Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

When Kermit Roosevelt was fifteen, he shared a book of poems he admired with his father, the President of the United States. As an encouragement to Kermit, his father sent a lengthy review of that book to The Outlook, an important publication of the time, saying, “There is an undoubted touch of genius in the poems collected in this volume…”Theodore Roosevelt had six children: Alice the mischievous, Ted Jr. the hero, Kermit the writer, Ethel the visionary, Archie the warrior and Quentin the colorful.Unexpectedly, it was Kermit, the writer, who always appeared at his father’s side when the old President needed a protector. When 51 year-old Theodore walked away from the White House and announced he was going to disappear into the jungles of Africa on a yearlong safari, Kermit dropped out of Harvard to accompany him.Four years later, when Theodore announced he was going to vanish into the jungles of South America to chart the unexplored River of Doubt, Kermit quit his job and left his fiancé to make sure his father remained safe.Had it not been for Kermit, Theodore Roosevelt would not have come home alive.This is not a speculation.Flowing from the mountains of Peru to where it joins the mighty Amazon deep in the jungles of Brazil, the River of Doubt was a mystery. Its length and course were not listed on any map. The only things known for certain were that its shores were lined with cannibals and its waters were full of man-eating piranha, fifteen-foot aquatic lizards and anaconda snakes as long as school busses.Frank Chapman, the curator for the American Museum of Natural History, said,“It may be said with confidence… that in all South America there is not a more difficult or dangerous journey than down the River of Doubt.”Natural History Museum director Henry Osborn wrote to Roosevelt several times pleading with him to abandon his plan.Roosevelt responded to Osborn in a letter to Frank Chapman:“Tell Osborn I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any nine other men I know; I have had my full share, and if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite prepared to do so.”Fortunately for Theodore, his son Kermit was not prepared that he should do so.After they arrived in South America, the expedition had to cross 400 miles of wilderness before they reached the River of Doubt. But then they plunged into the jungle.“Most of the men were veteran outdoorsmen, and many of them considered themselves masters of nature. They were stealthy hunters, crack shots, and experienced survivalists, and given the right tools, they believed that they would never find themselves in a situation in the wild that they could not control. But as they struggled to make their way along the shores of the River of Doubt, any basis for such confidence was quickly slipping away. Compared with the creatures of the Amazon, including the Indians whose territory they were invading, they were all – from the lowliest camarada to the former president of the United States – clumsy, conspicuous prey.”–The River of Doubt by Candice MillardThe expedition avoided the whitewater rapids by guiding their canoes through them with ropes as they walked along the banks of the river. But when the jungle was heaviest upon them, two canoes broke loose and most of their supplies were lost. The men were forced to stop for several days to build new ones. In an effort to make up lost time they resorted to running the rapids in their canoes. When two canoes got jammed in the rocks in a section of wicked whitewater, Theodore Roosevelt jumped in to free them and slipped, opening a large gash in his thigh.An infection set in that night and for the next several days, he drifted in and out of consciousness, utterly unable to walk. In a moment of clear thinking, Theodore realized he had no chance and was risking the lives of the other men as well. Drawing the American naturalist George Cherrie to his side, he said,“Boys, I realize some of us are not going to finish this journey. Cherrie, I want you and Kermit to go on. You can get out. I will stop here.”Kermit calmly convinced his father that even if he chose to kill himself so that the rest of the men could go on, Kermit would never leave his body behind. Consequently, to kill himself would be to kill Kermit as well.Kermit Roosevelt spent the next several weeks carrying his father on a stretcher through the jungle. His father lost 60 pounds but Kermit brought him home alive.These are just a few of the things for which Kermit never really got credit.Do you remember “Richard Cory,” the poem featured in last week’s Monday Morning Memo? That poem was from the book Kermit shared with his father at the age of fifteen.Kermit Roosevelt sent a pale beam of light into the darkness of poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, but it was enough to lift him from despair, illuminate his talent, win him three Pulitzer Prizes and establish him as the foremost poet of his generation.God bless Kermit Roosevelt.On whomwill you shineyour lighttoday?Roy H. Williams

