Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Our nation is changing, of course.Things aren’t like they used to be.Famous clothing brands are at historic lows and major retailers are closing hundreds of stores. In 2016, 2,056 stores closed their doors. The worst year on record is 2008, when 6,163 stores shut down.Brokerage firm Credit Suisse says in a just-released research report,“Barely a quarter into 2017, year-to-date retail store closings have already surpassed those of 2008… it’s possible more than 8,600 brick-and-mortar stores will close their doors in 2017.”But we’re not in a recession.According to an April 10 article by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic,“America’s GDP has been growing for 8 straight years, gas prices are low, unemployment is under 5 percent, and the last 18 months have been quietly excellent years for wage growth, particularly for middle- and lower-income Americans.”Yes, Amazon.com and the other online players are partially responsible for the decline of retail in America, but not nearly to the degree you might think.In 2016, only 6% of retail purchases were made online.But retailers are down by a lot more than 6%.Want to know what categories are doing better than ever?“Travel is booming. Hotel occupancy is booming. Domestic airlines have flown more passengers each year since 2010, and last year U.S. airlines set a record, with 823 million passengers. The rise of restaurants is even more dramatic. In 2016, for the first time ever, Americans spent more money in restaurants and bars than at grocery stores. Sales in this category have grown twice as fast as all other retail spending.”In other words, we’re buying fewer things, but more experiences.Materialism is on the decline.In retail stores and online, we’re spending a lot less money on clothing. Its share of total consumer spending has declined by 20 percent in barely more than a decade. Houses, cars and furniture seem to be less important to us as well.But we’re spending more than ever on togetherness, entertainment, and fitness.We hunger less for prestige, more for experiences and relationships.Relationships…If you’re going to get in step with this trend, you’re going to need to invest in customer bonding.Use mass media to win their hearts before they need what you sell.Don’t let your company be just another name on a list of search results.Roy H. Williams

Michael Jordan wasn’t a perfectionist; he was an improvisationist. That’s why he was hard to stop.A perfectionist knows exactly what he’s going to do. He plans his work and works his plan. The only problem is that because he knows, the defender knows, too.It’s easy to anticipate what a perfectionist is going to do. He’s predictable.But no one knew what Michael was going to do, because he didn’t know himself.Does it surprise you that nearly all the superstar basketball players and top-scoring running backs test as improvisationists?So do all the best ad writers.Predictability is the curse of the perfectionist,and the silent assassin of advertising.When you say what people expect you to say, no matter how perfectly you say it, you bore them.Improvisation puts the bubbles in champagne.Improvisation puts a wiggle in your walk.Improvisation puts money in your bank account, bread in your basket, glitter on your cheek, and a smile on your face.Unexpected is interesting.Unpredictable is enlightening.Improvised is exciting.Random Entry is a technique that guarantees improvisation in advertising.The magic of random entry begins when the ad writer doesn’t choose the opening line of the ad. Rather, it is chosen for him by someone who has no idea what they are doing.Want to try it? Ask a stranger to think of a colorful sentence. Tell them to make it “vivid, unexpected, larger than life.” Tell them, “The sentence doesn’t have to be about anything in particular; it just has to cause people to be curious about where this story is headed.”The best way to create Random Entry without the help of an unwitting accomplice is to flip open a book and place your finger on a page with your eyes closed. The sentence on which your finger lands will be the opening line of your ad.“Wiggins was Harvey’s pet hamster.”That’s your opening line for the 30-second radio ad you’re about to write for the company that provides your primary income. If your ad makes sense, elevates attention, and successfully sells a product or service, congratulations! You are an improvisationist.Indiana Beagle plans to celebrate the winning scripts in the rabbit hole next Monday.Be sure to time your ad while reading it out loud. Thirty seconds is all you’ve got.There will be prizes, but I’m not sure how many.That will be up to Indy. Some of the prizes will be ridiculous, some will be worthwhile, a few will be sentimental, but at least one will be a scholarship to any Wizard Academy class you choose.Send your 30-second radio script to indy@wizardofads.com before midnight, Saturday, April 22, 2017.Dunk the ball.I know you can fly.Don’t pretend you can’t.Roy H. Williams

