Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

When The Cluetrain Manifesto was published in 1999, it smacked of silly futurism, like Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone and Dick Tracey’s TV-wristwatch.Both of which are now possible.Likewise, the societal shift predicted by The Cluetrain is already happening. Can you feel it?Here’s a look at a few of the 95 Theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto. These statements were laughed at when they first appeared 8 years ago, but no one's laughing anymore:1. Markets are conversations.Are your ads a conversation with your customer, or are they a pompous lecture?2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.Are you marketing to people with names and faces and favorite places, or are you marketing to a “target”?3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.Are your ads written the way people talk, or the way ads talk?4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.Would the public describe your ads as “open, natural and uncontrived”?15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business – the sound of mission statements and brochures – will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.Wow. That's already happening. You've noticed it, haven't you?22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.What are your values? Do you admit your mistakes? Do you talk straight, or go sideways? Are you willing to say what you really think?23. Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.I've said it often: “Most ads aren't written to persuade. They're written not to offend.” Do you have the courage to take a position and suffer the wrath of those who disagree? Will you choose who to lose?24. Bombastic boasts – “We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ” – do not constitute a position.In my 1998 book, The Wizard of Ads, the fourth of my Twelve Most Common Mistakes in Advertising (chapter 35) was: “Unsubstantiated Claims. Advertisers often claim to have what the customer wants, such as 'highest quality at the lowest price,' but fail to offer any evidence. An unsubstantiated claim is nothing more than a cliché the prospect is tired of hearing. You must prove what you say in every ad. Do your ads give the prospect new information? Do they provide a new perspective? If not, be prepared to be disappointed with the results.”Is your business in step with the fast-coming future?2007 is winding to a close. We’re only Thanksgiving and Christmas away from a sparkling New Year’s Day.Then, Bang! 2008.You need to be in Austin December 12-14 if you want to make 2008 the best year your business has ever had.The internet has become our phone book, dictionary, encyclopedia, sales brochure, research vehicle and back fence for gossip. Like it or not, you're going to have to do a better job online if you want to flex your muscles in 2008.Come. We’ll give you exactly the tools you need. In just 3 days you’ll learn the new rules of communication and we’ll demonstrate specific techniques that will allow you to apply these new rules to your own situation.It’s an event that happens only once a year. It'll be Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg and me and a bunch of nuts and bolts. You coming?Roy H. Williams

Procedural Memory is the key to your brand being automatically remembered.Accomplish this through Relevance x Repetition.Symbolic Thought is how to make a brand meaningful.Access this by linking the unknown to the known.Particle Conflict is the way to make a brand interesting.Achieve this by adding an element that doesn’t belong, but fits.There’s a trend in marketing today to make brands “fully integrated” and “seamless.” In other words, to eliminate all incongruity and surprise.Shallow blands are fully integrated and seamless. To be deep and attractive, a brand must have incongruent characteristics that make it interesting.Just like a person.Francis Bacon said it 400 years ago: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”The most boring person in your life is the one “fully integrated and seamless.” Such people are painfully predictable.Delight is built on surprise. Comedy requires it. Predictability is death to the imagination, strangulation to the soul, a suffocation of the spirit.What is interestingly incongruent in your ads, your sermons, your sales pitches, your songs?Don’t listen to your friends and neighbors. They can tell you only what kinds of ads, sermons, pitches and songs they prefer to see and hear. They cannot tell you what will actually work.Young people in advertising have enthusiasm, theories, and fresh ideas. Old coots have experience and answers. It takes years of experiments and mountains of money to discover what will and will not work.Do you want to spend your own years and mountains? Or would you prefer to listen to a coot?Roy H. Williams