1. Use Words that have Specific Meanings.“The bug moved along the ground, deciding which way it should go.”“The ant crawled between the blades of grass, peeking left and right at every intersection.”Bug is nonspecific. Ant is specific.“…moved along the ground” is mildly specific, but not vivid.“…crawled between the blades of grass” is specific and vivid.2. Don’t Tell. Show.“…deciding which way it should go,” tells you what the ant was doing.“…peeking left and right at every intersection,” shows you the ant and leads you to conclude that the ant is deciding which way to go. You are, for a moment, seeing through the eyes of the ant. Giving human motives to inanimate objects is a powerful tool known as personification. “Your Rolex is waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up at Shreve and Company.”3. Write Tight and Clean.Short Sentences Hit Harder than Long Ones.Adjectives and adverbs don’t accelerate communication. They slow it down. Use them with restraint.What I’m doing now is giving you an example of a long sentence, (in essence, the kind of sentence often written by persons who are trying to sound educated, although in truth, sentences like this one just make you sound full of yourself,) for the purpose of demonstrating that complex sentences full of commas and parenthetic statements and verbose, multi-word, adjective-stacked descriptions have a much diminished impact and are not nearly so pleasant to read as short, clear statements like the 6-word sentence and the two 4-word sentences that preceded this horrific construction of 135 pompous, tedious and wearisome words that keep going on and on for so very long that by the time you get to the final point, you have forgotten several of the previous ones that were made.4. Let the Subject of the Sentence Take the Action.Passive Voice is a Bad Choice.You speak in passive voice when the subject of the sentence is acted upon: “Wizard Academy is attended by interesting people.”You speak in active voice when the subject of the sentence takes the action: “Interesting people attend Wizard Academy.”Passive voice is noncommittal: “It got lost.”Active voice is confident and clear. “I lost it.”5. Feed Your Pen Surprising Combinations of Interesting WordsIf you inform without persuading, you are hearing a newscast when you write. The goal of the journalist is to inform, not to persuade.If you entertain without persuading, you are hearing creative writing as you write. The goal of the creative writer is to entertain, not to persuade.The poet leads you to think and feel differently. The goal of the poet is to persuade. And the best ones do it in a brief, tight economy of words.I’m not talking about rhyming.I beg you not to rhyme.I’m talking about using surprising combinations of vivid words to trigger assumptions and conclusions in the minds of those who hear you.Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote Richard Cory in 1897. This was when “clean favored” meant good-looking, and how you were dressed is how you were “arrayed.”Richard CoryWhenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—And admirably schooled in every grace:In short, we thought that he was everythingTo make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head.Compare the images contained in that 124-word poem to those in the 135-word example in Point 3. – RHW6. If you would become a better communicator…if you would write better ads, persuade more people and make more money, read Good Poems, curated by Garrison Keillor. You can get the 3 books or visit the online archives.7. Read a poem a day, every day.It will take you about 60 seconds. Think of your daily poem as a vitamin. Don’t worry about understanding the poem. Just rub the salt of it on your mind. You will soon begin hearing a different voice when you write, and find yourself looking into sparkling eyes when you speak.Photos that have been black-and-white are about to become full-color.Roy H. Williams

Your life is a singular journey; a generation is a collective journey.We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.If this dirt-covered rock we occupy was the size of a standard schoolroom globe covered with a coat of varnish, the thickness of that varnish would represent the air we breathe.Like it or not, we’re all in this together.All seven and a half billion of us.When it gets dark tonight, look up at the stars. You’ll be looking out the window of our spaceship.If we could aim our 11,000-degree fireball at the nearest of its siblings – those things we call the stars – it would take us 63,000 years to get there even though we would be shooting through space at 52 times the speed of an 865 mph bullet.1Right now you think I’m going to talk to you about cultural tolerance or global warming or world peace or some other big idea.But you’re wrong.My goal today is to teach you how to use metaphors to make your data more interesting so that you can persuade more people.I borrowed the metaphor of the earth being a spaceship from Buckminster Fuller and the varnish on the globe came from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.A metaphor relates the unfamiliar to the familiar, the unknown to the known, effectively translating your data into a language your listener can understand.A good metaphor sharpens the point of your data.Once you’ve chosen your metaphor, your second challenge will be to select nouns and verbs that carry the voltage of mild surprise.I might have said, “The earth orbits the sun as it moves through space at 0.0004842454 au. (astronomical units).” But I chose instead to say, “We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.”