Ask a businessperson or a marketing professional, “What is branding?”Go ahead. Go do it. I’ll wait…Did they mention the importance of a having a logo? Did they talk about the consistent use of a chosen group of “brand” colors and a particular font and layout and look and feel? Have you done what they told you? Congratulations! You now have a visual style guide.And so does every other business on earth.The reason I avoid using the word “branding” is because most people think they’re already doing it.Here’s a far more important question: What are you doing to create an emotional bond with customers you’ve not yet met? This is the real goal of branding. But since too many people think they’re “branding” when all they’re doing is following a visual style guide, let’s you and I call this process “customer bonding,” okay?If your visual style guide is successful, people will recognize you when they see you.If your customer bonding program is successful, people will think of you and feel good about you when they finally need what you sell.Now let’s take this discussion to the street:You sell a product or service that people buy less often than once a year.There’s no way to know exactly who is going to need you, or when.This is why you’re investing in Search Engine Optimization and all those keywords. Am I right?So far, so good: now when the prospective customer finally needs what you sell, you’re going to show up…along with everyone else in your category.Let’s see what happens next:Your customer is scanning the results of their search.Do you want to know which company is going to get the click, the call and the sale?Surprise! It’s the company that’s been bonding with customers through mass media.One of the first signs your customer bonding program is working is that your online cost for lead generation will sharply decline and your conversion rate will rise.The SEO weasels will try to take credit for this, of course, by claiming they made some refinements to your keywords or found some efficient new way to target or blah, blah, blah. This is one of my favorite moments.Because I told the business owner this would happen.So when it does, they always laugh.I want you to laugh, too.It’s never too late to start bonding.Lower costs, higher conversion rates, and laughter.These are just the byproducts and side effects.Roy H. Williams

People read books for the strangest of reasons.I recently read a book about a female aviator in Africa in the 1930s.I have no interest in aviation. I have no interest in Africa.But it was a great book.I began reading it after I stumbled onto something Ernest Hemingway wrote in a 1942 letter to his friend, Maxwell Perkins.“Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer’s logbook. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and sometimes making an okay pigpen. But this girl who is, to my knowledge, very unpleasant,… can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people’s stories, are absolutely true. So, you have to take as truth the early stuff about when she was a child which is absolutely superb. She omits some very fantastic stuff which I know about which would destroy much of the character of the heroine; but what is that anyhow in writing? I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.”How can you resist a recommendation like that?Here are a few sentences from the book:“A map says to you. Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not… I am the earth in the palm of your hand.”“Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.”“The hills, the forests, the rocks, and the plains are one with the darkness, and the darkness is infinite. The earth is no more your planet than is a distant star – if a star is shining; the plane is your planet and you are its sole inhabitant.”Looking down from her plane she sees a herd of impala, wildebeest and zebra,“It was not like a herd of cattle or of sheep, because it was wild, and it carried with it the stamp of wilderness and the freedom of a land still more a possession of Nature than of men. To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the blemish of an axe. You know then what you had always been told — that the world once lived and grew without adding machines and newsprint and brick-walled streets and the tyranny of clocks.”Most of the book isn’t really about flying at all. It’s about looking and seeing and living in the world around you.“Toomba’s grin spreads over his wide face like a ripple in a pond… He grins until there is no more room for both the grin and his eyes, so his eyes disappear.”“The trail ran north to Molo; at night it ran straight to the stars. It ran up the side of the Mau Escarpment until at ten thousand feet it found the plateau and rested there, and some of the stars burned beneath its edge.”Writing about a young horse named Balmy, Markham said,“She was neither vicious nor stubborn, she was very fast on the track, and she responded intelligently to training… Had she made her debut on Park Avenue in the middle thirties instead of on the race-course at Nairobi in the middle twenties, she would have been counted as one of those intellectually irresponsible individuals always referred to as being ‘delightfully mad.’ Her madness, of course, consisted simply of a penchant for doing things that, in the opinions of her stable mates, weren’t being done. No well-brought-up filly, for instance, while being exercised before the critical watchfulness of her owner, her trainer, and a half-dozen members of the Jockey Club, would come to an abrupt halt beside a mud-hole left by last month’s rains, buckle at the knees, and before anything could be done about it, roll over in the muck like a Berkshire hog. But Balmy did, as often as there was a mudhole in her path and a trusting rider on her back, though what pleasure she got out of it none of us ever knew. She was a little like the eccentric genius who, after being asked by his host why he had rubbed the broccoli in his hair at dinner, apologized with a bow from the waist and said he had thought it was spinach.”Hemingway was right. It really is a bloody wonderful book.Roy H. Williams

