Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Humility and Simplicity are the New FrontierAmericans have always treasured independence and achievement. We’ve seen ourselves as fighters who stood tall after every victory, chin up, chest out, shoulders back. And to the victor go the spoils, right? Big houses, big cars, lavish vacations; these were the American dream.But we recently learned that America is not an only child. There is no American economy or American environment separate from the rest of the world. The wind blowing across Kansas today blew yesterday through Mongolia.Take a breath of Mongolian air. Clear your thoughts. Smile into the light. This story has a happy ending:We’re about to discover the joys of humility and simplicity. Smaller houses, smaller cars, a simpler lifestyle. We may even become the “kinder, gentler nation” Ronald Reagan's vice president believed we could be. (From the Republican National Convention acceptance address of George H. W. Bush, August 18, 1988.)Here’s an email I received last week from a friend who runs a hedge fund:This meltdown in our financial markets has been horrific. A friend of mine said, “The French invented democracy, the Americans perfected it and the CDOs killed it.”And that's how I feel. Our time as a nation has past and history will not be kind to us. The future now belongs to someone else, probably China. We privatize profits and then screw the tax payers with a bailout. Our corrupt politicians permitted an unregulated monster to grow out of control until it almost destroyed our financial system. So while Wall Street and Washington lined their pockets with cash, the American people got drunk on spending and spending and spending all the money they didn't have. Now those that enjoyed leverage are fucked, forever. Most people were broke to begin with, now they're really broke. Deleveraging hurts, ouch.Warren Buffet once said the only way to go broke is on borrowed money.For those that have heard your lesson on the pendulum of history, it would be an interesting time to have you revisit that lesson in light of current events. Thank you for your memos each week and for your perspective.Although I disagree with my friend’s statement that “the future now belongs to someone else,” I do understand how he feels. (My belief is that no one else can own your future. Your past and your future belong solely to you whether you take responsibility for them or not.)I first presented Society’s 40-year Pendulum in Stockholm, Sweden, in January, 2004. Since then, more than 100 trade associations and state governments have asked me to help them better understand the rumblings of societal change they feel beneath their feet. Perhaps you've felt it, too.Ten completed social cycles – 400 years of history – seem to indicate that in the 6 years following a 40-year tipping point, the majority of older consumers will choose to follow the younger consumers’ lead. Societal change during the next 34 years seems subtle and incremental when compared to the pace of change during the 6-year transition.The last tipping point occurred in 2003. You may recall that I wrote to you about it in December of that year. The memo was titled 1963 All Over Again:Forty years is how long a true ‘generation’ stays in power, during which time social change will be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. But in the waning years of each generation, ‘alpha voices’ ring out as prophets in the wilderness, providing a glimpse of the new generation that will soon emerge like a baby chick struggling to break out of its shell.Baby Boomer heroes were always bigger than life, perfect icons, brash and beautiful: Muhammad Ali… Elvis… James Bond. But the emerging generation holds a different view of what makes a hero.Boomers rejected Conformity and their attitude swept the land, changing even the mindset of their fuddy-duddy parents. But today's teens are rejecting Pretense. Born into a world of hype, their internal BS-meters are highly sensitive and blisteringly accurate. Words like ‘amazing,’ ‘astounding,’ and ‘spectacular’ are translated as ‘blah,’ ‘blah,’ and ‘blah.’ Consequently, tried and true selling methods that worked as recently as a year ago are working far less well today. The world is again changing stripe and color. We're at another tipping point. Can you feel it?Then, 4 years ago, (Nov. 1, 2004,) I wrote,The Age of The Baby Boomer ended in 2003. The torch has been handed to a new generation with new ideas and values. Sure, we Boomers still hold the power at the top, but the prevailing worldview that drives our nation is completely other than the one we grew up with. Businesses that don't get in step are going to find it increasingly difficult to succeed…Being a Baby Boomer isn't about when you were born. It's about how you see the world…Baby Boomers were idealists who worshipped heroes, perfect icons of beauty and success. Today these icons are seen as phony, posed and laughable…Baby Boomers believed in big dreams, reaching for the stars, personal freedom, “be all that you can be.” Today's generation believes in small actions, getting your head out of the clouds, social obligation, ‘do your part.’The adoption curve of the new values by the mainstream of society began in 2003 and will be complete by mid-2008 or early 2009. You have plenty of time to get in step with tomorrow. But you need to get started today.The 6-year transition from an Idealist outlook to a Civic mindset will be complete in December, 2008.What this means to business:Purchases in the future will be less about impressing others, more about meaning and relationships. My partners and I are currently interpreting how this trend will apply to specific business categories. Do you know how it applies to yours?Tomorrow has arrived, right on schedule. Humility and simplicity will be our new adventure. And frankly, I think we’ll be better for it.Roy H. Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