“We’re circling” causes you to see yourself in the story. This is the first step toward reader engagement.“11,000-degree fireball” is more vivid than “the sun,”“shoots through a limitless vacuum” is more exciting than “moves through space,”and “52 times the speed of a rifle bullet” packs more of a wallop than “astronomical units.”Brilliant communication isn’t a product of wit or charm or even talent.Preparation is what it takes to click the brightness of your message up to high beam so that it pierces the darkness like a lighthouse at midnight. In the words of Alec Nevala-Lee, “A good surprise demands methodical work in advance. Like any form of sleight of hand, it hinges on making the result of careful preparation seem casual, even miraculous.”“Like a lighthouse at midnight” wasn’t technically a metaphor, by the way. It was a simile. Metaphor: The earth is a spaceship. Simile: The earth is like a spaceship. A simile feels like a metaphor and can be used to accomplish the same effect.Write down what you want to say. Don’t overthink it. Just get some words on paper.Find a metaphor that relates your information to an idea that your audience already understands.Now look at what you wrote and replace the weary, dull words with energetic, bright ones.Want to know a secret? There’s really no such thing as good writing. There’s only good rewriting.Ernest Hemingway won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Each time he came to a place where the words weren’t flowing, he would set his work aside and answer some correspondence so that he could take a break from, “the awful responsibility of writing” — or, as he sometimes called it, “the responsibility of awful writing.” 2  In a letter to 22 year-old Arnold Samuelson in 1934, Hemingway advised that after writing something you think is pretty good, you should, “leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. The next morning, when you’ve had a good sleep and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before.”Having the courage to write badly is the first step toward brilliant communication. The second step is to look at that first draft and say, “How can I make this better?”One final piece of advice: Read great writing, for “As you read, so will you write.” Gene Fowler said it this way, “The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.”Brilliant communicators develop stronger relationships, achieve higher goals and make more money.Why not become one?Roy H. Williams

You bought it for 50 cents.You sold it for a dollar.You made 50 cents.What was your percentage of profit?You could say “100 percent” because the 50-cent profit you made is equal to your original investment of 50 cents.But if we look at it from the basis of your selling price, you sold it for a dollar and only 50% of that was profit.So did you make 100% or was it 50%? There is a valid argument for each perspective.It’s not my intention to lecture you today about the difference between markup and margin or to fill your ears with chatter about inventory turn or the concept of zero marginal cost.We’re talking about something bigger.We’re talking about your success.Profit is easy to identify, but tricky to measure.Success is like that, too.Does your pursuit of success ever make you feel like you’re chasing your shadow with the sun at your back; no matter how fast you run, you can never quite grasp it? Is success a forever carrot-on-a-stick, just a little further away than the length of your arm?Most of us live with the hope of accomplishing a series of goals, but rarely do I meet anyone who can tell me how they plan to measure their progress toward those goals.How will you measure success?Before you can answer that question clearly, you have to recognize that success comes in three different colors.You can make money.You can make a name.You can make a difference.If you make enough money, it will make you something of a name. But whether or not you ever make a difference is an entirely different question. Many successful people keep their money and their name clamped tightly within their fists.If you make a name for yourself, money will likely follow. But will you then care enough about others to try and make a difference in their lives?My advice to you is to first make a difference. Do what you do so very well that people take notice of it and speak highly of you. The money will quickly follow.What are you trying to make happen?How will you measure progress-to-goal?In what way will you make a difference?Roy H. Williams