“I’m a surfer,” she said as she extended her hand.It almost broke my heart.Her husband had moved her into a tiny fixer-upper on the tear-stained cheek of an Oklahoma town. With a young child dangling from each of her arms and a third one on the way, she needed us to see her as she had been.“I’m a surfer.”Please understand that in my heart I’m reckless and free under an open sky. Please. I need this.“I’m Roy and this is my wife, Pennie. Welcome to the neighborhood.”Show me what a person admires and I’ll tell you everything about them that matters.And then you’ll know how to connect with them.You’ll know how to cheer up your new neighbor when you understand what she admires.You’ll know how to sell the man looking into your face when you understand what he admires.You’ll know how to attract future customers through your ads when you understand what they admire.Have you ever peeked into the childish dreams of the people who would buy from you? If so, you’ve got the essence of a powerful, persona-based ad campaign. But never assume you can learn of your customer’s dreams by asking.Dreams are hidden in dark closets of the heart because our truest motives often embarrass us. So we craft logical, comfortable lies to justify what our childlike hearts have chosen. And then we tell these lies and believe we’re telling the truth:“I bought it for the gas mileage.”The prestige of owning a new car had nothing to do with it?“I read it for the articles.”You’ve never noticed the photos of the naked girls?“I’m only doing this job until something better comes along.”It scares you to believe this is as good as it gets?Learn the common hungers of your customers and you’ll know the words to use in your ads.“Freedom” is a magnetic word to a person who is feeling trapped.“Familiar” is a comforting word to a person who feels life is spinning out of control.“Defiant” is an attractive word to a person who’s angry.“Together” is a magical word to a person who feels alone.“Meaningful” is a powerful word to a person feeling empty.All of us are broken a little. And the most badly broken are those who feel they are not.I’m always hesitant to pull back the curtain and show you the realities of effective marketing. Robert Louis Stevenson said it best:“There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.”I think that’s all I’m going to say today.Roy H. Williams

Think too deeply about customer profiling and you’ll soon fall into niche marketing.And the problem with niches is they’re not created equal.Have you chosen a niche too small?Reis and Trout inadvertently popularized niches in their extraordinary 1981 book, Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind. That book taught us to consider the strengths of our competitors and the “positions” they occupy in the customer’s mind before embarking on our own journeys of self-identification. But many who read Positioning saw it only as a treatise on niche marketing. They were wrong.Chris Anderson openly celebrated niches in last year’s book, The Long Tail, which was likewise misunderstood.Tragically, the seductive logic of niche marketing makes perfect sense even when it does not apply.Here’s a classic example:A dentist in a small town came to me for consultation. He no longer wanted to see 6 or 7 patients a day who required only a thousand dollars worth of dentistry apiece. He had chosen a niche and wanted me to create a marketing strategy whereby he would see only 1 or 2 patients a day who required 10 thousand to 30 thousand dollars worth of dentistry each. “And make sure that all of them have the money. Lots of people need that much dental work, but most of them don’t have the money.”I fear he left disappointed. There just aren’t enough rich people with bad teeth in the average small town. My friend had chosen a niche too small.Some of my clients serve larger populations that allow us to successfully target a niche. But when onlookers see this success and assume the same strategy will work in their own small towns, the niche-devil shows his horns.Considering a niche? Do the math.Be detached and objective. This isn’t a time for wishful thinking.If your marketplace isn’t big enough for niche marketing, you can still embrace (1.) positioning, and (2.) persona-based ad writing, a technique that speaks to personality type and appeals to a significant percentage of readers even when those readers are randomly chosen.Persona-based writing is built upon a customer’s preferred style of buying.Niche marketing is built upon your own preferred style of selling.Positioning is built around the strengths of your competitors.Each of these is a decision-making technique, a perspective we bring to the creative process.Persona-based writing is about your customer’s personality, not their demographic profile. To what personality types are your ads currently written?Positioning is about the realities of the marketplace. Your competitors occupy positions in the mind of your customer. Do you recognize these positions, or are you navigating with your eyes closed?Niche marketing is about specialization, focused inventories, narrow training, becoming the king of an available kingdom. But before you plop your heinie on the throne, be sure the kingdom you’ve selected has enough subjects to provide you the living you desire.Advertising cannot create population.Please don’t let anyone tell you that it can.Roy H. Williams

