Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Todays memo is a long one, but I promise you it's worth it.Advertisers are attracted to online media when they’re not entirely happy with their investments in traditional broadcast media. To understand the reasons behind their disappointments, we need only to revisit the subject of last week’s Monday Morning Memo:“Linear, no-threshold thinking” assumes that every statistic is scalable. It’s what causes advertisers to assume they can “test the waters” with small investments, then increase their financial commitments if the test results are positive.If an ad needs to be encountered only once to trigger a sale, it’s a direct-response ad. Congratulations! You’ve successfully crafted a high-impact offer for a product with a short purchase cycle. Direct-response ads are scalable, meaning sales increase proportionately to the number of people reached. But not everything can be sold with a direct response ad. The simple truth is that most products and services require that their ads be encountered again and again.Pepsi has been a household word since before we were born, so why do they keep advertising? Couldn’t they reduce their mass media spending and still maintain their sales volume?In a word, no.We know this because Pepsi tried it.Bob Hoffman was the keynote speaker at the 2014 European conference of AdvertisingWeek:“In 2010, Pepsi cancelled all its TV advertising and its Superbowl advertising to great fanfare and bet BIG on the largest experiment in social media marketing ever attempted, ‘The Pepsi Refresh Project.” TIME magazine quoted the CEO of a New York brand consultancy, ‘This is exactly where Pepsi needs to be. These days brands need to become a movement.’ Well, they became a movement all right. I estimate The Refresh Project cost them between 50 and 100 million dollars. It got them 3.5 million Facebook likes and a 5% loss in market share, which they seem to have never recovered. That year, they dropped from the second best-selling soft drink in the US to third. Pepsi’s marketing director said, ‘The success has been overwhelming. We have more than doubled our Facebook fans. We have more than 24,000 Twitter fans.’ The L.A.Times didn’t see to agree. They called it ‘a stunning fall from grace.'”Hoffman went on to say that TV and Radio are best at creating demand, while the web is terrific at fulfilling demand. The interviewer then challenged Hoffman by saying, “But it is changing. And it’s changing fast. Ten years ago 93 percent of the public got their news from television and only 7 percent got their news online. Today it’s 26 percent online.”Hoffman’s response reflected his 40 years of experience directing ad campaigns for McDonald’s, Toyota, Shell, Nestle, Blue Cross, Chevrolet and Bank of America:“What we often confuse is the use of digital media with its power as a marketing or advertising entity. The fact that more people are using online for news is not a de facto proof that it’s a good advertising medium. Let me give you an example of that: the old-fashioned telephone. Everyone in the world had a telephone. It was a hugely popular means of communication. That didn’t make it a good advertising medium. It was a lousy advertising medium. The fact that people us it for communication or to get information or to have conversations doesn’t necessarily make something a good advertising medium.”Now let’s get back to the subject of why so many advertisers are frustrated with their TV and Radio campaigns.In last week’s memo we described motorcycles going out of control when their riders accelerated them beyond the “safe speed” threshold while navigating an S-curve. Trips through the curve below the safe threshold speed are uneventful, but trips through the S-curve above the threshold are dangerous. In other words, the ratio of crashes to speed isn’t “scalable” because the motorcycle behaves very differently at speeds above and below the threshold.The skill of the rider is another variable, of course, but although skilled riders might navigate the curve at higher speeds, there’s always a threshold at which even they are going to crash.Thresholds are inevitable when measuring human response.We must also keep in mind that humans attach complex meanings to sound. This is what makes TV and Radio effective at influencing people who aren’t currently, immediately in the market for your product or service. TV and Radio win the heart’s preference, then patiently wait for the customer to be ready to buy.The motorcycle safety threshold is all about(1.) speed and(2.) the skill of the rider.But mass media advertising is all about(1.) repetition and(2.) the impact of the message.TV and radio campaigns that deliver minimal results in the first few months often become highly effective when they’ve crossed the repetition threshold of the listener. A customer needs to encounter the average message multiple times before it is likely to be retained.Advertisers often ask, “How many times does the average person have to see or hear my message before it will be transferred into the automatic recall part of the mind?” Although this seems like a reasonable question, it’s a little bit like asking, “How many ounces of alcoholic beverage does it take for the average person to get drunk?” We can’t really answer that question until we know whether the “ounces of alcoholic beverage” are beer with 5% alcohol, wine with 14% alcohol, or Scotch with 45% alcohol.How strong are your ads?The stronger your ads, the fewer times they have to be heard. And even then, as Pepsi learned, the customer will sober up and forget you if you leave them thirsty long enough.Strong ads are created by strong writers.How many do you have working for you?Roy H. Williams