Do you sell a product or service that is reassuringly expensive?Ronny is selling $700 vacuum cleaners through a direct-response television campaign he created after attending, “How to Sell Upscale Products and Services” at Wizard Academy.That ad campaign began as a $100,000 experiment.Ronny told me he’s currently spending nearly a million dollars a week on national advertising and making a marvelous return on his investment.Funny thing: we teach that class under the assumption the techniques will be used by brand builders, not direct response marketers. But Ronny proved those same techniques can also work when you have a short time horizon.We taught Ronny something.He taught us something in return.Direct response marketers usually sell products that have a short purchase cycle. They want us to make an impulse purchase. This is why the return-on-investment for direct response ads can be measured accurately and immediately.But not everything can be sold that way.Brand builders are companies whose products or services have a long purchase cycle. The goal of a brand builder is to be the provider you think of immediately and feel the best about when you finally need what they sell. It takes courage, confidence and patience but it works better and better the longer you invest in it.The essence of brand building is emotional bonding.Direct response marketing, on the other hand, is typically intellectual. Features and benefits and added value, “But wait! Order now and you’ll also receive…” It is that world of product demonstrations and money-back guarantees, limited-time offers and upsell incentives.Direct response ads don’t work better and better as time goes by. They work less and less well until you finally have to come up with something altogether new and different.Right now you’re thinking, “But hey, if I make enough money on my direct response campaign, I’ll just retire and live happily ever after.”That sounds like a good plan but I’ve never actually seen it work out that way. Most of us have the fundamental inability to quit while we’re ahead.A glittering city in Nevada is proof of it.Wizard Academy teaches powerful concepts.How you use them is entirely up to you.Ronny is winning and winning big. I like him.He’s already taught me one lesson.I’m hoping he will teach me another.Roy H. Williams

A couple of weeks ago I spent an hour and a half on television speaking to a nationwide audience of several million viewers.They wanted me to talk about Pendulum, the book we published in 2012. Specifically, they wanted me to explain how we knew four years ago exactly what would be happening right now.I chose not to mention Wizard Academy.Does that surprise you?Pennie and Vice-Chancellor Whittington and I agreed that any mention of Wizard Academy would likely flood your school with people who would be coming for all the wrong reasons.Even worse, they would be coming with all the wrong expectations.Wizard Academy uses carefully crafted content marketing delivered through indirect targeting to attract learners into a carefully designed gravity well. Our hope is to win ever-larger chunks of your time until you finally show up in person on our campus. (Sounds sinister, doesn’t it? But it’s actually quite honest and friendly. Perfect transparency inspires confidence, does it not?)Wizard Academy doesn’t consider age or income or educational attainment or gender or ethnicity or zip code or home ownership or any of the other things targeted by most advertising efforts.We want to attract a specific, self-selected tribe that shares our core beliefs:1. We believe traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom.Our quirky books, memos, videos, course descriptions and public art function as marketing filters, attracting some people, repelling others.2. We believe history repeats itself only because we didn’t pay attention the first time.We use case studies to assist you in the hands-on implementation of what we teach, but larger lessons are learned by looking at the timeless, big ideas of physics, agriculture and biology, allowing you to understand and harness sequences of events that have been echoing since the birth of time. (If the study of recurrent patterns appeals to you, you’ll love it here.)3. We believe intuition is the logic of the wordless, right hemisphere of the brain.Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his documentation of brain lateralization, in essence asserting that we don’t have a single brain divided into two hemispheres so much as we have two separate, competing brains: the logical, deductive-reasoning left and the intuitive, pattern-and-sequence recognizing right.* But the right brain has no language functions. Hence, we often “know” things we can’t explain. The intuitive power of the right brain is essential to the artist, the entrepreneur, and anyone searching for a proven innovation model.4. We believe passion is a by-product of commitment.Chapel Dulcinea, our world famous free wedding chapel, is a symbol of our belief in the power of commitment to transform personal relationships, business outcomes, and destinies. (In October, Dulcinea welcomed wedding parties from France, Scotland, New Zealand, Japan and 88 other places. In 2014 she witnessed 984 weddings. In 2015 it was 999. Will this be the year she sees 1,000?)Did any of the concepts we spoke about today interest you?This Monday Morning Memo was an example of content marketing delivered through indirect targeting to attract a self-selected tribe into a gravity well.Did we affirm your values? Confirm your beliefs? Tickle your imagination? Make you want to dive a little deeper into some of these ideas?If you feel a tug of gravity pulling you toward us,we trust you can figure out what to do next.Roy H. Williams