People are more interesting than non people.Mingle a bit of wood, paint and cloth, then drench the pile in sparkling imagination and a new person leaps onto the stage.Few techniques in communication are as powerful – or as often overlooked – as personification: ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects.It turns dead corporate brands into living persons. Who are the Keebler Elves, the Jolly Green Giant, Mr. Clean and Ronald McDonald if not personifications of the brands they represent?This memo isn’t about clumsy corporate cartoon characters. Personification is much bigger and more elegant than mere mascots and logos. When conceived in words, lively words, personification summons the imagination and triggers the emotions.Listen to how Robert Frost gives human characteristics to inanimate objects in his storm poem, Once by the Pacific:The shattered water made a misty din.Great waves looked over others coming in,And thought of doing something to the shoreThat water never did to land before.The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.You could not tell, and yet it looked as ifThe shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,The cliff in being backed by continent;It looked as if a night of dark intentWas coming, and not only a night, an age.Someone had better be prepared for rage.There would be more than ocean-water brokenBefore God's last 'Put out the Light' was spoken.Waves looked over others and thought of doing something to the shore, which was lucky in being backed by cliff?Personification. Can you do it? Can you speak a person into existence?Herman Melville did it 156 years ago in 3 short words, “Call me Ishmael.”I did it 12 years ago in 5 words for Rolex and Everest, “…the world’s most angry mountain.”Apple is doing it in 7 words right now. “I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC.”(Did it ever occur to you that the audio track from these ads would work even better on radio than it does on TV? Evidently, it’s never occurred to anyone who sells radio airtime, either.)We gaze longer at pictures that have people in them than at pictures that have no people. I believe the same is true of words. We pay more attention to words that tell us of people than to words that don’t.That’s enough rambling for one Monday morning. Now go look Today in the eyes, smile sweetly and say, “I own you. You’re mine. You’re happy and warm and comforting and good and if you think for one second that I’m going to let you be otherwise, you’re sadly mistaken.”Be firm. Days can become unruly if you let them.Roy H. Williams

Most of us are out of balance and suffering for it. We’re either too pragmatic or too romantic.The pragmatist never stops to smell the roses. “What’s the use? Just get the job done, move onward and upward. Winners never quit and quitters never win.”The romantic smells the roses and gets misty-eyed. “Roses are so meaningful. Let’s sit down and talk about our feelings and listen to some music and understand.”You realize I’m not talking about actual flowers, right? I’m talking about the pitfalls of a too-flowery life and the emptiness of a life without them. I’m talking about the dangers of a lopsided perspective.Good things come into conflict. And there is no choice so difficult as the choice between two good things.Justice or mercy?Honesty or loyalty?Inspiration or accuracy?Time or money?Science or romance?Which way do you lean?A weak student will choose one side of a duality and disparage the other side while a brilliant student will stand between the poles and feel the energy that passes between them.F. Scott Fitzgerald put it this way, “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”Life is a tightrope.Leaning is dangerous.Balance is what you need.“In fact, romanticism and science are good for each other. The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human.” – Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, 1971I’m not suggesting that you seek watery compromise, that mind-numbing “happy medium” cherished by the frightened and the weak. I’m suggesting you find the electricity that flows when two poles of a duality are brought into close proximity.Electricity is not a compromise. It is an altogether third, new thing that emerges from two potentials. “And so I will tell them one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest story of all – the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness. I shall try to demonstrate to them how these doubles are inseparable – how neither can exist without the other and how out of their groupings creativeness is born.” – John Steinbeck, East of Eden, 1952Can you see the truth in opposite possibilities?Your opponent isn't always an idiot.Your adversary isn't always evil.Learn to love your enemy and feel fully alive.Reach for the electricity.Roy H. Williams