Reliable data tells us exactly how many motorcycle riders have died trying to navigate an S-curve at 100 miles per hour. The straightforward logic of traditional accounting, with its linear, no-threshold thinking, predicts one-tenth as many deaths at 10 miles per hour.But we know this is ridiculous. The number of riders that die at 10 or 20 miles per hour is likely to be zero. There is a threshold speed at which the curve becomes dangerous. Any extrapolation that crosses that threshold is certain to be inaccurate.If you understand the concept of “extrapolations that cross the threshold,” you have the key you need to understand why financially focused businesspeople often make breathtakingly bad decisions in business.The rules of accounting make it counterintuitive for a financially trained person to perceive a numerical threshold at which the laws of math are suddenly altered. But keep in mind the threshold speed of the motorcycle in the S-curve: deaths at speeds above that numerical threshold will have no correlation to deaths at speeds below it. In effect, the laws of math are suddenly altered.You and I know that an invisible force, momentum, is affecting the motorcycle and causing it to careen out of control. Although momentum can be measured, there’s no column for it on a financial spreadsheet.Momentum in business can be positive or negative, pushing your company forward or back. Advertising, public relations, word-of-mouth and social media provide momentum to a business. But a threshold called “the experience of the customer” will dramatically alter these efforts, accelerating them forward or holding them back.If your typical customer’s experience is delightful, your communication efforts will be highly effective. But if that experience falls short of delightful, advertising, public relations, word-of-mouth and social media will no longer have the desired effect.Financial types like to “hold advertising accountable,” because it’s easy to blame poor advertising for every decrease in sales opportunities. But no calculation is ever made for the cumulative impact of un-wowed customers. Financial types never consider the threshold of disappointment at which once-loyal customers abandon ship.When Michael Eisner came to Disney in 1984, he was initially perceived as a golden boy of finance, making Disney wildly profitable during a time when its rivals were faltering. He worked his miracle by putting Disney’s greatest cinematic treasures on DVD, milking every last dollar from the rich heritage that had taken the Disney brothers half a century to build. Within a few years, video sales were providing almost all the profits for Disney’s movie division and, by 2004, Disney had raked in $6 billion from video and DVD sales. But then the Disney cow was dry.Michael Eisner looked at assets and opportunities through a financial lens. He had none of the whimsy of adventure, none of the imagination or commitment to excellence that had guided the Disney brothers. While busily milking the cow and making himself more than a billion dollars in the process, Eisner quietly abandoned the values and traditions of Disney.“A company without values and traditionsis a train without a track, unable to gain momentum.”– The Monday Morning Memo for July 14, 2014“In 2003, Roy E. Disney resigned from his positions as Disney vice chairman and chairman of Walt Disney Feature Animation, accusing Eisner of turning the Walt Disney Company into a ‘rapacious, soulless’ company (against everything Walt Disney believed in and stood for.) ‘You can’t fool all of the people all the time. Nor can you succeed by getting by on the cheap,’ said Disney, referring to his accusations that Eisner slashed spending on the Disney theme parks, leading to closed rides, peeling paint and unhappy customers.”– disney.wikia.com/wiki/Michael_EisnerThe cow was angry at being milked dry.Eisner was out. Bob Iger was in.As the new CEO of Disney, Bob Iger“put an end to the practice of making cheap direct-to-video sequels of old favourites, such as ‘Cinderella II: Dreams Come True’ — Disney’s equivalent of frozen food.”