Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Dear Elon, Congratulations on your initial public offering of SPCX. Google’s AI says, “The blockbuster debut briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire on paper.” The words “briefly” and “on paper” dim the dazzling brightness of the word “trillionaire” a little, but still, it’s a pretty big deal. I’m sure that Errol and Maye are super-proud. You’ve come a long way since you started Zip2...

There is a big difference between a boundary and a wall. A boundary is a friendly agreement that keeps people from going too far. But a wall separates people. A wall isolates people. A wall keeps people away. In business, there are few things more important than the management of expectations through the use of clearly-worded boundaries. In business, these boundaries are called “up-front agreement...

If your message is predictable, your message is invisible. If your advertising is predictable, your advertising is invisible. When something never changes, we quit paying attention to it. But we always pay attention to things that are new, surprising, and different. What qre you doing for your customers that is new, surprising, and different? Talk about those things in your advertising. Most busin...

Do you want to become a great ad writer? Follow these ten steps and you will rise high and go far. 1. Read poetry every day. 2. Memorize at least two dozen poems. 3. Recite them out loud when you are alone. 4. Perform them spontaneously when you have an audience. 5. Feel the pulsating rhythm that is the heartbeat of every poem. 6. Wiggle your way through the unexpected twists and turns that are it...

Business owners ask, “How can we get customers to do what we want them to do?” And then they create an app and insist that you download it. How many apps have you been told that you need to download? (Look at your phone and count them.) Generally speaking, retail apps are good because they reduce the friction of your shopping experience. Service provider apps are bad because they increase the fric...

Direct response ads are written to take the customer from Attention to Interest to Desire to Action in a single encounter. Direct marketers have a product or a service to sell. They don’t have a brand to protect. This is why ROAS is the perfect analytical tool for them. ROAS is the acronym for Return On Ad Spend. In other words, it is the Return On Investment of your ad budget. You can: measure le...

I promise that I will state plainly for you – in ten short words – the singular Rule of Success before you have finished reading this Monday Morning Memo. Stay quiet and stay close. We are wandering into a dangerous area. To see the glittering truth of the Rule of Success, we must quietly sneak up on it. The North Star never moves because it hovers directly above the axis of the earth. If you draw...

Effective advertising is not about delivering information; it is about delivering persuasion. Don’t tell your audience how to feel. Make them feel. Great ad writers are secret poets. Poetry is not about making words rhyme. Poetry is about leading people to a realization. Poetic ad writers open your eyes and cause you to realize. They lead you to a conclusion, then let you discover it for yourself....

Find out what people already want, then offer them exactly that. Quit trying to convince customers that they should want what you are selling. Speak to everyone, everywhere, about widely felt needs, deeply held beliefs, and personal values. Quit telling yourself that you need to reach “the right people” with your advertising. A: The media doesn’t make the message work. The message makes the media...

I write this with reluctance because I know that I will receive hundreds of emails correcting me on a few niggling little details. But write on, I must. “Write on, write on, write on.” “Cost of Compute” refers to the $8 to $13 that every AI company has to spend on electricity and short-lived computer chips for every $1 that comes through the door. Losing a dozen dollars for every dollar you touch...

I could be wrong, but I think I see a line of 6,603 standing dominoes with a forefinger poised to flick the first domino. Take a step back, I’ll give you some facts, and then we’ll return to the dominoes. There are 6,602 FM radio stations in America, 597 FM stations in Canada, and 234 in Australia on which you can air radio ads for local businesses. These radio stations are producing miraculous re...

Just as strawberries taste better when they are dipped in chocolate, advice tastes better when it is wrapped in a thick coating of encouragement. Your advice is valuable, but it will never make as big a difference as your encouragement. Encouragement is the opposite of flattery. When you flatter someone, you tell them something positive about themselves that they know is not true. And they suspect...

In the Kairos moment, you will find yourself in an unknown place. And a person will appear. This person is known among storytellers as “The Old Man in the Woods.” His job is to prepare you for all the challenges you will face on the next segment of your adventure. Mr. Miyagi was the Old Man in the Woods for Daniel LaRusso in the Karate Kid. Obi-Wan was Luke Skywalker’s first Old Man in the Woods,...

