Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“What will he write of us, Cissy, this young man who has taken it upon himself to tell our stories?”“I’m not a mind reader, Alice.”“He never met us. He didn’t know us. He has seen us only through the lens of books he little more than scanned.”“He will write what he will write.”“But I’m so tired of it all, these writers who remember only the scandals.”“I don’t think he’s like that. His book will be historical fiction.”“That’s even worse.”“Perhaps.”“Historical fiction. What does that mean?”“He plans to tell the tale we hid from the world, Alice, not the tales that have been told before.”“Good god, you don’t mean…”“Yes. You, me and Ellie. Cal, Willie and Nick.”“Please tell me you’re only being mean.”“Alice, it’s happening. Face it. He pieced it all together.”“You and I were friends once, Cissy.”“Yes.”“But not anymore.”“No, not anymore.”–   Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884 – 1980)–   Eleanor Medill “Cissy” Patterson (1884 – 1948)AAs I write the words of Cissy and Alice, they step from an unchanging past into a myriad of possible futures. They step tentatively at first, testing the waters of time with pointed toes as though the temperature might be unkind.Then they rush laughing into life, dancing on the waters as they understand the opportunity they've been given.I’m writing the chaotic story of the intersecting lives of six persons. Dozens of books have been written about five of the six, though no author has ever noticed that all five were actors in a single play.The sixth invididual, Cal Carrington, was also real and his relationship with the five was exactly as I will describe.My novel begins in 1884 and ends in 1948. Teddy Roosevelt makes an occasional appearance, although he is not a principal character.The encounters and relationships I've woven together were sucked from the dark archives of Time Magazine, the diaries of neighbors, books written by other authors and my own imagination. I've been researching the sacred six since February, 2001.I believe their story would have been told long ago except that Alice Roosevelt would have sued for slander. And since Alice outlived the other five, their amazing story died with her.Until now.Roy H. Williams

2008 is shaping up to be an unhappy year for most product and service categories. If your year-to-date numbers are trending ahead of 2007, I salute you.Today’s Monday Morning Memo is for the remaining 96 percent of American business owners.Here’s what I want you to do:1. Write in a vertical list the names of every competitor you face in your chosen product/service category. If you need help remembering them, look in the Yellow Pages. This should take no more than 10 to 12 minutes. Don’t leave anyone out.2. Write next to each name an estimate of that company’s sales volume in the category in which you compete.3. Add your own name and sales volume to the list.4. Total the dollars that you’ve estimated will be spent in your product/service category this year in your trade area. This is your Market Potential.5. Tell us the name of your city or trade area and its approximate population.6. Email all this information to Tamara@WizardofAds.comNow for the “Treasure” part:1.   I’m going to ask my market research department to verify or modify the snapshot you’ve given us of your Market Potential. You'll receive the results by email.2.   Ninety-nine of you will be invited to be my guests in Austin April 14-15 for the unveiling of an all-new presentation and workshop: How to Make Business Good When Times are Bad.  3.   This is a session I’ll soon be presenting to business owners from coast to coast at $25,000 per market visit. But 99 of you will get to experience it in Austin for free.You’ll learn to identify your Limiting Factors, the things that've been holding you back.You’ll learn to evaluate your Competitive Environment, the key to good strategy.You’ll learn to develop Unifying Principles, the secret of esprit de corps.You’ll learn to leverage your Defining Characteristics, the essence of persuasive ads.You’ll learn Wanek’s Ways to significantly increase the believability of your advertising, your sales presentations, positioning statements, tag lines and slogans. (There are only 6 things you can do. I'll teach you all 6, courtesy of my partner, Tom Wanek.*)You’ll return home equipped to take your place among that happy 4 percent of business owners who are trending ahead of last year.Interested?Get started on your list of competitors and sales volumes. Be sure to tell us the name of your trade area and its population. We need to have this information as soon as possible.Have a great week.Yours,Roy H. Williams