– The Economist, Apr 17th, 2008, “Magic Restored: Under its new boss Disney has staged an impressive creative turnaround—and is making synergy work.”Writing for Time magazine on March 21, 2014,Kevin Kelleher maintains that whoever follows Bob Iger“will have a tough act to follow. Under Iger, Disney’s brand and business is as strong as it’s been in four decades and there is no clear path to maintaining the double-digit profit growth Disney has been enjoying… Under Iger’s leadership, Disney has seen its stock rise 250% – five times better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Iger has shut down, sold off or cut back properties like Touchstone and Miramax and bought others like Pixar for $7.4 billion and Marvel for $4 billion. Iger’s Disney is closer in spirit to the one run by the Disney brothers…”What are the values and traditions that guide your company? Are you communicating them internally (staff training) and externally (advertising and marketing) through brandable chunks?The Next Big Thing is a pile of little things. And those little things are called brandable chunks, the most versatile, effective, “right now” thing you can do to lift your marketing into the 21st century.Are you ready to work? Christopher J. Maddock, the inventor of brandable chunks, will join Jeff “The Professor” Sexton and me for a 2-day Brandable Chunks Workshop at Wizard Academy November 5-6. We’ll help you discover your brandable chunks so you can whisper them, sing them and shout them to the world. Rumors that this workshop might happen have already resulted in Engelbrecht House and Spence Manor both being full, which means we can accept only a dozen more people before it becomes too big and each of those dozen will have to snag a hotel room. I have no idea how long it might take to align – for a second time – the schedules of Maddock, Sexton and me, so let me just say it could be awhile before we can announce a second workshop.Come. It’s time to do this thing.Roy H. Williams

for Recommending You to Their FriendsAmerican retailers learned some interesting things last year. Although consumer confidence was higher during Christmas 2013 than it was during Christmas 2010, ShopperTrak tells us that in-store, holiday foot traffic declined by almost half during those three years. But don’t assume sales volume declined by half for those retailers or that half their customers bought online. A 50% decline in foot traffic simply means that we’re making half as many trips to the store.We no longer feel that we have to visit the store to learn what we need to know.A 2013 Harris Poll reports that 46% of us have shopped a brick-and-mortar store for information, then gone online to find a better price. But that same Harris Poll says that a far higher number of us – 69% – have done exactly the opposite; researched online, then bought from a local brick-and-mortar.If the result of our online research is that we visit just one store instead of two, a 50% decline in foot traffic will be the direct result.“In many instances, customers have access to more information online than when talking to an in-store sales associate. Online reviews and price comparisons enable them to feel more confident in their buying decisions…”– Jeremy Bogaisky, Forbes, Feb. 12, 2014A 2013 McKinsey & Company report echoes those findings. “Our research shows that for the average consumer, peer recommendations carry ten times more weight than recommendations from salespeople.”Of course you want your customers to recommend you to their friends; a friend has 10 times the influence of a salesperson. But before you get all excited about creating a rewards program for customers who send you their friends, please know that such schemes are almost always counterproductive.Here’s an example of why:A client told me that a buddy of his invested in a particular company and then said to him, “It’s going to skyrocket. I invested $250,000. You really ought to get in on this.” My client took his buddy’s advice and likewise invested $250,000. My client would probably have recommended that investment to everyone in his inner circle, but a disturbing betrayal made any such recommendation impossible. As he handed over the check for his investment to the financial officer of the company, the man said, “If you know anyone else who might want to invest, just keep in mind that we’re paying 10 percent to whoever sends them in.”When my client realized that his buddy had made $25,000 by “recommending” the investment to him, he felt a lot less good about the investment.And a lot less good about the buddy.My client immediately knew that if he recommended the investment to any of his friends, they would be made the same offer that he had just been made. There’s just no way that he was going to risk that.Let me say this plainly: If you try to bribe your customers, they’ll think less of you.Friendship is built on trust. A friend makes a recommendation because they believe it will be good for their friend. They don’t do it to benefit themselves or the company they’re recommending.That wouldn’t be a friend at all.That would be a salesman.To win the recommendations of customers, you must impress those customers with your performance. Focus your efforts on being consistently and truly remarkable. It’s the most effective thing you can do.Word of mouth isn’t new; it’s as old as the human race. Friendship isn’t new. Integrity isn’t new.What’s new is digital technology and the way it amplifies and accelerates everything you say. But if you look closely, you’ll see this digital knife cuts both ways. People are losing their jobs, their friends and their freedom because of things they tweet and put on FaceBook.The amplification and acceleration of digital technology is not something you can directly control. The best you can do is try – very hard – to make sure your customers have good things to say.The only reward your customers want for recommending you to their friends is for you to make those friends happy.Roy H. Williams