At first glance it would appear that Vince Poscente and I stand for exactly opposite things.Vince is all about speed. His mantra seems to be, “You don’t have to choose; you can have it all. And you don’t have to wait, you can have it now.”Yes, at first glance it would be easy to write Poscente off as just another preacher of gimmicks and hype. But that would be a mistake.Vince challenges the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare in chapter six, Naughty, Naughty Speed. “The hare doesn’t lose because he’s fast – speed does not work against him in any way. And the tortoise doesn’t win because he is slow. The hare loses because he makes a ridiculous choice about how to spend his time.”Time. Focus. Purpose. Clarity. Commitment. These are the things Vince Poscente talks about. I like him.You and I know the world is changing at an unprecedented rate. The big fish are no longer eating the little fish. The fast fish are eating the slow.Lee Iacocca, in his just-released book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? says, “When you stop to think about it, most of the great companies of our times began as upstarts – Little Davids taking on big Goliaths. When I first heard about Fred Smith, the guy who created Federal Express, I thought the idea was crazy. I remember thinking, He’s going to take on the post office? Today Federal Express does such a huge business that even the U.S. Postal Service hires it to move a billion dollars in packages every year.”My problem with the rabbit in the fable is the problem I have with all traditional preachers of speed: they almost always lack commitment. They’re all huzzah and high-fives until Adversity rears his ugly wolf-snout and then the twitchy little bastards scatter like the rabbits they are.Vince Poscente is not a twitchy little rabbit. He’s an Olympic speed skier who loves the feeling of standing still at 200 kilometers per hour.My favorite chapter in his book is number twenty-nine, Racing Across a Tightrope. “One after another, each of us started across the tightrope, believing we could win. And one after another, each of us failed. No one won the race because no one could stay on the rope. We’d hold our arms out to our sides, keep our eyes on the rope, and carefully place one foot in front of the other. We’d concentrate all our energy on going fast and not falling – but then we’d fall. Again. And again. Once we had accumulated enough bruising and humiliation, the coach let us in on a little secret: to go fast, stop focusing on the rope and start focusing on the destination.”It reminded me of what Peter learned in that famous walking-on-water incident.Gosh, I’ve already written 478 words, yet I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Poscente has to say.Let me accelerate for you: The book is about using speed to reduce the stress in your life.I hate stress. If you do too, read the book. It just hit the New York Times bestseller list.Now for some fun: Vince has created an insightful, online survey exclusively for readers of The Monday Morning Memo of the Wizard of Ads. You’ll enjoy the questions; it’s a fun survey to take. Even better, Vince is going to calculate our answers as a group and then let us see how similar, or dissimilar, we are to the general population.Ready to take the survey?Look for the results in next week’s Monday Morning Memo.Roy H. Williams

I learned last week why I’m no good at making small talk. The realization blew my mind.Pennie and I were sitting in the sun room looking at our computers when she asked, “Did you get the email from Janet?”“Yes.”“Should I answer it or will you?”“You, please. I have no idea how to respond.”Pennie smiled her knowing smile and began to type for both of us. Our friend Janet had sent us an email “just to stay in touch.” I enjoyed reading it, was glad she had sent it, but when it came to typing a response I was paralyzed.“How’s this?” Pennie asked.I looked at what she had written and was flabbergasted, “Princess, you are the smartest person in the world.”Pennie smiled, then looked curiously concerned. Closing her computer, she asked, “Why is it so hard for you to make small talk?”She knows that chitchatting with people is hell for me. Friends who know us casually think of me as quiet and mousy, “the guy who never says anything,” or ferociously unfriendly, “the guy with the giant ego.”I looked at Pennie’s face and saw she expected an answer.“Well,” I began slowly, “when a person says something like, “How about this day we’re having!” or asks one of those filler questions like, “How have you been?” every response that pops into my head strikes me as being utterly irrelevant or makes me look completely self absorbed.”That was the Eureka moment. I think I may have actually gasped a little. With giant eyes I whispered, “It’s from all the years of ad writing!”People who’ve seen me speak from a platform know I’m the king of forceful statements, persuasive arguments and ribald ripostes. But social situations require low-impact statements, the kind I guard against every day. I’m the bounty hunter who looks for words without impact and makes them disappear. My job is to keep my clients from making irrelevant statements in their advertising and make sure they never seem self-absorbed.I’m less embarrassed by my awkwardness now. I think of it almost like a war wound, “Gather ‘round, children, and I’ll tell you how I got these scars.” How’s that for putting a spin on it?Somewhere in this world is the most extraordinary ad writer on earth. I have no idea who he is.The only thing I can tell you for sure is that he is socially very awkward.Roy H. Williams