It seems to be a fundamental law of the universe that a thing cannot exist without its opposite.Negatively charged electrons revolvearound positively charged protons.Male and female.Inhale and exhale.Extend and contract.Seedtime and harvest.Every good thing exists in a state of duality.A voice spoke into the darkness,“Let there be light,”and the first duality was born.Darkness didn’t go away; it simply met an opposing force.Whether you believe the Bible to be ancient folk wisdom or the word of God or something in between doesn’t really matter. Most of us can agree that something about it caused the Bible to be remembered for millennia.According to the first chapter of Genesis, after the voice pierced the darkness with light, it spoke five other dualities into existence and proclaimed each of the six pairs of opposites to be good.I’m not writing to you about religion.I’m writing to you about wisdom.I’m glad to see you’re still reading! I’m sneaking up on an important point. Stay with me.Good and evil are not a duality.Love and hate are not a duality.Peace and war are not a duality.The first is life and the second is death.It shouldn’t be hard to choose between them.The only difficult choices in life are the choices between two good things.Freedom and Responsibility are two good things that we must often choose between.Likewise, a tension exists between Justice and Mercy.Honesty and Loyalty are also good things.Have you ever had to choose between them?Which one is good and which one is evil?The next time you see two antagonistic groups throwing word-grenades at each other, peer beneath the emotional language and you’ll notice that one group believes in freedom while the other group believes in responsibility. Or one side is pushing for justice while the other side pushes for mercy.Niels Bohr wasn’t a touchy-feely philosopher. He was a scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among his discoveries was this:“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”Stanislaw Lec said it this way,“Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”Then F. Scott Fitzgerald challenged you and me to step into a larger realm of living,“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”Don’t fall into the trap of believing you have to choose one and disparage the other.Every creative person is familiar with the magnetism that exists between opposites. A skillful articulation of this energy is the secret behind hit songs, big movies, bestselling books and successful ad campaigns.A voice spoke light into the darkness and said it was good.And Niels Bohr said “Amen.”And Stanislaw Lec said “Amen.”And F. Scott Fitzgerald said “Amen.”So please tell me, if you will,What say you?Roy H. Williams

The statesman, according to Wikipedia, “who is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism,” was Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797). I was unaware of this until I stumbled upon it while searching for the origin of the famous statement, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”A worthy counterpart to Edmund Burke might be George Bernard Shaw, widely considered to be an early champion of liberal thought. Shaw wrote, “When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” 1You’ll find both of these quotes in the random quote database at MondayMorningMemo.com because these statements cause us to think.And thinking is never a bad thing.Examine that first quote and you’ll notice it’s based on the underlying premise that some people are good while others are evil.The second quote is based on the premise that some people are stupid while others are not.But have you ever known anyone so good there was no bad in them, or anyone so bad there was no good? And who is so wise they’ve never done a stupid thing?Witold Gambrowicz was an obscure Polish writer until his private diaries were discovered after his death in 1969. According to the Paris Review, they are “widely considered his masterpiece.”One of the golden nuggets Gambrowicz left behind for us was his theory on how to write a book review:“Literary criticism is not the judging of one man by another (who gave you this right?) but the meeting of two personalities on absolutely equal terms. Therefore do not judge. Simply describe your reactions. Never write about the author or the work, only about yourself in confrontation with the work or the author. You are allowed to write about yourself.”Wow. I get it. And this idea isn’t limited to literary criticism.Instead of saying, “What you’re about to do is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of and if you do it, you’re an idiot,” one might say, “If I were about to do what you’re about to do, I would be frightened.” Then if your friend asks, “Why would you be frightened?” you can share with him your concerns.