for Realtors, Used Cars and Free PuppiesReal estate is a business involving mountains of money. It’s also a business in crisis. Put these together and it means ka-ching if you know how to make the phone ring for realtors.You ought not be surprised that I know how to make phones ring. What should surprise you is that I’m willing to tell you… for free.Here’s how to Make Magic in real estate:1.   Ask the realtor to show you an unusual house. More often than not, you’ll want the house to be in the price range an average person could afford.2.   What makes this house quirky or weird or memorable isn’t really important. What matters is that it has something distinctive about it.3.   Visit the house. Ponder the distinctive feature until it triggers the memory of a cultural icon.4.   Pull the icon into your ad copy. Radio works best, but this technique also works well in newspaper classifieds.5.   Always mention the price of the house.6.   Never mention the square footage, the number of bedrooms, or the address.Let’s say it’s a white, frame house with a front porch, the kind that blanketed America during the first half of the 20th century. Older parts of every town are littered with these. The only thing this house has going for it is a giant tree in the front yard.ANOUNCER: Telling your friends how to find your new house will be easy.FEMALE ON PHONE:  “We’re the house with the giant tree in the yard. You can’t miss us.”ANNOUNCER: That big tree is begging for a tire swing. Will yours be the family that finally hangs one from that massive branch? Add a white picket fence and it’s the house of Tom Sawyer. Here comes Becky Thatcher down the sidewalk. This is the house of a Norman Rockwell image. In a minute you’ll see Andy and Barney cruise past in the patrol car. Aunt Bee is making a pie in the kitchen. This is a house for celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. A home to come home to. And just two hundred and nine thousand dollars makes it yours. Want to see it? Call Kathryn Nelson at 555-5555. She’s not one of those big hair, lots-of-jewelry realtors. She’s regular people.REALTOR: Kathryn Nelson. Small hair, modest jewelry. 555-5555Okay, that was easy. Let’s try again. This time it’s a house begging for a remodel. The appliances are a weird color, the sinks and bathtubs are pink porcelain and the bathroom tile is checkerboard black and white. The light fixtures are strange.ANNOUNCER: Did you ever see Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Distinctive. Avant-guarde. Sophisticated. Straight out of The New Yorker magazine. This is the house of Holly Golightly. Ridiculously retro. Definitely not for everyone. But absolutely adorable. And it has a driveway built for a sportscar. There’s only one and this is it. Two hundred and twenty-nine thousand. And the shrubbery! I’m not even going to try to describe it. Listed by Harvey Rich Realtors, of course. Harvey Rich has all the interesting houses.REALTOR: Boring houses are for boring people. Harvey Rich has interesting houses. And I’d love to show you this one. 555-5555 Harvey Rich.Now let me make this clear: The goal is to make the phone ring. Whether or not the caller buys the advertised house is unimportant. The realtor just wants to meet folks who are thinking of moving. He or she wants a shot at listing their current home. If the respondent doesn’t like the home you featured, the realtor will happily drive them to see some other ones.NOTE: If you yield to temptation and add any of the typical “3 bedroom, two bath” real estate language, it’ll kill response deader than a bag of hammers.The Cognoscenti will recognize this technique as a variation of Being Perfectly Robert Frank:1. Selected Details.2. Interesting Angle.3. What to Leave Out.This is a Wizard of Ads signature technique. Consequently, it requires an advertiser bold enough to believe that every other realtor is doing it wrong. These people are harder to find than you think. Most advertisers secretly believe in conformity to the norm.Jason Embleton is a Cognoscenti graduate of Wizard Academy and a used car dealer. Here are a couple of radio ads Jason wrote recently:A Chevy pick-up with a sunroof. Four doors. And the back seat along with the wall behind it folds down to create the longest, roomiest cargo space of any vehicle on the road. Yours for $19,995. It’s the Swiss Army knife of trucks. Jet black with dove grey leather. It’s a weird, cool truck for a weird, cool person. See it for yourself at Embleton Auto, where the only pressure is in the tires. Recognize the technique?It’s a car you’ll want to drive forever. Just nineteen thousand, nine hundred dollars. A limited-edition Mini-Cooper with a factory-supercharged BMW engine. Black with a charcoal hood scoop and wrap-around racing stripes. Six speed transmission. It doesn’t just look fast. It’s a bullet-on-wheels that corners like a Formula One racecar. See it for yourself at Embleton Auto, where the only pressure is in the tires.Keep in mind that no one is looking for a realtor. Everyone is looking for a house. And no one is looking for a used car dealer. Everyone is looking for a car.My mother taught me this ad-writing technique when I was thirteen. My dog’s accidental puppies were ready to wean when this ad appeared in the paper:Authentic Precious Pearl puppies.Free to good homes. 555-5555“Hello?”“What kind of dog is a Precious Pearl?”After we got through telling them all about Pearl, our dog, every caller wanted a puppy.The secret is knowing how to make the phone ring.And now you know how.Aloha and Aroo.Roy H. Williams

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

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