Business Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by at least two distinct identities or dissociated personality states that show up in a company’s behavior.BPD emerges when unrelated teams work independently in the areas of (1.) Advertising (2.) Web Presence (3.) Sales Training.If a person encounters your ads, then visits your website, then comes to your place of business, will they feel they have encountered a single personality three times, or three personalities once?Advertising rarely makes the sale. It merely engages the customer in the early stages of a conversation. If the reader/listener/viewer of your ad has purchased from you in the past and had a good experience, it’s possible the ad will cause him or her to make immediate contact with your business.But customers who are less familiar with you will hope to extend the conversation and learn more about you by visiting your website. And they will expect to encounter the same personality they met in your ads.Will that happen?Or will they encounter an entirely different personality crafted by your website team?Does your website continue the conversation begun by your advertising, or does it stand alone, as though that conversation never took place?To what degree is your website disconnected from your advertising? That will be the degree of disconnection experienced by your customer.If by some miracle, the personality, tone and style of your website agrees with the personality, tone and style of your advertising, your biggest problem remains. Will your people continue the conversation that was begun in your ads and continued on your website? Or will they introduce an entirely different company than the one your customer was hoping to meet?Relational Marketing depends on Integrated Messaging.Integrated Messaging begins withWe Believe(Statements that capture the Personality and Promises, Processes and Benefits of your company.)Personality makes the customer feel they know you.Promises make the customer feel secure.Processes give credibility to your Promises.Benefits are what the customer is hoping to experience.(Your Origin Story is essentially the backstory of We Believe. We spoke of this in last week’s MondayMorningMemo.)Brandable Chunks(memorable identifiers and phrases extracted from your We Believe statements.)Deliverables(Advertising, web copy, content marketing, and signature phrases used by your people, all built from the same list of Brandable Chunks) These deliverables include 5, 10, 15, 30 and 60-second radio ads, billboard copy, email subject lines and body copy, digital marketing text, memorable identifiers for truck and van wraps, store signage, etc.)You’d like to see some examples, I know.You’ll find them in Chapter Ten of Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It. You can read that chapter by following the hyperlink in the previous sentence, or you can wait for the book to be published in a couple of months.The audiobook is in production right now. It’s going to be the first ever of its kind; a business book presented as dialogue.Roy H. Williams

There are two kinds of advertising.The goal of the first is to make yours the company the customer thinks of immediately and feels the best about when they – or any of their friends – need what you sell. This is called a “relational” ad campaign. It works better and better with each passing year.The goal of the second kind of advertising is to cause the reader/listener/viewer to buy something from you immediately. I began my career writing these “transactional” ads. I was good at it. This type of campaign is called “direct response.” Transactional ads work less and less well the longer you run them.Today I write only the first kind.If you have the staying power to build a relational ad campaign, you’re going to need to remember your origins. You’re going to have to write your Genesis Story.There are two kinds of staying power. The first is financial.Here’s my advice: Don’t launch a relational ad campaign so big that you would not be able to sustain it indefinitely. If you say, “I can fund this for 6 months, but by then it needs to be self-supporting,” then you’re spending more than you can afford. It’s impossible to predict the moment of breakthrough, that moment when all your previously fruitless efforts will begin to radiate results like a newborn sun.This is why you have to have the second kind of staying power: emotional staying power. Three or four months into your campaign, you’re going to begin to panic. But the only thing worse than never launching a relational ad campaign is to launch one and then abandon it.Relational ad campaigns are never about having the lowest price. A customer who switches to you for reasons of price alone will just as quickly switch from you for the same reason. And there is nothing that some other company can’t do a little worse and sell a little cheaper.People don’t bond with companies so easily as they bond with people. We bond with people we like, people we feel good about, people we think we know.Here are three examples of well-told stories of origin:“My Dad was a house painter. He taught me to sand and scrape old paint until my fingers were aching and raw. But I wanted to make him proud, so I always worked hard. I’ll never forget the day we opened our brown bags at lunchtime and he said, “Son. I’m proud of how hard you