“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”– Ralph Waldo EmersonI’ve never found anyone who could explain to me the difference between constructive criticism and just plain criticism.Violence may kill the body, but criticism kills the spirit. If you hope to bring about change, you must armor your soul against it.John Steinbeck reminds us that all criticism is based upon subjective, personal perceptions and that such perceptions are never universally true.“A painter, letting color and line, observed, sift into his eyes, up the nerve trunks, and mix well with his experience before it flows down his hand to the canvas, has made his painting say, ‘It might be so.’ Perhaps his critic, being not so honest and not so wise, will say, ‘It is not so. The picture is damned.’ If this critic could say, ‘It is not so with me, but that might be because my mind and experience are not identical with those of the painter,’ that critic would be a better critic for it, just as the painter is a better painter for knowing he himself is in the pigment.” 2If we want to make the world a better place, if we want to bring an end to polarized politics, if we want to make friends instead of enemies, we must remember the advice of Gambrowicz, Emerson and Steinbeck.At least it seems so to me.Does it seem so, also, to you?Roy H. Williams

Science is the study of objective reality.Art is the study of subjective reality.Subjective reality is perception through filters. It is interpreted reality, romanticized reality, imagined reality. It is your own personal fiction.We’ve spoken of this before, but I think we need a refresher:Electromagnetic waves exist regardless of whether you perceive them. They are nonfiction. But colors exist in subjective reality, as a result of transformations provided by our senses. Colors are fiction.Vibrations traveling in air or water are objective, real, nonfiction. But sound is a fiction that exists only in our mind.Likewise, chemicals dissolved in air or water exist in objective reality, nonfiction. But smells and tastes are purely subjective, fiction. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes do not exist, as such, outside our brains. And any associations we experience in connection with a color, sound, taste or smell are purely subjective as well.Each of us lives in a private world that is mostly subjective fiction.Our ability to communicate is based on the assumption that other people will interpret subjective stimuli in ways that are similar to our own. But when their reactions spring from different backgrounds and experiences, communication grows more difficult.Politics, anyone?Color, sound, smell and taste are very convincing fictions. So convincing, in fact, that we often embrace them as “reality.” This is why we have so many arguments.To “frame” a conversation is to set the stage for a fiction that is about to begin.The current style of communication in America is declarative and descriptive, leaving little room for nuance or multilayered interpretation. The impact of this declarative style is often clinical and bombastic.The heart doubts declarative statements because they tell us what to think and believe.Evocative statements pull the answers from inside us.Lead a person to an answer and they will usually discover it.Lead a person to the truth and they will cling to it.We own every truth that comes from inside us. This is why it is rare for an argument to overturn something we have realized.If you followed Indiana Beagle down the rabbit hole last week, you saw a statement by Brandon Sanderson, “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”Sanderson may as well have been talking about evocative statements.Look at the frontispiece of The Wizard of Ads and you’ll see The Seven Laws of the Advertising Universe. Laws 3 and 7 explain why stories are so powerfully persuasive:“Intellect and Emotion are partners who do not speak the same language. The intellect finds logic to justify what the emotions have decided. Win the hearts of the people, their minds will follow.”“Engage the Imagination, then take it where you will. Where the mind has repeatedly journeyed, the body will surely follow. People go only to places they have already been in their minds.”Well-told stories win the heart and take people on journeys in their minds.How well are you telling your stories?The best stories have a narrative arc and a character arc.Narrative Arc: a sequence of events that unfold; a continuing storyline that fascinates the mind.Character Arc: a gradual deepening of our understanding of the character’s motivations, revealed by how the character thinks, speaks, acts and sees the world. The character arc is a character’s inner journey over the course of the story.An advertising campaign is more than a series of ads.A good campaign has a narrative arc that engages the mind of the customer, revealing layer after layer of information about your company, your product, your service.A good campaign has a character arc that entangles the heart of the customer by allowing them to feel they understand why you do the things you do.Does your company have an ad campaign, or have you just been running a series of ads?Do you need to visit Wizard Academy to get a handle on this?Come, we’ll walk you through it.(This is the new workshop we teased you with last week.)Roy H. Williams