Michael participates in our monthly Wizard of Ads LIVE webinar. Last week, Michael asked for a method that would let him create fewer leads, but better leads.I responded by telling Michael that broad targeting can be donegeographically by zip code,financially by income,demographically by age and gender, orpsychographically by targeting specific “personas” derived from affinity groups and previous purchase histories.Anyone who knows anything about targeting already knows those things. But then I told Michael what few people know:“The key is to make sure that your leads are coming to you for the right reason. You want them to be coming to you for that thing you KNOW you can deliver better than anyone else. If they’re coming for any other reason, it’s a lower quality lead. The key is to target through ad copy. The key is to use brandable chunks.”We’ve spoken about brandable chunks before but I didn’t give you a clear explanation.Ray Smith asked, “How is a brandable chunk different from a slogan, a tagline, or a positioning statement?”I said, “Slogans and taglines are usually white noise, adspeak, something you wish people that would believe even though they probably won’t. But a good positioning statement differentiates you from your competitors in a meaningful way. The problem is that positioning statements are usually about the BIG picture. They tend to be all-encompassing, relating the totality of your company to the totality of your competition. A brandable chunk is a memorable, micro-positioning statement about JUST ONE ASPECT of your business. Consequently, you can easily have a dozen or more meaningful, brandable ‘chunks’ of highly memorable message.”Brandable chunks are memorable, micro-differentiators. They are refined from average advertising in the same way that hi-octane gas is refined from crude oil.Brandable Chunks:1. create vivid mental images.2. employ unusual word combinations.3. communicate features and benefits succinctly4. have meter (rhythm) so they tumble off the tongue.If you have the discipline to repurpose your brandable chunks in your web copy and through your face-to-face and voice-to-voice communications, your brandable chunks will bring your advertising, your web presence and your customer experience into perfect alignment. Your brand identity will be strengthened and your close rate will rise. Your customer will finally see you in 3D.We’re now going to lift some brandable chunks from a couple of better-than-average radio ads that I’m told are working quite well for a business in Michigan:TIME… IT’S THE MOST PRECIOUS THING YOU CAN GIVE SOMEONE. SPENDING TIME WITHOUT CELL PHONES, VIDEO GAMES OR ELECTRONIC DEVICES IS EVEN MORE PRICELESS. GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE WANTS TO KNOW IF YOU’VE BEEN FISHING YET…AND… WHO TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISH? IT’S AN EXCELLENT WAY TO SPEND TIME WITH SOMEONE. STOP IN TO GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE AND BE READY TO FISH. THEN, GO OUT TO THE WATER AND LEAVE DISTRACTIONS BEHIND. YOUR MEMORIES START AT GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE IN OLD TOWN… LIKE ‘EM ON FACEBOOK. GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE… REEL EM IN!Here’s the shorter, tighter ad we refined from it:Time…it’s the most precious thing you can give someone.Especially if you make sure it’s uninterrupted.No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices.Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles. And time.Grand River Bait and Tackle believes there’s no time like the present, and no present like time. Step through their door and you’ll feel time stand still.It may look like they sell bait and tackle, but what they really sell is the perfect day. Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town. Just add water.Here’s a second, original ad from that same campaign:WHETHER YOU’RE A CATCH AND RELEASE EXPERT OR JUST OUT TO CATCH DINNER… THE EASIEST WAY TO HOOK EM IS WITH FRESH LIVE BAIT! GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE HAS THE FRESHEST LIVE BAIT IN TOWN… THEY GET 2 SHIPMENTS A WEEK!!! (REEL FX) YA GOTTA BE CONFIDENT WHEN YOU FISH…MAYBE YOU HAVE A FAVORITE ROD AND REEL… IS IT READY TO HANDLE ALL THE FISH YOU’RE GONNA CATCH THIS YEAR? GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE CAN MAKE IT “CATCH-A-WHOLE-LOTTA-FISH-READY”. STOP IN TO GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE IN OLD TOWN AND GET READY TO FISH. LIKE ‘EM ON FACEBOOK TOO. GRAND RIVER BAIT AND TACKLE… REEL EM IN!Here’s the ad we refined from that one. We used only 85 words compared to the original 114 so that we can have a relaxed, easy-going delivery:Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait.And the really BIG fish prefer that you get itfrom Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.Your luck will change the moment you step through that door.You can actually feel it happening.Time slows down, your neck muscles relax and the radio plays better music.It may look like they sell bait and tackle, but what they really sell is the perfect day.Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.Just add water.Now let’s look at the memorable, brandable chunks we’ve created that could easily be repurposed in web copy and face-to-face with your customer:1. Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait.2. Grand River Bait and Tackle believes there’s no time like the present, and no present like time.3. No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices. Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles.4. Your luck will change the moment you step through that door.(The face-to-face variation would be, “Your luck changed the moment you stepped through our door.”)5. It may look like they (we) sell bait and tackle, but what they (we) really sell is the perfect day.6. Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.7. Just add water.Look at those 7 chunks.Imagine each of them as a headline on a web page.Now imagine each as a way to answer the telephone.Look the customer in the eye as you hand them their sales receipt and smile as you say another brandable chunk. This is the key to aligning your ads with your web presence with your store experience. People tend to do what they hear themselves say. You need to make sure your people are saying exactly the right things.Unlike a slogan or a tagline or a positioning statement, brandable chunks are never predictable because you have so many from which to choose.Brandable chunks are opening statements, closing statements and simple explanations of benefit to the customer. They are carefully worded pieces of a bigger corporate message. They communicate your values and beliefs. They show where your treasure is hidden. A company’s brandable chunks are the anthem of its tribe.Would you like some help crafting yours?Brandable chunks are an invention of the Wizard of Ads partners.Perhaps you should get to know us.Roy H. Williams

Her plan was obviously brilliant, so why wasn’t it working? Susan was as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. I was about to suggest an answer when she said it herself; “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”Every experienced consultant knows that a third-best plan that will be executed is better than the first or second-best plans that won’t.The first time I heard the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for lunch,” was 14 years ago when another student at Wizard Academy was explaining why he resigned his position as Chief Visionary Officer in a Fortune 500 company in which he had labored for 30 years:“Time after time I’d have all the C-level executives* in agreement with me, only to find that the rank and file would choose not to implement what the executive team had decided. In a small company you can simply replace those workers who won’t comply, but when you have more than 200,000 employees, culture eats strategy for lunch.”Another name for culture is corporate memory. And the anthem of corporate memory is, “That’s not how we do it here.”But this isn’t really about Susan or my friend from corporate America. It’s about you and what you’re trying to do.Values and traditions are the left and right rails of the railroad track that will determine the direction of your company. Moving those rails is extremely difficult and it’s impossible to do so quickly.Your company is the train that rides on those rails. A company without values and traditions is a train without a track, unable to gain momentum.Strategy is a motorcycle exploring the territory ahead.The train can easily push the motorcycle.The motorcycle can’t push the train.It’s not the job of the strategist on the motorcycle to move the railroad tracks. And only a foolish strategist would pretend those tracks don’t exist.The job of the strategist on the motorcycle is to prepare the passengers on the train for all the hills and valleys and tunnels that lie ahead, suggesting which window might offer the better view, and when they might need to turn on the lights.The job of the copywriter is to ride behind the strategist and cry out to the citizens of the countryside about the glories and wonder of the train that is about to pass their way.Roy H. Williams