work, but I hope that someday you’ll get a job where you can wear a tie.” And because I wanted to make him proud, I decided to open a jewelry store. I watched as my Dad took his last seven hundred dollars out of his sock drawer to help me get started. But he never got to see that store. He died just before it was open. I lived on wieners and beans for the next 11 years until I finally figured it out:  Lose the tie… And be a regular guy just like your Dad. That’s when things turned around for me. I’ve been sharing the story of that 700 dollars with young entrepreneurs in High Schools and Colleges for years. America’s newest and best Kesslers Diamonds is about to open in front of Cabela’s next to the Rivertown Mall in Grandville. I’m Richard Kessler, and I’m hoping to become your jeweler.”Your origin story doesn’t have to be your first ad. Some of the most successful stories of origin have been introduced after the advertiser had already become a household word.Tom Heflin was a railroad conductor. His wife had a sister. That sister had two little boys. One day she took those boys on a train to Winslow, Arizona to spend a few days with them. Tom took those boys out into the desert to collect rocks. One of the little boys grew up to be a pediatrician. The other just kept pickin’ up rocks. I’ve never been able to explain what got into me that day …but it’s never left me. It has something to do with how the beauty of nature is made permanent, and becomes transferable, only in natural gemstones. Blood-red rubies. Piercing blue sapphires. Emeralds greener than the greenest grass. And diamonds …rocks that are perfectly colorless, clear and pure. Rocks! Call me crazy. Call me naïve. But I don’t think gemstones are here by accident. I think God put them here. And he made them beautiful, and he made them rare, and he made them hard to find, so that you and I might give them as symbolic gifts to those rare and hard to find people who are beautiful in our own lives. You know who I am. And that’s all I’ve got to say today.The power of your origin story doesn’t depend on your category of business.I was a ten year-old boy holding a flashlight for my Dad while he worked on an air conditioner for a customer. His name was Duncan Goodrich. He didn’t talk much. But there’s a certain kind of magic that happens when a son holds a flashlight for his father. I held it steady and quiet and Dad talked to me while he worked. He said, “When a person needs help, you respond right away. Not when it’s convenient for you.” He said, “Always do the right thing. Always do what’s right.” And he said, “The Goettl Iron Horse is a magnificent machine. Nothing else even comes close.” That was the first night I held a flashlight for my Dad but it wouldn’t be the last. A few months later at Dad’s funeral, I realized that every time he handed me that flashlight, he was passing the torch. And my Dad believed in Goettl air conditioners. So I bought the company. Goettl. Gee Oh Ee, T-T-L. It’ll keep you cool, but it’s hard to spell. You can count on us to respond right away and do the right thing… Always. Gee Oh Ee, T-T-L.Search your heart and mind. Find your story of origin. Make yourself vulnerable.Richard Kessler told us that he was once so poor that $700 made a huge difference in his life. The late Woody Justice told us that he believed in God and he believed gemstones are here for a reason. Ken Goodrich told us the memory of his father drives his actions to this day.What’s the story of how you got to where you are now… from where you were?You really need to share that story.Roy H. Williams

Four words have echoed in my head for several days.“Not everyone. Not always.”Why do such thoughts leapsparkling like swordfishfrom the dark watersof the mind?I can’t be sure, but I suspect my heart is responding to all those authoritative voices making silly statements about “the customer” with misguided certainty. They whisper to us from websites, blogs and business books.How can they teach us about “the customer” when every person has two different customers inside them?When you are in “Transactional” shopping mode, youare thinking short-term.care only about today’s transaction.look forward to the process of shopping.fear only paying too much.plan to become expert through extensive research.are willing to spend lots of time investigating.are highly focused on price.When you are in “Relational” shopping mode, youare thinking long-term, hoping to find a permanent solution provider.consider today’s transaction to be one in a series of many.aren’t in the mood to comparison shop or negotiate.fear only making a poor choice, “buying the wrong one.”hope to find an expert you feel you can trust.consider your time spent shopping to be part of the purchase price.are likely to become a repeat customer.“Time and money are interchangeable.You can always save one by spending more of the other.”