Answer: If you knew, it wouldn't be a blind spot.Accelerate the performance of your business in 2008. Find your blind spot and fix it.There are 7 common blind spots with 4 common causes.The most common blind spots have to do with…1. customer profiling.What traits do your customers have in common other than the fact they all buy from you? Are you seeing your customers as they really are, or are you seeing them as you wish them to be? False profiling leads to expensive mistakes.2. reputation.Consider the people who don’t buy from you. Are they buying elsewhere because they haven’t heard about your company, or is it because they have? I’ve never met a business owner willing to believe their company had a bad reputation.3. relevance.Most “unique selling propositions” are irrelevant to the customer. Are your ads answering questions no one was asking?4. location.Yesterday’s right location is tomorrow’s wrong one. Has the future arrived and left you behind in a weird part of town? Or did you fall into the happy trap of cheap rent only to find yourself invisible?5. staff.How consistently is your staff delivering the experience you’ve crafted for your customer? The fact that your staff is perky and happy doesn’t always mean they’re doing their jobs. Have you been confusing attitude with performance? Are you one of those big-hearted bosses who will excuse incompetence as long as the employee seems loyal and sincere?6. price credibility.Do you know the prices of your competitors in your product or service category? Or do your customers know more than you? If you say to me, “I don’t worry about what the competition is doing, I just worry about what we’re doing,” I swear I’ll slap you.7. media myths.Are you anxious to find a more effective media? If so, you’ve got really bad ads. I’ve never seen a company fail because they were using the wrong media or reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen thousands fail because they were saying the wrong things. A powerful message will produce results in any media.The most common causes of blind spots are…1. entitlement.Do you believe your business deserves to grow each year simply because it’s had another birthday?2. preference and denial.Do you mistakenly believe that other peope think like you do? Are you so focused on your goals that you can’t see reality? Have you attended one-too-many positive thinking seminars? If so, you’re on dangerous ground, amigo. “Well, that can’t be true because, well, it just can’t.” Is this really your answer?3. misinformation.Do you usually believe what you’re told? A dinner companion says to you, “The food here is terrible. I’m never coming back.” But when the smiling manager arrives at the table and asks, “How was everything?” your companion replies, “It was great.” Are the people around you telling you what you want to hear? Are you part of a group of business friends who telephone each other for false reassurance?4. risk aversion.Did you work hard to “build up your business” and now you’re taking it easy a little, enjoying the fruits of your labor? Congratulations. That warm glow you’re feeling means you’re about to be toast. If you’re not acutely aware of your competitive environment, you’re coasting, losing momentum and in danger of being overtaken. You became a self-made man or woman because you took big chances when you had little to lose, right? But now that life is good, you abandoned this aggressive behavior and expect good things to happen because “you earned it.” Remember the tired old elephant whose butt you kicked to get where you are today? The new elephant is you.Am I your enemy or your friend?This was a dangerous memo for me to write because folks tend to be sensitive about their weaknesses. So if at any time you felt belittled, insulted or offended while reading this memo, there’s a pretty good chance we found your blind spot.Still friends, right?Yours,Roy H. Williams

Courage… Curiosity… Intuition.In the biggest news since Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a beagle has taken top honors at Westminster for the first time in history. Arooo! Aroo-Aroooooo!In the happy little village where I spend a lot of time, beagles are the symbol of curiosity and intuition, reliable guides to success in 2008.Haven’t you heard? Maintaining the status quo will yield a decline in 2008 for most business categories.The February 8 issue of the Wall Street Journal had this to say:“Retailers turned in their worst monthly sales results in nearly five years, and big chains appeared to be girding themselves for a prolonged slowdown in consumer spending by announcing plans to close hundreds of stores and cut thousands of jobs.”“Even gift-card redemptions, which were expected to give January sales figures a bigger lift, instead offered a glimpse at just how strapped consumers are. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday noted that redemptions were below its expectations, and said consumers were holding onto the cards longer — or using them to buy groceries rather than treats like electronics.”The beagle called Intuition might seem to be a chaser of rabbits, a rowdy without decorum, a runaway balloon on a windy day, but the joy of the beagle is neither random nor reckless. Her path connects the dots of an image too big to see, a pattern you’ll recognize when you’ve climbed higher than where you stand.Do you want to climb higher? Follow your beagle. She'll lead you to success.2008 will be a grand adventure if you'll raise an intuitive ear and listen to what's blowing on the wind.Do you plan to run with the beagles or stay on the porch?Arooo! Aroo-Arooooooo!Roy H. Williams