Norman Rockwell was an illustrator of fiction.He never showed us America as it really was, but America as it could have been, should have been, might have been. His images caused an entire generation to vividly remember experiences we never had.Rockwell showed my generation a fictional America and we believed in it.I don’t want to mention client names and I’m sure you’ll understand why, but my most successful ad campaigns have been built on exactly that kind of fiction.Not lies. Fiction. There’s a difference.Fiction is romanticized reality, showing us possible futures and the best of the past, leaving out the dreary, the mundane and the forgettable. It is a powerful tool of bonding. Properly used, fictional characters attract new customers and deepen customer loyalties. But predictable characters hold no interest for us. It is conflicted characters – those with vulnerabilities, weaknesses and flaws – that fascinate us immensely.A recently published study1 in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships suggests that fictional friends may be as valuable as “real” friends, particularly when life-partners watch television shows together.“…our studies show that sharing the social connections provided by TV shows and movies can deepen intimacy and closeness. Furthermore, watching TV shows and movies together may provide couples who lack access to a shared social network of real-world friends with an alternate means of establishing this shared social identity.Previously, sharing a social world with a partner has been conceptualized in terms of sharing real-world social experiences.2 However, creating these experiences may not always be possible. Fortunately, humans are remarkably flexible in finding ways to fulfill their social needs.3 When people’s need for social connections are undermined, they turn to a variety of social surrogates that provide alternate pathways to meet this need, including comfort food,4 photos of loved ones,5 pets,6 and media like TV shows and movies.7“Recurrent characters in advertising fit into that last category of “media like TV shows and movies.”In fact, fictional characters shine so brightly in our minds that we have created a word – metafiction8 – for those moments when fictional characters become aware that they are fictional.If you doubt what I say, all you need do is suggest to Indiana Beagle that he isn’t real. You will quickly and painfully be made aware of how real a fictional character can become.It is the architecture of our brains that makes fiction so powerful.Humans are the storytelling animal.You have about 100,000 times more synapses in your brain than sensory receptors in your body. If brain synapses were strictly equal to sensory receptors – which they are not – this would mean that you and I are 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist than a world that does. So let’s assume that a single sensory receptor is worth 1,000 brain synapses. Congratulations, you’re still 100 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist than a world that does.This was the purpose of today’s Monday Morning Memo:Find some TV shows to watch with your life-partner. The shared experience will be good for both of you.Play with the idea of creating a fictional spokes-character for your company. (If you don’t know how, consider the online classes at AmericanSmallBusiness.org.)Take quality fiction more seriously. Logical, sequential, deductive reasoning is a function of analytical thought, which has its headquarters in the left hemisphere of your brain. Loosely speaking, the left hemisphere of your brain is there to connect you to the world that is, while the right hemisphere connects you to worlds that could be, should be, might be, ought to be… someday. This is where fiction comes alive.Want to hear something funny? The right hemisphere of your brain doesn’t know right from wrong or fact from fiction. That’s the left brain’s job.Our belief in fiction is made possible only by the amazing right hemisphere of our brains.Regardless of whether you believe in natural selection (evolution) as the origin of the species, or intelligent design (God), the wordless, intuitive right hemisphere of your brain is there for a reason.Don’t diminish it. Don’t disparage it. Don’t try to overcome it.It’s there for a reason.Let it do its work.Roy H. Williams