1. Bring positive and negative into close proximity.2. Resist the temptation to clad them in insulation.3. Witness the flow of electricity as it leaps between the two.Speaking in 1980 of his songwriting experience with Paul McCartney, John Lennon said, “He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.”– David Sheff, All We Are Saying“The work John initiated tended to be sour and weary, whereas Paul’s tended to be bright and naive. The magic came from interaction. Consider the home demo for “Help!” – an emotionally raw, aggressively confessional song John wrote while in the throes of the sort of depression that he said made him want ‘to jump out the window, you know.’ The original had a slow, plain piano tune, and feels like the moan of the blues. When Paul heard it, he suggested a counter-melody, a lighthearted harmony to be sung behind the principal lyric – and this fundamentally changed it’s nature.”– Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Atlantic, July-August 2014, ‘The Power of Two,’ p. 80We’re talking about the magic of duality.We’re describing the foundations of transformative thought.“When he began to write songs, Paul [McCartney] wasn’t thinking about rock and roll. He wanted to write for Sinatra.”– Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Atlantic, July-August 2014, ‘The Power of Two,’ p. 80Lennon’s McCartney was Sinatra’s Riddle.I bought Why Sinatra Matters mostly because I was curious why a bestselling novelist would write a biography. Sure, Sinatra was a great singer, but since when does a great singer really matter? And why Sinatra instead of some other singer, actor, writer or photographer?What I found was that Hamill’s book isn’t so much about a person, but about a time.“Frank Sinatra was the voice of the 20th-century American city.”– Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters, p.94In the beginning, Sinatra was merely a teen idol, the heartthrob of teenage girls. Twice he tried to enlist as a soldier in WWII, but was rejected each time because of a punctured eardrum. As the other young men went off to boot camp or basic training there were a lot of lonely women left in the land. Sinatra was every girl’s boyfriend singing of his loneliness.“…in the music he professed a corrosive emptiness, an almost grieving personal unhappiness. The risk attached to his kind of singing was that it promised authenticity of emotion instead of its blithe dismissal… His singing demanded to be felt, not admired. It always revealed more than it concealed.”– Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters, p.130When the soldiers came home from WWII, Sinatra’s career fell flat.“One thing is certain: for many of those who came back from WWII, the music of Frank Sinatra was no consolation for their losses. Some had lost friends. Some had lost wives and lovers. All had lost portions of their youth. More important to the Sinatra career… the girls started marrying the men who came home. Bobby socks vanished from many closets. The girls who wore them had no need anymore for imaginary lovers; they had husbands. Nothing is more embarrassing to grownups than the passions of adolescence, and for many, Frank Sinatra was the passion.”– Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters, p. 133-134Sinatra became Sinatra when his Riddle arrived.“Sinatra started out with far more female than male fans. He ended up with more male fans. This happens to very few pop singers.”– Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters, p.127Sinatra’s Riddle had a name: Nelson. What Paul McCartney was to John Lennon, Nelson Riddle was to Frank Sinatra.The first product of the Nelson Riddle/Frank Sinatra partnership leaped out of the radio with a beaming smile on April 30, 1953. “I’ve Got The World On A String” became a runaway hit.“Lightness shines as the primary ingredient of the Riddle style… Riddle always manages to make everything sound light; that way, the weightiest ballad doesn’t become overly sentimental and insincere.”– Will Friedwald“I love how Riddle used Ravel’s approach to personality,” said Quincy Jones, who has written arrangements for everyone from Count Basie and Ray Charles to Michael Jackson. “Nelson was smart because he put the electricity up above Frank. He put it way upstairs and gave Frank the room downstairs for his voice to shine, rather than building big, lush parts that were in the same register as his voice.”Paul, if you’re reading this, I’d like to suggest that when you were young, you weren’t really admiring the dark vocal voice of Frank Sinatra as much as you were admiring the light musical voice of Nelson Riddle.Riddle “put the electricity up above Frank”just like you put the sparkle above John.If I’m right about you being affected by the arrangementsof Nelson Riddle, please let me know.And please knowthat we miss Johnalmost as much as you do.Roy H. Williams