1. See your destination in your mind.“When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”– White Rabbit2. Start walking.“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”– Lao Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC)3. Think ahead as you walk.“It’s like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow    4. Don’t quit walking.“Don't wait. Where do you expect to get by waiting? Doing is what teaches you. Doing is what leads to inspiration. Doing is what generates ideas. Nothing else, and nothing less.” – Daniel Quinn5. Make no deadlines.“Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.”– Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC – 184 BC)“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”– Margaret Thatcher, April 4, 19896. Look back at the progress you made each day.“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.” Genesis 1:317. If evening finds you at the same place you were this morning, take a step before you lay down.The magic isn’t in the size of your actions, but in the relentlessness of them. “It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.” – Henry Van Dyke    Never let a day pass without making, at the very least, a tiny bit of progress. Do NOT tell yourself you’ll make up for it tomorrow. (That seductive lie is the kiss of death.) Make a phone call. Lick a stamp. Correct a misspelled word. Something. Anything.You realize I'm talking about business, not hiking, right?A second common mistake is to get these steps out of order. If you skip Step 1, “See your destination,” and go straight to step 2, “Start walking,” you’ll be a wanderer, a drifter on the ocean of life, sadly on your way to lying beneath a tombstone that says, “He Had Potential.”Even more dangerous is to go from Step 1, “See your destination,” directly to Step 3, “Think ahead,” without ever doing Step 2, “Start walking.” These are the people who never get started. Analysis paralysis. Lots of anxiety and plans and meetings and revisions and studies and evaluation and research can make you think you're getting somewhere when you're not.Gen. George S. Patton said it best, “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” In other words, there is no perfect plan. Shut up and get started.Visitors to Tuscan Hall will recall a beautiful stairway that leads into a wall, then does a 180 halfway up to finish in exactly the opposite direction. At the top of those stairs a magnificent catwalk runs the entire length of the building to a gallery of fine art overlooking the floor below.This is the Journey of Life.If you find yourself headed in the wrong direction, you can always correct your way.But only if you know your destination.Have a great week.Roy H. Williams

I was freshly married to Pennie and barely old enough to see over the dash of a car but I wanted to show her the magical places of my childhood, so we saved up enough money for 3 tanks of gas and made the 200-mile drive from Broken Arrow to Ardmore, Oklahoma.I never knew my father’s father. A couple of photographs and a pocket watch are all that remain of the original Roy H. Williams. But my mother’s dad I knew. Roy Pylant (PIE-lant) was the iceman in Ardmore for more than half a century.My career as an iceman began one afternoon when I was five. A restaurant called for 100 pounds of crushed ice and I went with Daddy Py to deliver it. I watched him dump the ice into the restaurant’s icemaker and then I carried the empty canvas bag back to the truck. I wasn’t big enough to do much else.As I walked away I heard, “Looks like you got you a new helper.”“That’s my grans-ton Little Roy. He saves me a lotta steps.”Daddy Py couldn’t say “grandson” without putting a T in it.Daddy Py’s house had chickens and a little stone washhouse and a garage from which you could see the edge of the world if you climbed up onto its flat tar roof.Once, when I was nine, Daddy Py and I took a break from crushing ice to go with Larkin from Larkin’s Bait Shop. He needed to check his trot lines and asked if we wanted to go along. Trot lines were illegal, of course, but Larkin knew how to hide them so he never got caught. He got a big catfish that day and I got my first ride in a motorboat. I also saw Tucker Tower. It was even cooler than the garage at Daddy Py’s house.Summer after summer, Daddy Py and I would roll out of bed early, drive to the ice plant and slide 300-pound blocks of ice onto his ‘65 Chevy long-narrow pickup. Roll the tarp over the ice, drive to Lake Murray, crush and bag the ice, toss it quick onto the truck, cover it again with the tarp and deliver it to the convenience stores.I was good at it.As a child, it never occurred to me that my family spent summer vacations at Daddy Py’s because we didn’t have the money to go anywhere else. I figured we went there because it was the grandest place on earth. And Mama Py took care of us all.Back then they didn’t let you become a grandmother unless you could cook and Mama Py was a grandmother of five. Her food glowed like the sword Excalibur. Dopers would give up drugs for it. Ministers praised it from