A check arrives in my office and a one-day meeting is scheduled. The business owner arrives on the appointed day.This is going to be tough. It always is.To earn my money, I must take the client through 5 steps that are easy to understand but hard to do. This is the process my staff and I use to grow little companies into big ones. But our magic can’t happen until we’ve extracted these answers from our client.1. Focus.What are we trying to make happen? How will we measure success? See it clearly. Say it plainly.2. Evaluate.What is the competitive environment? Do we understand the felt needs of our prospective customer? What is holding us back? Name the limiting factors.3. Prioritize.When two of our goals come into conflict, which one bows the knee? Prioritize our objectives.4. Strategize.What would be the shortest route to our primary goal? What levers might we use to dislodge impediments? How might we nullify other limiting factors? Are we willing to modify the business model? This is the moment when the future is won or lost.5. Implement.Are we willing to pull the trigger? Lets quit talking and DO something. Nothing changes until action is taken.Seventy-five or eighty percent of the time we can tell business owners how to get to the next level and they’re happy with us. But about 1 in 5 business owners will fixate on a symptom and refuse to see the root disease. Here’s what it can look like:I ask, “What are we trying to make happen?”“Traffic is flat. We need more traffic.”After evaluating the limiting factors, I say, “Your media plan indicates that you’re already reaching more than enough people to achieve your goal. You’ll have more traffic when you have a stronger message. What new message are you willing to give me?”“Can’t we just say more strongly what we’ve been saying all along?”“No. The limitation isn’t the language; it’s the message itself.“I don’t think we need a new message. We just need to use a different media. Which one do you recommend?”When the client’s self-analysis is wrong, they often grow frustrated when I refuse to join them in their delusion. “But Roy I don’t think you fully understand our essence. We truly love the customer. We treat them far better than any of our competitors. We greet them at the door with a smile, get them a cup of coffee or a soft drink and then listen attentively as they tell us about their problem. We provide a far superior experience. If only you could capture this and communicate it with a really great ad or through a more effective media, I just know our company would grow.”In the old days, I would accommodate these people by telling them that they weren’t on the right track and in my professional opinion their message plan couldn’t be made to work, “but if you insist, we’ll go ahead and do the best we can.”I no longer do this because I got tired of hearing the report, “Roy, we did exactly what you said and it didn’t work.”I’d rather be the jerk who refused to believe in your dream than the jerk whose ads didn’t work.There is no benefit in the perfect execution of a bad plan.Occasionally the client doesn’t have a marketing problem at all, but is limited by something else entirely. Here’s what happened during a recent session of Ocean’s 11 – Build Your Business.The client was Scott Fraser, one of my partners in Wizard of Ads, Inc. [Note: Scott paid the same price as every other participant in the class, even though he is a partner and a friend.]Aside from being a talented marketing consultant, Scott owns Milne Court, a gas station/convenience store near Halifax, Nova Scotia.I ask, “What are we trying to make happen?”“I want to increase the sales volume at Milne Court.”We go to step 2 and evaluate the limiting factors. “How many cars drive past the store each day?”“34,500”“How much gas would a successful station sell to that much traffic? Are there any industry statistics available?”“The oil companies say I can’t expect to sell more than 4 million liters per year.”“How much are you selling right now?”“About 5.5 million liters per year. (That’s almost 40 percent above the projected best-case scenario.) But the profit isn’t in the gas, it’s in the coffee and cookies and stuff they buy while they’re there.”“What’s the industry average for coffee and cookies bought by the typical person who stops for gas?”“About 2 dollars and 75 cents.”“What’s your average?”“About 5 dollars.”“Scott, you are the king. I bow before you. I don’t really think there’s anything I can suggest that’s going to make a significant difference in your sales volume.”At this point, steps 3 and 4 tumble on top of each other.“Scott, you need to open more locations.”“But I don’t want to spend the million and a half dollars it costs to open each new store.”“Then become a consultant to the thousands of gas station/convenience stores that are merely average. And if that category isn’t exciting enough for you, look for other retailers who have hundreds of cars parked in their parking lots, but who haven’t been able to get those drivers into their stores.”“What do you mean?”“The only reason to sell gas is to stop cars so you can sell coffee and cookies to the drivers, right?”“Right.”“Think of all the fringe retailers around the edges of the anchor store’s parking lot in a power center. Every Home Depot is surrounded by little businesses that see cars parked outside their windows every day, but they can’t figure out how to get those drivers into their stores to buy coffee and cookies. I believe you’re the man who can solve that problem. In fact, you’ve already proven it.”Whether or not Scott was disappointed in me for not being able to tell him how to take Milne Court any higher, I cannot say with certainty. We didn't get to spend any private time together before Scott had to leave for the airport.But I do know this: He doesn’t have a marketing problem.Do you?Roy H. Williams