Institutions of higher education offer a degree path, a specific series of classes that will prepare you for the journey you’re about to take. Wizard Academy’s board of directors is preparing a similar map for those happy adventurers who come here for refreshment, instruction and advice.Dr. Oz Jaxxon and space shuttle scientist Mark Fox prepared an initial list of core curricula to present to the rest of the board of directors at last Tuesday’s board meeting. It triggered an interesting conversation.I looked at the list and said, “I like it. Some of these classes are informative – giving students a new set of skills that will take them to the next level. Others are transformative – opening their eyes to new perceptions – giving them a new set of stars to shine brightly among the shadows of the mind, allowing them to navigate with greater confidence.”Dennis Collins said, “Navigate?”Knowing that Dennis had spent 40 years in advertising, Princess Pennie answered, “In advertising, navigation is strategy; finding the message that will have the greatest impact.” Dr. Nick Grant added, “The informative classes help you externalize your strategy.”I was so jarred by the next statement that I can’t remember whether it came from Corrine Taylor, Dr. Lori Barr, or chairman of the board Jean Backus. All I can remember is that a woman’s voice said, “But isn’t that communication?”“Yes!” I thought, “Public Speaking 101, Advanced Wordsmithing, Writing for Radio and the Internet and the other informative classes help students implement what they learned in transformative classes like Magical Worlds, Escape the Box and Da Vinci and the 40 Answers.”Speaking and writing, singing and acting and all the other arts flash into existence when you externalize an internal realization.Transformative classes load you up with internal realizations.Informative classes equip you to externalize those realizations.And externalized realizations are called “communication.”Dr. Grant spoke up again. “Transformative classes give you a new operating system. Informative classes give you cool applications that run on that operating system.”Small realizations make incremental differences: Evolution.Big realizations make exponential differences: Revolution.Which do you need right now?Have you decided?Good. We have a class for that.Roy H. WilliamsA

Cedric Yau is one of a handful of geniuses I know.In our most recent conversation, Cedric opened my eyes to a truth I had not previously encountered, but it reinforced everything I know about ad campaigns and it’s about to make Cedric a billion dollars.I’m not exaggerating.You’ve seen long lines of ants carrying food back to their hives, right? So where is the centralized intelligence that brings such sophisticated synchronization to their actions? If you dig even a little bit, the mystery of ant behavior moves very quickly from interesting to miraculous to intoxicatingly impossible.Consider: You and I are more than 1,800 times as tall as the ants that live in our yards. The mowed grass through which they walk would be for us a jungle 600 feet high. A single ant colony forages for food each day across an area that would be 1,156 square miles for you and me.Here’s the zinger: If you and I and all our friends are scattered across 1,156 square miles and one of us finds some food, how does that one notify the rest of us who are scattered across 1,156 square miles? Ants have no telepathy, telephones or radios and there are no bosses to give them instructions.But they do have 3 unifying principles that synchronize the entire colony.Does your business have unifying principles?Viewed in high speed at the macro level, ant behavior seems to be guided by chaos theory as their movements create a pattern too vast for the unaided mind to comprehend. But when mapped on a computer, what at first appeared to be randomness becomes a beautiful fractal image built upon the unifying principles of self-similarity.Fractal images are maps of highly organized chaotic systems and their patterns seem to mirror the behavior of the stock exchange and population fluctuations and chemical reactions. Using chaotic math, computers today are producing images that look exactly like the beauty found in nature… ferns and clouds and snowflakes and bacteria. These maps can also resemble mountains and the human brain and the frost that forms on a windowpane.Ant behavior goes from intoxicatingly impossible to seductively predictable when the principles that bring an ant colony into unity are reverse-engineered. Here are the ingredients of ant-magic:1. If you find food, take some home and leave a scented trail.2. If you find a trail, follow it and add to the scent. If that trail leads you back to the hive, turn around and follow it the other direction.3. If you don’t know where food is and you don’t where a trail is, wander.That’s what the miracle of the ant-line looks like when you reduce it down to its unifying principles.But Cedric wasn’t studying ants so that he could better understand advertising or team motivation. Cedric has an altogether different use for these insights. My closing words to Brother Yau were these: “Based on what you’ve told me, it should take about 2 years for you to quietly put one billion dollars into your bank account.”“That’s right.”“My suggestion is to then publish exactly what you did and how you did it. Spend a few months being interviewed on talk shows and then come and teach a class at Wizard Academy.”“That’s exactly what I had in mind.”We’ll keep you posted.Roy H. Williams