the pulpit. Shakespeare wrote sonnets about it.Mama Py had a vegetable garden. Bright rays of color would shine from her kitchen windows as she prepared tomatoes, okra and corn on the cob with bowls of beans and fried potatoes. Her kitchen table glimmered like a leprechaun’s pot of gold.Then Daddy Py would arrive with a tinfoil bundle and 2 mysterious jars of liquid. The quart Pepsi bottle with the screw-on cap contained a thin, grey-brown au jus, redolent with course black pepper. The baby food jar contained an equally thin, red liquid that sparkled with what appeared to be cayenne. The tinfoil contained sliced brisket. Airplanes buzzed the house to get a sniff of it. This was Lieutenant McKerson’s barbecue.We delivered ice to him every morning.The sidewalk in front of McKerson's was broken. The building had no air conditioner. A tightly sprung screen door traded magical aromas for outside air. There was a hole worn in the linoleum in front of the serving counter, its edges smooth, tapering down to a mirror of grey cement, the silent work of a million shoes standing, twisting, turning to leave with their tinfoil treasures and sparkling jars. I looked into that mirror and saw the soul of America.And it was beautiful.Rich men had tried for decades to get McKerson’s recipe by offering to franchise his little place, but McKerson had no interest. He cooked for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.Each morning I’d hold open the screen door and Daddy Py would plunge into the mist with a 12-and-a-half-pound block of ice. I never saw McKerson’s face. These early morning hours had him boiling Pepsi bottles and baby food jars in a 25-gallon aluminum pot. I saw only the white apron strings tied behind his neck and back. He didn't turn to see who we were. Our delivery of the ice was a morning ritual worn as smooth as the hole in the linoleum. We were gone in less than ten seconds. Ice is an impatient master.One day as we drove away, I asked, “What branch of the service was Lieutenant McKerson in?”“He was never in the military. His mama just liked the name.”A decade later I sat with Pennie, my young wife, across the street from Lieutenant McKerson’s in Ardmore. Daddy Py and Mama Py were dead. I told Pennie about the Pepsi bottles, the baby food jars and the soul of America. We were gazing in silence at the tired little building when an ancient man emerged in a glowing white apron. He hung an Open sign on a hook outside. We watched as he went back in.I sat and thought.Then I drove away, unwilling to taint the taste of the memory.Roy H. Williams 

In the language of academics:The central executive of working memory is the new battleground for marketers. Writers are successfully surprising Broca, thereby gaining the momentary attention of the public, but an absence of salience remains.In the language of newscasters:Are your ads gaining the attention of the public but failing to get results? Find out why and learn exactly what you can do about it. Stay tuned for complete details. (Insert commercial break here.)In the language of the street:Ads have gotten more creative, but they haven’t gotten more convincing. This sucks for advertisers and the public isn’t helped by it, either.In the language of clarity:Can your product be differentiated?Can you point out that difference quickly?Can you explain why the difference matters?This is effective marketing.To differentiate your product powerfully and clearly:1.   See it though the eyes of the public. (Insiders have too much knowledge.)2.   Ignore everything that doesn’t matter.3.   Focus on what the public actually cares about.4.   Say it in the fewest possible words.5.   Close the loopholes by anticipating the customer’s unspoken questions.Have a great week.Roy H. Williams

January 28, 2008John and Jane Doe4321 Happily Thereafter Ave.Everytown, USATo the Companies Who Want Our Money,Yesterday’s selling techniques aren’t working so good. Have you noticed?We’re betting that your traffic has been trending downward for the past few months. Are we right? (If we’re wrong, keep up the good work. You’re doing all the right things.)But if your traffic has, in fact, been trending downward, here are some things for you to think about:Today’s customer expects easy access to information.And that information includes the price.Quit trying to romance everything. Cut the hype. Just say it clean and tight, shoulders back, looking us directly in the eye.Give us the truth with clarity. Transparency. Openhanded disclosure. Nothing hidden behind your back.If you tell us about a product or service online and we wonder what it costs and we learn the only way you’ll tell us the price is if we give up our contact information, we think: 1.   you’re charging too much and you know it.2.   you want an opportunity to “overcome our objections” or3.   you’re planning to contact us and control the conversation with rigged questions       under the pretense that you’re “consulting” us for our own good.4.   you want us to give you a credit card number,5.   but what you really need is a clue.Sorry, we don’t mean to be rude.You seem to be sincere in your confusion about why traffic is down and we’re just trying to tell you the truth you need to hear.Yes, it’s partly the economy.But you’ve also lost touch with the times.You’ve got reasons for not disclosing your prices. We understand that. You don’t want to give your competitors “the edge” or something or other. But companies with good prices aren’t afraid to share them. In their ads. Over the phone. On their websites. From the housetops.Or at least that’s how it seems to us.Have a great 2008.John and Jane Doe