– Princess Pennie WilliamsA person in transactional shopping mode is more willing to spend time than money. A person in relational shopping mode is more willing to spend money than time.Customers in transactional shopping mode make high demands on your staff and on your time. Transactional customers are the source of about 80 percent of all your problems.Customers in relational shopping mode go straight to the provider they think of immediately and feel the best about. If this provider has a reasonable solution to their problem, they purchase it and are done. None of the competitors to this provider were ever given a chance to make the sale. In fact, they were never even aware this customer was in the market to buy. Relational customers are the source of about 80 percent of all gross profits, even though they represent only 50 percent of the shoppers in any given category on any given day.You buy the cheapest eggs because “eggs are eggs.” The grocer makes very little profit on this sale. But 3 seconds later you reach into the milk case and happily pay double the price of the cheapest milk because this particular brand of milk combines a unique set of production circumstances that you offer consequential benefits. No Bovine Growth Hormones!The person behind you buys the cheapest milk because “milk is milk.” The grocer makes very little profit on this sale. But 3 seconds later, they reach for eggs and happily pay double the price of the cheapest eggs because THESE eggs were laid by free-roaming, never caged, vegetarian hens that deliver higher levels of B12, B2, A, and B5, plus selenium and folate! And these yolks are a deep golden yellow!Each customer bought one item transactionally, one item relationally.You have a transactional mode of shopping and a relational mode of shopping and so does everyone else.Now this is the part that might stick in your throat a bit: I’ve never found a product or service category in which the ratio of customers in transactional mode versus relational mode wasn’t approximately 50/50. This holds true even for groceries and new cars, although grocers and new car dealers have a difficult time swallowing it. The problem, you see, is that customers in transactional mode are the vocal ones up in your face, making threats and demands, while the relational customer slips invisibly in and out, leaving only a pile of money behind as evidence they were ever there.The only way to target the relational customer is through your ad copy.Do you know how to write it?Dr. Roger Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his documentation of brain lateralization when he demonstrated that we don’t have a single brain divided into two halves so much as we have two separate, competing brains.Transactional mode is largely a function of the logical, rational, sequential, deductive-reasoning (and suspicious) left hemisphere of your brain. Relational mode is a function of the intuitive, pattern-and-connection seeking (not suspicious) right hemisphere.Are you beginning to understand why I’m uncomfortable with authoritative voices making silly statements about “the customer” as though every customer makes decisions according to the same criteria used by every other customer? Heck, we don’t even use the same criteria from moment to moment!I probably should have wrapped this up and concluded today’s memo 4 paragraphs ago, but I want to give you another fun bit of evidence of the never-ending tug-of-war between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.Got another minute?“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”– George Santayana (1863 – 1952)“Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”– Stanislaw Lec (1909 – 1966)Look before you leap.He who hesitates is lost.If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.Don’t beat your head against a stone wall.Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.Don’t cross the bridge until you come to it.Haste makes waste.Time waits for no man.Life is what we make it.What will be, will be.You’re never too old to learn.You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.Hitch your wagon to a star.Don’t bite off more that you can chew.A word to the wise is sufficient.Talk is cheap.It’s better to be safe than sorry.Nothing ventured, nothing gained.“Rollercoaster, carousel.You can grab the ring, you can ring that bellWhen the ride is over, you can never tell.Well maybe I’m just cynical and all these words are lies.Experience keeps telling me that the cautious one is wise.But caution makes you hesitate, and hesitate you’re lost.So take your opportunities and never count the cost.”– Sara Ramirez, “Rollercoaster”Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

Hi, everyone! My name is _____________________.Because Wizard Academy appreciates your generous donation to help keep Chapel Dulcinea open, free and beautiful, I’m going to take you on a 4-minute walk to Wizard’s Tower, where we’ll enter the underground art gallery, then go straight up to the Star Deck where I’ll tell you a 2-minute story, then you’ll have 15 more minutes to take photos and enjoy the view from nearly 1,000 feet above downtown Austin. Follow me, please.[Start walking.][Pausing at The Old Man and the Sea…]AThis is Ernest Hemingway’s“The Old Man and the Sea”by Jane DeDecker.If you remember that Nobel prize-winning novel, you’ll remember how the old man fought the giant fish – and then the sharks – for 3 days and 3 nights before sailing home.[Pointing now at the statue above the art gallery as you walk toward it…] The counterpoint to this symbol of the heroic, masculine struggle is Jane DeDecker’s symbol of feminine determination – “Into the Wind” – a living figurehead on the bow of a ship sailing above the art gallery. We’ll take a closer look in a moment.[Stopping briefly at the bronze plaque with the footprints on it….]bThis is the Laughlin Stone. If you place your feet on those footprints at night[Pointing now at the sword at the top of the tower….]you’ll see the North Star hovering just above the hilt of that sword. Since the North Star is positioned directly above the axis of the earth, it’s the only star that doesn’t move across the sky during the night…The Star Deck – just behind it ­­– is where we’re headed.