“When Death snatches your friend you walk into the darkness a little,calling his name, waiting to hear his voice in answer. It is a lonely and quiet time.”– Roy H. Williams, October 29, 2011, 5 days after the death of Woody Justice2007: I’m sitting in the grand ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York, surrounded by hundreds of people in tuxedoes and evening gowns. So this is a five star hotel, huh? Seven hundred dollars a night. Wow.The tuxes are jewelers from across America, gathered to witness this year’s induction of two luminaries into the Jewelers Hall of Fame. This year’s inductees were selected from more than 30,000 jewelers. The first honoree is Michael J. Kowalski, CEO of Tiffany.During his acceptance speech, Kowalski mentioned that although his company did more than 641 million dollars last quarter, “It’s really not that difficult to take a 200 year-old legendary brand to the next level. What I’ve done is nothing compared to my fellow honoree. Woody Justice is a man who started with nothing and built a jewelry store that’s known across America. And he did it in just 25 years.” The walls shook with thunderous applause as Woody Justice stepped up to the microphone. This was a man known to everyone in the room. His success in selling diamonds is the envy of jewelers everywhere.I was there with my wife, Pennie, because Woody has been a client and friend of ours for 20 years. Last year his Springfield, Missouri jewelry store did 35 times the sales volume it did in 1987. His current volume is 10 times the national jewelry store average and growing every year.Ninety percent of his ad budget goes to radio. For many years it was 100 percent, but then he began mailing personal invitations to customers for special events. He also supports the local arts community by purchasing ads in their programs and publications. He doesn’t buy these print ads because he thinks it’s an efficient use of ad dollars. He buys them because he’s a good guy and good guys support the community.Woody’s rise to the top began the day he realized that jewelry isn’t a visual product, it’s an emotional one. It’s a product of personal identity. It speaks of relationship and effort and commitment and achievement.And the best jewelry ads speak of precisely these same things.Here’s one of Woody’s most recent sixties:“Antwerp, Belgium, is no longer the diamond capitol of the world. Thirty-four hours on an airplane. One way. Thirty. Four. Hours. That’s how long it took me to get to where eighty percent of the world’s diamonds are now being cut. After 34 hours I looked bad. I smelled bad. I wanted to go to sleep. But then I saw the diamonds. Unbelievable. They told me I was the first retailer from North America ever to be in that office. Only the biggest wholesalers are allowed through those doors. Fortunately, I had one of ’em with me, a lifelong friend who was doing me a favor. Now pay attention, because what I’m about to say is really important: As of this moment, Justice Jewelers has the lowest diamond prices in America, and I’m including all the online diamond sellers in that statement. Now you and I both know that talk is cheap. So put it to the test. Go online. Find your best deal. Not only will Justice Jewelers give you a better diamond, we’ll give you a better price, as well. I’m Woody Justice, and I’m working really, really hard to be your jeweler. Thirty-four hours of hard travel, one way. I think you’ll be glad I did it.”Woody rarely runs ads that talk about having lower prices. Yes, price matters to diamond shoppers. But just claiming to have low prices is hardly effective. You’ve got to substantiate your claim by explaining why your store can offer better prices. And your explanation has to ring true in the hearts and minds of a jaded public.The style signature of a Woody Justice radio ad isn’t low prices, but blunt, brazen honesty tinged with glimpses of humor, wit and humility.You might also have noticed where he went was left out of the ad. This omission was intentional. It’s what I call a “word flag.” It’s an indirect way of measuring response to an ad. Can you imagine the number of people that asked, “So where did Woody go that took 34 hours to get there?” When dozens of customers are asking your salespeople this question every day, it’s a pretty good indication that the ads are working, don’t you think?And a sales volume that’s 10 times the national average is a pretty good indicator, too.Roy H. Williams