I am always fascinated when I see business owners all marching in the same direction, doing the exact same things because they believe, “This is the way to differentiate yourself.” Do you believe that following the same strategy as everyone else is the way the surest way to succeed? Of course you don’t. Because if you were an unthinking conformist, you would never have subscribed to the MondayMorn...

March 30, 2026 It pays to know what people already care about. The following conversation illustrates one of the ways in which this pays. “If I spend money on advertising, what will I get in return?” It depends on what you say in your ads. “What do you mean?” Most ads have no relevance to most people. “Yes, that’s why you need to target the right people.” There is some truth in that, but not as mu...

I have bumbled my way through life with a reasonable degree of success, I think. Especially when you consider the number of people who have patted me on my head and told me that I didn’t need to understand what they were talking about because they would happily, “do all of those difficult things” for me if I would just hand them the checkbook and the keys. I never did that, of course. Head-patters...

March 16, 2026 I am sitting in front of a computer that can deliver love letters to billions of addresses across the twenty-four time zones that encircle this watery rock we live upon. I sit and stare and look with wonder at the glittering ocean called Youtube, deeply aware that I know next-to-nothing about it. This gives me a tremendous advantage. It keeps me from doing what everyone else is doin...

One thing always leads to another That’s why big sisters have baby brothers And how King George gave away a nation when he said “No” to representation. He did not not know how much it meant for those colonies to have seats in Parliament. Think about it. The cry of the colonies was only this: “No taxation without representation.” What if King George had said… “That is a fantastic plan! Each colony...

February 26, 2026 Kronos is chronological time. Kronos appears more than 50 times in the original New Testament. Kairos is a pregnant moment in time, an inflection-point of consequence. Does in surprise you that Kairos appears more than 85 times? Each of us vividly remembers those Kairos moments when we decided to turn the steering wheel of Life and begin traveling in a whole new direction. Jim Bu...

Welkin is a poetic or archaic term for the sky, firmament, or vault of heaven. To “ring the welkin” or make the “welkin ring” is a literary idiom meaning to make a very loud noise, such as shouting, cheering, or singing, that seems to echo throughout the sky or heavens. It implies creating a celebratory or boisterous sound that fills the air. Will you ring welkin? “Jet” Eisenberg knew immediately...

Everywhere he went, Jeremiah warned people that their land would be subjugated, their way of life would be destroyed, and that they would become slaves of a government they did not choose. Jeremiah is remembered today as “the weeping prophet.” He was earnest, sincere, and entirely correct, but no one wants to be told that they have an inescapable appointment with a dentist and a gastroenterologist...

Relationships are easier to navigate when we realize that one person’s heaven is another person’s hell. The things that bring us joy are subjective and personal and uniquely our own. Can we talk for a moment about joy? Joy is a mixture of appreciation and wonder. You cannot appreciate something and be filled with wonder by it without also having a feeling of thankfulness for it. Every garden of jo...

WORLDWIDE ANXIETY: Do you find yourself wondering what is going to happen next? You are not the only person who has that question echoing in their mind. Billions of people are feeling this way around the world. Instability creates anxiety and uncertainty causes worry. That’s why the price of gold has been shooting upwards like a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July. The stock exchange is a short-te...

David and I began building oilfield heat exchangers in a heavy steel fabrication shop in Oklahoma when we were 14 years old. We were universally known as, “them schoolboys.” Steel shops are notoriously noisy, but when we heard “Schooolboy!” ring out above the cacophony of hammers and grinders, we would swivel our heads toward the sound and begin walking toward whomever was looking at us. “Hard, di...

Before you borrow cash from a friend, decide which one you need most. Never tell a person that their child is ugly. Every child is the trigger on the gun of their parent’s rage. If you say, “I am only speaking the truth,” you can be sure that the child’s parent will just as truthfully amputate you from their life and throw shade at the memory of your name forever. “The Proper Priorities of Governm...