Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Have you found your identity? Do you know your purpose? Are you ready for your adventure? Identity:  Who am I? Purpose:  Why am I here? Adventure:  What must I overcome? Identity  is your self-image; a composite of your beliefs, your preferences, and your relationships. Bits and pieces of your identity will evolve with your experiences, but other bits are carved into your bones...

Paul Compton and “Jackie” Floyd walked to grade school together in 1934. Their mothers, Clara and Ruby, rented rooms in the same boarding house in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Paul Compton was Princess Pennie’s father. It was Pennie’s grandmother, Clara, that answered the boarding house telephone on October 22, the night the bad news came. Paul Compton’s friend, Jackie Dempsey Floyd, was interviewed on tel...

Talent is Unconscious Competence;  a superpower you were born with. People born with a superpower usually have difficulty teaching it to you. Skills are Conscious Competence;  acquired excellence, learned behavior. People who acquire their skills through study and practice usually make excellent instructors. Talented people are tricky to manage. If you tell them what to do, the...

One hundred and seventy-four years ago, America’s 11th president sent John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico, authorizing him to pay the Mexican government up to $25 million for their territories in New Mexico and California. When Mexico refused to consider the offer of President James K. Polk, he sent 4,000 troops to occupy land near the Rio Grande—a region Mexico claimed as its own. Mexico r...

MANLEY:  I’m making things more  efficient . DAVE:  How? MANLEY:  Abbreviations. DAVE:  Give me an example. MANLEY:   LOL. I text that to my plumbers to remind them to LOOK…OUT… for LEAKS. DAVE:  You’re texting that? MANLEY:  Yep. And sometimes the guys text back “D-K.” That means DRAIN… CLOGGED. DAVE:  But clog is spelled with a C....

When our oldest son was an infant, I would hold a spoonful of baby food in front of his mouth, smile my most radiant smile and say, “It’s a good one.” I learned this, of course, from watching Princess Pennie. Later that spring I was sitting across from him when he pulled a lollipop from his mouth, pressed it against my lips and said, “It’s a good one.” Pennie and I laughed until we had tears strea...

The advice I give to others, I rarely take myself. I admonish persons who possess detailed knowledge to “dumb it down” so the rest of us can understand because, frankly, we are rarely interested in the mystery and wonder of the unabbreviated truth. I tell them, “Say it so plainly that you worry you have stripped it of all its truth and beauty.” I tell them, “Simplify it to such a degree that any p...

Every form of communication is composed of 12 basic ideas and each of these ideas, held singularly, is a separate channel of communication in the mind. Like a jet lifting off the runway, these 12 concepts will accelerate and elevate your creative expression: speaking, writing, drawing, painting, persuading, acting, photography, sculpting, selling, singing, landscaping, interior decorating, inventi...

“The deer have killed the oak tree! The deer have killed the oak tree!” Forty-year-old Todd – we’ll call him Todd – came running into my office with his second crisis of the day. I expected there would be at least one more. Todd felt it was his job to bring every problem to my attention so that I could tell him how to solve it. Todd was an idiot. His only value was that he gave me a sparkling exam...

Tinkerbell’s light gradually dims as she begins to die. Her only hope of survival is an audience that believes in fairies and demonstrates that belief through enthusiastic applause. Tinkerbell’s light has been growing brighter since 1904, when she first appeared in J.M. Barrie’s play,  Peter Pan. Everyone believes in fairies enough to clap enthusiastically. The Tinkerbell Effect describes thi...

When a business is struggling financially, cost-cutting looks like a brilliant move. But can you shrink your way to success? From what I’ve seen, it’s easier – and healthier – to increase revenues than it is to cut costs. Cost-cutting comes at a very high cost. When I was 16 years old, General Motors was the bluest of the blue-chip stocks. Alfred Sloan was the Steve Jobs, the Jeff Bezos of GM and...

I know what happens when men retire. I do not know what happens when women retire. Perhaps they are plagued by the same maladjustments, discomforts and discontentment as men, but I doubt it. As Michele Miller points out in her audiobook,  The Natural Advantages of Women,   females of our species are gifted with different neurological wiring that helps them be less obsessive, more able to...