Have you ever gone shopping only to come home with something entirely different than what you had planned to buy?Of course you have. We all have.“Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say,‘these are the conditions, now what happens next?'”– Richard Feynman, (winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize)Advertising people can be like that, too. We like to believe that we can ask, “What does the customer want?” and an answer will be forthcoming. But in truth, what the customer wants is in a constant state of flux.Decision is a destination, a tangible place of certainty, but the multiple paths that will take us there can be faint and foggy and damp. We are confronted by choices unanticipated. We find new information, unexpected options, possibilities we did not foresee.Simply stated, our buying motives can evolve from a tiger to a mouse to a llama to a rhino to a little pink pony in the space of a single hour.Darwin would be made dizzy.Professor Sexton reminded me of all this recently when he discovered that our ongoing “evolution of motive” has a scientific name. And like all scientific names, this one is both confusing and dull: Heterogeny of Ends.Read the WIKIPEDIA entry for Heterogeny of Ends and you’ll learn that“an ongoing behavioral sequence must often be understood in terms of ever-shifting patterns of primary and secondary goals. For example, one may accept the invitation of a friend to attend an art show. Initially, the motive is simply the anticipation of a pleasant evening in good friendship, but in the course of that evening, one encounters a highly desirable work of art and wishes to purchase it. A whole new set of motives now enter the picture and exist alongside – and in addition to – the original motive.”I present this information for your consideration today because I’m concerned about the public’s growing reverence for numbers and measurements and statistics. We seem to have arrived at the silly conclusion that every decision-making process is the same.We human males are small and simple enough to think we can ask, “What does a woman want?” in the belief that someone, somewhere, someday will finally be able to answer us.But a woman will answer that question with one of her own; “Who is the woman and what time is it?”What does the customer want?Your customers want confidence that they’ve made the right decision. The big umbrella answer is confidence. But I cannot tell you what combination of information and events will give a particular customer confidence.I cannot list the little raindrop answers. And when the sad day arrives that someone finally can, human beings will no longer be magical.Roy H. Williams

When Jacqueline Bouvier married JFK she became “Mrs. Kennedy.”She was the Princess Di of her generation.Following her husband’s assassination, Jacqueline’s voice was almost never again heard in public. She quickly became the most mysterious and glamorous woman on earth. When she married Aristotle Onassis, the world’s richest man, she became forever thereafter, “Jackie ‘O’.”“Like so much in her life, the aim of her signature style was concealment. A chemical straightener disguised the naturally kinky hair she hated. The teased bouffant masked a low hairline. Kid gloves covered large, strong, mannish hands… the cut of her suit jacket artfully concealed the breadth of her shoulders and her muscular back and arms. The skirt disguised hips she thought much too broad. The shoes were specially cut to make large feet look smaller and more feminine. Sunglasses hid brown eyes set so far apart that her optician had to special-order a suitably wide bridge. Dark lenses had the additional advantage of guarding emotions that since childhood she had taken tremendous pains to hide.”– Barbara Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, (2011)But, oh, she was glamorous.A“One way or the another, all glamour follows the formula laid out by Hollywood photographer George Hurrell, ‘Bring out the best, conceal the worst, and leave something to the imagination.’ Mystery is an essential element of glamour as it provides a blank space for the imagination, a spot where the audience can project its own desires.”– Virginia Postrel, The Power of Glamour Silence, too, provides a blank space and a mystery. It is a type of glamour. Few people use it to full advantage.“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”– Leonardo da VinciNassim Nicholas Taleb, too, understands this power of silence. “Never say no twice if you mean it.”Taleb also observes, “What we call a ‘good listener’ is usually someone with skillfully polished indifference.” And when that same cold indifference turns its face toward you, the silence can hurt like frostbite. “You remember emails you sent that were not answered better than emails that you did not answer.”Roger Lincoln says,“There are two rules for success.(1) Never tell everything you know.Ha! Silence – the voice of Mystery – strikes again.Perhaps we should study it.I think maybe I’ll startnow.Roy H. Williams