictator, you can go to work for someone else. Heck, you can even go to work for yourself. But if you're an unwise financial dictator, the bank and the IRS will come and haul away your stuff. Welcome to America.Customers: If you don't prefer the person you bought from yesterday, buy from someone else tomorrow. God Bless America: Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.I share these untidy and discomforting thoughts with you only as a warning: Don't introduce democratic principles into your business. I've seen it done too many times to count, and always by the kindest and best of my clients. And it has always ended badly.A strong business requires a strong dictator.Hey, don't get mad. I don't have a social or political agenda here, I'm just sharing an observation that's been tumbling through my head.“The American Dream” isn't the dream of a great society. It's the dream of personal wealth.I'm not saying that's the way it should be.Roy H. Williams