[Begin walking again toward the tower….]rThe famous psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that life is a journey on water. Above the waterline is the conscious mind. Below the waterline is the unconscious, a shadowland of nonverbal symbols and music and mysteries.[Point up at “Into the Wind”….]You’ll notice as we enter the tower that we’re directly beneath the ship of “Into the Wind.” If the old man and his fish are on a beach – and that ship above us is sailing on the ocean, we are now 12 feet underwater, which is where we’ll find the art gallery, the wine cellar and the musical instruments of Wizard Academy, since each of these speaks to the unconscious mind.[Enter the art gallery.]iWizard Academy teaches advertising, marketing and communication to businesses across America and around the world. Our students include Nobel Prize-winning scientists, university professors and best-selling authors, as well as executives at companies like Procter & Gamble, Kellogg, and IBM. But mostly they are the owners of America’s 5.91 million companies that have fewer than 100 employees. Wizard Academy is where these people – people like you – come to learn big things fast, in an environment that feels like summer camp for grown-ups.[Give the group instructions about staying together and NOT going up the stairs.] e[When everyone has arrived on the Star Deck, ring the bronze bell near the stairwell door, then point at the statue of the boy on the paper airplane as you begin walking toward the sword.]If you look behind the base of that statue, you’ll see a little boy reading a book.[Point now at the larger boy, above.]And this is that same little boy, flying on those wings of paper. It’s called “Journeys of Imagination,” by Gary Lee Price. It’s about the wonderful journeys we take in our minds when we read good literature.I’ll be finished in just 2 more minutes, then you can admire the view.[Finish your talk as you stand next to the sword, facing north.]fLife is a journey on water.The conscious mind is above the waterline.The unconscious is beneath.You only meet 4 people on the ocean of Life, but you meet them again and again.The first person you meet is drifting, pushed this way and that by the winds and waves of circumstances. You know you’ve met a drifter when they say, “Whatever. It’s all good.”The second person you meet is surfing. They seem to be having a pretty good time, but they never really get anywhere. They just paddle around in the ocean, looking for a wave to ride. The surfer is forever looking for “the next big thing.”The third person you meet is drowning.We’re not just talking about “going under” and needing a helping hand.Most of us, if we’re healthy and normal, will occasionally need a helping hand from someone who loves us. We may need to be rescued financially, or chemically, or relationally. This is normal. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about professional drowners. You’ve met them. They say, “It’s been the worst week of my life, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” So you help them. You get them back on their feet. Then when you see them a few weeks later, they say, “It’s been the worst week of my life, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”The fourth person you meet is navigating. They’re challenged by the winds and waves of circumstances, just like the drowner, the surfer and the drifter. But the navigator turns the rudder of the ship to counteract the direction of the waves. The navigator adjusts the sails to harness the wind and make it take him where he wants to go.But the navigator does not navigate by watching the wind and waves.The navigator keeps his eyes on a non-negotiable standard that isn’t connected to his circumstances. The navigator has a North Star, a guiding light that never moves.Do you remember the wise men from the Christmas story?These wise men – these wise-ards – followed a star because they believed it would lead them to something wonderful. It is from these wise men – these wise-ards – that Wizard Academy takes its name.Thank you again for your generous donation.I’ll ring the bell when it’s time for us to go.#  #  #  #Written by Roy H. Williams for the ambassadors at Wizard Academy

I’m experimenting with radio in a way that, for me, is new and different.Many of those who understand what I’m doing won’t agree with the fundamental premise of my experiment. But that’s not what worries me.I’m concerned about those who will agree and then attempt it – and fail. I believe they’ll fail because they won’t do it right.Here’s what’s happening: I’m airing a 5-second ad every hour, 24 hours a day, for 365 days, on each station in a broadcast group in a major city. The result will be 51% reach (18+) with a weekly frequency of 10.4. This means that 51% of the total population in that region will hear one of my ads an average of 10.4 times each week, 52 weeks in a row.That’s right. One 5-second ad per hour, 24 hours a day, on each station in the broadcast group.You can run, but you can’t hide.Here’s why I fear people who attempt this experiment will likely screw it up:They’ll buy too little frequency.