“It was dark inside the wolf,” is how Margaret Atwood believes the story might have opened. Emily Dickinson would agree. “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” was her advice to those of us who want our emails to be opened, our stories to be read, and our voices to be heard. If you want your subject line, headline, or opening line to win attention, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” Approa...

1. You Cannot Measure What Has Not Happened. When you ask a person about an experience that exists only in their imagination, they will give you imaginary answers. You can measure only what has already happened. In other words, you cannot measure what “would” or “would not” work. You can only measure what “did” and “did not” work. 2. The Question Influences the Answer. “A question, even of the sim...

I ate too much and it made me heavy and slow. Using too many words is like eating too much. It makes communication heavy and slow. Short sentences hit harder. Nouns and verbs are fists that deliver punches. Adjectives and adverbs are gloves that soften the blows. Unless they are unexpected. A brass-knuckled uppercut is an unexpected adjective that modifies a noun you didn’t see coming. “Your soup...

There is, to my knowledge, only one way to profitably put the power of the internet to work for you. It’s simple; just give people what they want. But first you have to know what they want. Let me help you with that. (1.) They want answers, and (2.) they want entertainment. But the answers they seek aren’t usually about your product or service. The answers they seek are solutions to their problems...

When someone says, “Figures don’t lie,” know this:  Figures lie, and liars figure. Never trust a weasel with a calculator. Do you remember the mortgage meltdown of 2008 and  The Big Short,  the movie that was made about it? There is a scene in that movie where investors Mark Baum and Vinnie Daniel go to visit Georgia Hale, an employee of the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s: Georg...

The average person is afraid of criticism. But the person who has no fear of criticism is more likely to succeed. This lack of fear is what keeps them from being average. The average business owner is afraid their ads will be criticized. Do you want to kill a great ad? Show it to the people you trust. In  the words of my partner  Mick Torbay, “You need to understand something: the commit...

Ad writers hear it every day, whistling toward them like a bullet: “We need more traffic, that’s what we need; more sales opportunities!” I spent the early part of my radio career stepping up to the plate and knocking that fastball out of the park. If your back was against the wall, I was the man to call. I was like Coca-Cola, baby, I was everywhere. It was the early 1980s. My employer required me...

Few people remember it because it was too long ago. April, 1962 – America tries to overthrow Fidel Castro of Cuba in the “Bay of Pigs” invasion. July, 1962 – Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reaches a secret agreement with Fidel Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. October 14, 1962 – An American U–2 spy plane takes photos of Soviet nu...

Throughout my career as an ad writer, I’ve noticed that the easiest companies to skyrocket are those with a healthy and happy corporate culture. You know it’s a great company when everyone wants to get a job there and no one wants to leave. Let’s talk about culture. Definition One: In biology, a culture is a cultivation (usually bacteria, germs, or tissue cells) in an environment of nutrients. Cul...

I’m reading Hemingway’s novel,  Death in the Afternoon,  and I like it. It is a detailed explanation of bullfighting. Not a story about a bullfighter. Bullfighting. I have no interest in bullfighting. None. The book has no character arc because it has no characters. It has narrative, but no narrative arc. No plot, no moments of crisis, no heroism, no romance. It is essentially an instruc...

1967 – A little boy leaned on his elbows in front of a black-and-white TV in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, unaware that Walt Disney was dead. How could he be dead? I was watching him on TV. Looking right into my eyes, Walt told me about his purchase of 43 square miles of Central Florida, an area twice the size of the island of Manhattan, and his plan to build there an Experimental Prototype Community of...

Two brothers were locked out of their home, so they climbed onto the roof and entered the house through the chimney. When they crawled out of the fireplace, one of them had soot on his face, the other did not. The clean-faced brother immediately went into the bathroom and washed his face. The brother with soot on his face did not. Why? We are confused by the actions of the brothers until we put ou...

Indy Beagle posted a T-shirt in the rabbit hole that said, “If life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic.” Princess Pennie laughed when she read it. If that T-shirt had said, “If life gives you oranges, you might be dyslexic,” would she – or anyone else – have laughed? Pleasant surprise is the foundation of delight. Confusion is the foundation of frustration. When something unexpected happens,...