In January of 2004 I launched a public presentation: Society’s 40-year Pendulum. Audiences from Stockholm to Sydney to Vancouver to Myrtle Beach will recall my statement, “2003 was the first year in a 6-year transition from the Idealist perspective to the Civic.”2008 will be the sixth and final year of that transition.Labels like Baby Boomer and Gen-X and Soccer Mom assume a person’s outlook is determined by when they were born. This is a very foolish assumption.Look around and you’ll see that Baby Boomers aren’t Boomers anymore. Most have adopted an entirely new outlook and are becoming part of what’s happening now. By the end of 2008 there won’t be a Baby Boomer left in America. The last, reluctant holdout will finally admit that Woodstock is over, Kennedy is dead, and the Idealism of the 60’s was a wistful dream.In their 1993 book, Generations, Strauss and Howe asserted that western society swings from an Idealist outlook to a Civic perspective and back again with the precision of pendulum. And at the bottom of each arc, the new views introduced by that generation's youth will be adopted by the adults within 6 years of the tipping point.1963 introduced the Idealist outlook we associate with “Baby Boomers.” 1968 was the final year of that transition. By 1969, everyone in America, regardless of their age, was seeing through rose colored lenses.2003 was 1963 all over again, but this time we're headed in the opposite direction.2008 will be the last year of our transition to a Civic perspective.Here’s what to remember when selling in 2008:1. Efficiency is the new Service.Your customer is saying, “Quality and price and quick, please. I’ve got things to do. Thanks.” Service and selection still matter, but not nearly so much as they once did. Inefficient organizations built on high-touch “relationship” selling will decline. Today’s customer is magnetically drawn to efficiency. This attraction will increase over the next few years.2. Authenticity is essential.Listen to the street. “Being cool” has become “Keepin’ it real.”Naiveté is rare today. Your customer is equipped with a bullshit detector that is highly sensitive and amazingly accurate. And the younger the customer, the more accurate their bullshit detector.When selling, remember: If you don’t admit the downside, they won’t believe the upside.Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Leonard Pitts gave us an example of “keepin’ it real” when he opened his syndicated column recently with the following lines:I’ve got nothing against fame. I’m famous myself. Sort of.OK, not Will Smith famous, or Ellen DeGeneres famous. All right, not even Marilu Henner famous.I’m the kind of famous where you fly into some town to give a speech before that shrinking subset of Americans who still read newspapers and, for that hour, they treat you like a rock star, applauding, crowding around, asking for autographs.Then it’s over. You walk through the airport the next day and no one gives a second glance. You are nobody again.Dave Barry told me this story about Mark Russell, the political satirist. It seems Russell gave this performance where he packed the hall, got a standing O. He was The Man. Later, at the hotel, The Man gets hungry, but the only place to eat is a McDonald’s across the road. The front door is locked, but the drive-through is still open. So he stands in it. A car pulls in behind him. The driver honks and yells, “Great show, Mark!”For the record, I consider Leonard Pitts to be one of the greatest living writers in the world today. Read his column and see if you don’t agree.3. A Horizontal Connectedness is replacing yesterday’s vertical, social hierarchy. Labels like “white collar” and “blue collar” sound almost racist today. The new American dream isn’t about pulling ahead and leaving the others behind. It’s about becoming a productive member of the team.“Winning” has become less important than “belonging.”Listen to the streets. “I’m number one,” gets the response, “You ain’t all that, dog. You ain’t all that.”Labor unions were deader than a bag of hammers in 2004, a relic of the past, so when I predicted that collective bargaining would reawaken and gain momentum during the coming Civic outlook, audiences often laughed or folded their arms and curled a lip, thinking I was advocating organized labor. (I wasn’t.)Have you heard about the Hollywood writer’s strike? Expect to see Wal-Mart unionized in the upcoming years. Hide and watch. See if I’m not right.4. Word-of-Mouth is the new Mass Media. Video games and cable TV stripped our kids of their innocence at an early age, but the Technology that robbed them of idyllic childhood