“Well, I think a spot an hour is overkill, so I’m just going to buy a 5-frequency instead of a 10+ frequency each week.”They’ll rotate too few ads.I’ll be producing 12 new 5-second ads every 6 weeks. Consequently, even though I have a 10.4 frequency each week, the typical listener is likely to hear 10 different ads, one time each.Their ads won’t say anything worth remembering.The key to success is to make a different, memorable statement in each 5-second ad. You can then open, or close, each ad with a single word that identifies the company. Only one or two ads in every series of twelve will feature the contact info of the company.Here’s what I like about this plan:Reach is double what I used to get for the same money.Frequency is triple what I used to get for the same money.With a 10.4 weekly frequency, I can safely expect a listener to unconsciously “connect and combine” each of my brandable chunks, nuggets and factoids to create a coherent mental image much bigger than the information found in a single ad. In fact, I expect that within a few months a large percentage of that city will be able to recite meaningful amounts of information about my client.The 5-second format – combined with 12 new ads in rotation every 6 weeks – will allow me to dodge the audience burn-out bullet.What will happen if my experiment proves successful?I’ll finally have a way to help advertisers with small budgets in big cities.Give me a schedule of 1 spot per hour, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year on the smallest station in town and it won’t be long before my client is on a second station, then a third.Get enough advertisers to do this and Radio will become happy again.Even if you believe that “a unit is a unit, no matter the length,” you can’t argue with the fact that airing twenty-four 5-second ads would mean only a 2-minute commercial load per hour. This would mean that a listener tuning in to your station would be greeted by a commercial – instead of music – just once in every 30 visits to your dial position, compared to the current 1 in 4.Even if radio stations began airing 36 ads per hour – more than double the number they’re currently airing – I’m fairly certain that listeners would be delighted with just 3 minutes of ads per hour.A radio station with 4 commercial breaks of NINE, 5-second ads each hour would have rollicking, rock-and-roll commercial breaks of just 45 seconds each and I’m convinced listeners would retain a higher percentage of those messages.The weakness of this plan is that so few people know how to write attention-getting, memorable 5-second ads.But don’t worry. We’re putting together a class.Indy says “Hi,” by the way.He just showed me what he put in this week’s rabbit hole for you.You’re going to like it.Roy H. Williams

We encounter “meta” most often in the word metaphor.We create metaphors when we see the same pattern in two, unrelated things.Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”But Shakespeare wasn’t the first to see the similarity between the world and a stage. Seneca the Younger – sixteen hundred years before Shakespeare – wrote, “Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”In his marvelous new book, Metaphors Be With You, Dr. Mardy Grothe reveals the importance of metaphors in everyday communication:“Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images, revealing their connections.” ­– Robin Morgan“Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind’s eye something that has never before been seen.”–Rebecca McClanahanThe poet Robert Frost said, “An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.”“Metaphor isn’t just for poets; it’s in ordinary language and is the principal way we have of conceptualizing abstract concepts like life, death, and time.”– More Than Cool Reason, George Lakoff and Mark Turner“Meta” has recently evolved a second meaning.It now refers to things that are self-referential. Ben Zimmer tells of a librarian named Lauren Dodd who recently tweeted, “Just saw a librarian shush other librarians at a library conference.”(Indy Beagle is chuckling his signature, “Heh, heh, heh,” after reading that over my shoulder.)Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner talks about “how to get students to reflect, to turn around on themselves, to go ‘meta,’ to think about their ways of thinking.”Yep, “to think about your ways of thinking” would definitely qualify as self-referential.In his book, Tilting Cervantes, my friend Bruce Burningham says,“We delight in the notion of a stand-up comedian named Jerry Seinfeld who creates a sitcom on NBC in which he plays a stand-up comedian named Jerry Seinfeld who eventually creates a sitcom on NBC in which he plays a stand-up comedian named Jerry Seinfeld.”If triple-meta were a recognized designation, I believe Bruce Burningham’s sentence would qualify.To understand a thing that is new and different, you need only search for what it is like.Monkfish is the poor man’s lobster.Success is a bastard with many fathers, but failure is an orphan.America is a melting pot.You are my sunshine.He drowned in a sea of grief.Every new concept, invention, innovation or idea reflects an established pattern.That pattern has just never been used in this application before.Contemplate a metaphor. See the pattern. Consider how it might be used as a solution to your problem. Do this again and again and your spinning brain will soon be flinging ideas like a grinding wheel throwing sparks at the darkness.Perhaps you’ll discover a miraculous solution. Perhaps you’ll just have fun.Give it a try and see.As Indy walked away just now, he called to me over his shoulder, “Anything you can do, I can do meta.”I’m going to have to ponder that one awhile.Roy H. Williams