Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The world of online marketing was rocked so hard this summer that it almost fell to its knees. Some really big names in online marketing had the courage to announce that online customers are more likely to buy your products if they’ve heard of your company and feel good about it. Dumbfounded, I spoke to my computer screen as though online marketers everywhere could hear me, “How did you not alread...

We are alert to danger because our survival depends upon it. But there is more to life than danger. There is singing. And looking at the sky. And chewing on a blade of grass. Have you done any of those things recently? They call to you from beyond your window. Walk outside. Sing a song. Pluck a blade of grass. Hold it high. Take a selfie. Email it to  indy@wizardofads.com and he will email yo...

In 2018, I will continue to fade from sight. By the end of 2019, I hope to be completely transparent. This has been my goal since May of 2000. If the founder of an organization remains vitally involved until the day they are no longer viable, the organization they founded will cease to exist within 10 years after their passing. I don’t want that to happen to Wizard Academy. Don’t worry, I’m not dy...

Dale Earnhardt, Jr will make 21.4 million dollars this year. He is the world’s  one hundredth  most highly paid athlete.1 But don’t assume pro athletes make a lot of money. The sad truth is that the top 10 percent – the star athletes – receive more than 90 percent of all the money paid to athletes. If the 80/20 rule held true in sports, the salaries of the bottom 90 percent would more th...

Your body doesn’t have a single immune system; it has a bundle of them. And the most powerful of these systems is the one that rejects foreign tissue. This is why doctors do everything they can to suppress it during transplant surgery. That suppression doesn’t always work. When the cells of your body detect an intruder cell – “This is not like me, and I am not like it!” – they employ powerful form...

Characters in books and movies and TV shows are magical. They make us laugh and cry and hold our breath as they take us to a vivid elsewhere. Conflicted, exaggerated, accelerated characters live in a world more interesting than our own. And it is a world we like to visit, even if it’s only 30 seconds at a time. This is why character-driven ad campaigns are outperforming logic-driven campaigns, han...

The object of conformity and compliance is to bring the best of the past forward. A person can achieve expert results by following in the footsteps of an expert. The old ways are often the best ways. But you, my strong-willed friend, are a nonconformist; a renegade, a rebel, a misfit. One of “those” people. Congratulations. A Discoveries are made only by those who stray from the path.  “...

“I was told that repartee heightens the attention of an audience.” “Is this going to be like that time you told me about ambergris?” “What do you mean?” “There I was, minding my own business, when you started telling me how the most expensive perfume in the world comes from whale puke. Like I needed to know that.” “Yes. This is another interesting fact that will broaden your horizons.” “Okay, let’...

(1.) Adrenaline is a neurotransmitter that increases blood flow to the muscles during times of excitement and creates involuntary recall of events. When there is adrenaline in the blood, you are more likely to remember the moment. This is why advertisers try to make their ads sound exciting. (2.) Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter that produces feelings of connectedness and bonding. This is how powerf...

Real experts in online marketing rarely use the phrase “going viral,” because it has no agreed-upon definition. Instead, they talk about “Discovery Content” and “Community Content.” To understand Discovery Content, just look at anything posted by  BuzzFeed  or any of the other organizations whose principal income is generated by the companies who sponsor their clickbait.1 But not al...

Whittington said it. Eisenberg endorsed it. The waitress distracted us with a question of her own. I somehow knew to capture that moment with a photo. Our conversation never made it back to Daniel’s idea that every life has a theme song, but later that day I carried his wandering thought to the  Worthless Bastards  at the Toad & Ostrich Pub. “What is the theme song of your life?” is...

Everyone agrees that Henry Leverseege would have become much more famous had he lived beyond 29. But even though he died young, his paintings hang in museums across England. There is only one of them in private hands. Mine. A Henry was born in 1803, the year that Thomas Jefferson famously negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with Napoleon Bonaparte. I say “famously” because Jefferson was fully a...

I consider myself to be the luckiest person on earth. And I can tell you of several specific moments in my life that would convince you of it. Being lucky is a choice I made. Because the truth is that I could just as easily tell you of other moments in my life that would convince you that I am the unluckiest person on earth. Allan Gurganus says, “Stories only happen to people who can tell them.” A...