also empowered them with cell phones, blogs and blackberries.Viral marketing wasn’t created by the advertising community. It’s simply the result of a horizontally-connected generation (1.) sharing their happy discoveries with each other and (2.) trying to protect one another from mistakes. WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS: It’s no longer enough just to have great advertising. When your customers carry cell phones and can email all their friends with a single click, you need to be exceptionally good at what you do.5. Boasting is a waste of time.Your customer is saying, “Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me.”IN YOUR ADS, do you include “proofs of claim” your reader, listener or viewer can experience for themselves?6. Everyone is broken a little.And the most broken are those who pretend they are not.It’s time to take the advice of Bill Bernbach, “I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”7. Keep in mind that during the next 12 months, as we complete the transition from the Idealist outlook to the Civic perspective, these trends will be accelerated by the facts that:(1.) Access to information is going up and(2.) Access to money is going down.By the way, if I ever win a Pulitzer, I’ll immediately start wearing French shirts with 3-inch cuff links that spell out PULITZER PRIZE WINNER in diamonds.But if what I said earlier about “the last, reluctant holdout” is true, I expect my attitude will change approximately one second before midnight on December 31, 2008.Have a great week.Roy H. Williams

Every business that tries to rise to its full height will bump its head on a glass ceiling they didn’t realize was there.That glass ceiling is created by the business owner’s core beliefs about the customer.Traditionally, 5 out of 10 customers will be in transactional shopping mode. The other 5 will be in relational shopping mode.Shoppers in transactional mode are looking for information, facts, details, prices. Their thoughts revolve around the product itself, not the purchase experience.Relational-mode shoppers are looking for a pleasant experience. They want to find the right place, the right person from whom to buy, an expert they can trust. Meanwhile, the transactional shopper is gathering the information that will allow them to be their own expert.A customer can be a relational shopper in one category and a transactional shopper in another. The labels don’t define the customer. They describe only the mode of shopping, the momentary mindset of the decision maker, the type of ad to which he or she will respond.Here’s what’s currently happening in America:One of the 5 relational shoppers has begun to think transactionally.The reasons are:(1.)   concerns about the economy,(2.)   access to information via search engines.Americans spent $29.7 billion online at Christmas (Nov. 1 to Dec 31,) approximately $100 for every man, woman and child in the nation, up 19% from the previous year. In other words, there was $100 fewer dollars per person spent in brick-and-mortar stores in your town than was being spent just a few years ago at Christmastime.And for the first time in the history of Starbucks, traffic is in decline.Starbucks has always sold relationally. We pay for the atmosphere of the café with its half-lit earthtones and iconic logo – the idea of affordable luxury – as much as we pay for the coffee. But some of us have begun to compare the quality and price of the coffee itself to the quality and price available from other providers.Beginning to get the picture?Starbucks has found the glass ceiling. In other words, they’re selling as much coffee as can be sold relationally.I’m sure you have your own idea about how Starbucks should respond to their decline in traffic, but the point of today’s memo is this: A glass ceiling exists when you overestimate the number of people who prefer to buy the way you prefer to sell.People never really change their mind. They merely make new decisions based on new information. Will Starbucks give us new information, a new perspective in 2008, or will they just whine at their marketing department for the inexplicable decline in traffic?More importantly, what new information will you deliver in 2008? (You realize this memo isn’t really about Starbucks, right? I don’t care about Starbucks. I care about you.)The Tiny Giant is that 1 relational shopper in 5 who is moving to a transactional perspective. This effectively shifts the marketing balance from 5/5 to 6/4. This doesn’t sound like a big thing until you realize that 6 is 50% more than 4.Do you have the clear answers that 6 in 10 shoppers demand? Are you willing to provide the growing tribe of transactional shoppers with the information, facts, details and prices they expect?Or will you simply demand that your marketing team deliver more customers in relational shopping mode? (Please, I’m begging you for your own sake, don’t fall into the trap of believing the answer is to “target” relational shoppers though some magical mailing list, email list, or sponsorship package.)Think about it, won’t you?Your financial future hangs in the balance.Roy H. Williams