Ivan and Alvina are in their early 20s. Ivan was born and raised in Bulgaria. Alvina, in Siberia. When Alvina sees Ivan playing keyboards in a café on the Black Sea, they become pen pals. And then they fall in love. And then they get married. They dream of moving to the west. Canada says it will accept them as immigrants if they will learn to speak French. Self-taught piano players in cafés don’t...

The door to immediate action is easily kicked open by the steel-toed boot of urgency. If you want people to take immediate action, you’re going to need a credible shortage. A shortage of product. “Only 11 remain!” A shortage of time. “Sale ends Saturday at 6PM!” A shortage of capacity. “Only 128 seats are available!” Some kind of shortage. But smart marketers don’t create a series of non-stop urge...

1. Freeze-frame each moment when something rocks your world. 2. When you cry or become frightened or get angry or laugh or are overwhelmed by a sense of wonder, reverse-engineer what just happened. Ask yourself, “Why am I feeling this way? How did they do this to me?” Was it something in the sequence of events? Was it in the shapes or colors, words or music, symbols or associations? Was it facial...

When you’re trying to transfer a thought or a feeling to someone else, the impact of your communication will be determined by the following equation: How big is the thought in your mind, or the feeling in your heart? How quickly can you transfer it? The Law of Impact (or force,) documented by Isaac Newton, applies to communication as much as it does to physics:  impact  is the product of...

I always look forward to my lunches with Ray Bard because he teaches me valuable things. He doesn’t intend to teach me things; it just happens. Our short lunches last 3 hours. Our record is 6 ½. Ray is my publisher. During our most recent lunch, Ray said – and I’m inclined to agree with him – there are only three sources of wealth: Luck, Accident, and Desire. If you inherited the money, married th...

You hear a lot of talk these days about how no one listens to the radio anymore. Interestingly, the people who make these claims offer no evidence beyond the fact that commercial free music can be obtained through online streaming. This reminds me of that famous malaprop by Yogi Berra, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” If you want to see raw numbers, look at the Nielsen Audio Ratings....

Exactly three hundred and thirty years ago – roughly ten generations of parents and children ago – the French explorer La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered by his own men. We were experiencing dysfunction among supposed team members. In Virginia, a panicked Nicholas Spencer of Westmoreland County provides Virginia Governor Francis Howard with, “Intelligence of t...

Every successful person has a blind spot. Here’s what often happens: You have a unique approach, a particular process, or a special emphasis. It separates you from your competitors. Your commitment to it makes you successful. So far, so good. You found a way to be different and it made you a success! But now your hockey-stick growth has begun to flatten out and level off. You’ve obviously reached...

I’m in a strange mood. I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ve been contemplating things unsaid. Deeds undone. Symphonies unfinished. The reality of mortality has shown up as a hole in the light, a silhouette on the horizon. And its whispering voice has led me to compile a list of unfiltered thoughts that seem to me, remarkable. Thoughts that should not be lost. Perhaps I overreact. I get this way when I’v...

A world of absolutes is a tidy world, but narrow. The wider world must make room for things that are not. “Make room for things that are not.”  I wrote about that last week, didn’t I? We cling to absolutes, I think, because they give us the illusion of stability in a world of constant change. We see rivers on maps, but in the strictest reality, you cannot step into the same river twice. The r...

We live in a universe of paired opposites. Proton and electron. Inhale and exhale. Extend and contract. Rise and fall. Male and female. Day and night. What you embrace does not define you nearly so much as what you exclude. I’m speaking of self-definition. EXAMPLE: One person says they love cars made by Ford. Another person says they love Ford “because it is the oldest American brand; I refuse to...

Others judge you by the outcomes you achieve, but you judge yourself by your intentions. You judge yourself as God does. This is why I like you. You have no power over the vagaries of your circumstances; to be in the right place at the right time is not a matter of skill, but of chance. But you try to do the right thing in the right way for the right reason. This is why I like you. You have failed...