Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Wizard Academy exists to educate, equip and encourage small business owners, little people with dreams who face giant corporations with big bank accounts. Like the windmills of Quixote, these giants are often unaware and unfeeling of their challengers. Don Quixote was an average man, distinguished only by his beautiful dream. He called this creation of his mind, “My lady, Dulcinea.” She...

A rich knowledge of history is better than creativity. Let me qualify that. A rich knowledge of history is better than creativity  if your goal is to make money. The most profitable form of creativity is to repurpose the proven. Do you want to put together a group of colors that create a powerful effect? Maybe for a website or a sign or a brochure or a living room? Common sense...

We have, for the most part, the feelings we choose to have. Please don’t be angry with me if you prefer to be tragic. I do not deny you this choice. I deny only that you have no escape. Our feelings in the first moment are triggered by our circumstances. Happy news. Sad news. News that makes us angry. But in the second moment, and the third, our feelings are the produce of our chosen per...

Use half as many words and they’ll hit twice as hard. Every writer knows it. Salespeople need to learn it. A few weeks ago I invested a day of training in the telephone staff of a client of mine and doubled their close rate as a result. “You’re working way too hard at it,” I said. “These people are calling you, remember? They’re calling you because they believe your company can solve the...

But at Least You're in the Parade" When your friend says something interesting, write it down. Better yet, post it online and give your friend eternal life. I was whining to Rich Mann over a plate of sushi one day when he reminded me to shut up and be happy. Rich didn’t even look up when he said it. He just mumbled, ‘You may be shoveling horse manure but at least you’re in the parade,’ w...

Today I’m going to tell you 3 new things you need to know about. My enthusiasm will probably make it sound like I’m giving you a sales pitch. Sorry about that. If you’re not in the mood, the tiniest motion of a finger will take you to a new and different place… You decided to stay? I think you’ll be glad you did. YouTube. Not FaceBook. Throughout the year I’ve been saying to student...

I recently spent a day with two lawyers who practice the same legal specialty. We’ll call them Nick and Ralph. They live on opposite sides of the country. They met at a conference and became friends. Nick read my books, attended Wizard Academy, and decided to go fishing for customers with a net. He put his money in radio. Ralph thought it made more sense to target only those people...

The Miraculous Disappearance of Black-and-White Most of the choices we make have effects we did not anticipate. This is due to the Law of Unintended Consequences. “Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and  popular opinion  have largely ignored it.” – Rob Norton, author of  The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics...

Voltaire is often quoted as having said it, but he never did. It was actually Pierre de Beaumarchais in 1775, just a few months before Thomas and George and Ben and the boys wrote their scathing letter to England’s king. Beaumarchais was working on the second scene in the first act of  The Barber of Seville,  when it hit him, “Aujourd’hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être...

An auction house is an island of cast-offs and misfits where the rejected and broken feel finally at home. I am speaking of the merchandise, of course, not of the people. Perhaps I am speaking of the people, as well. From the age of 18, Pennie and I have searched for buried treasure in auction houses. When you collect the misfit and the broken, you quickly learn how to acc...

A wise man sees both sides of a matter. The fool sees only one. The origin of the word “wizard” is wise-ard. It means wise man. Nothing more. The wise-ards of the Christmas Story followed a star, had an adventure, made a discovery and leaped onto the pages of history. What did they talk about along the way? Who did the cooking? What pressing issues did they leave unattended back hom...

We can listen much faster than we speak. Consequently, a listener’s mind will wander when we take too long to make a point. This isn’t new. What is new, however, is the current trend toward voluntary, rapid distraction. Defenders of this practice call it ‘multi-tasking.’ But brain-imaging studies reveal that ‘multi-tasking’ is merely the switching of attention back and forth between two tasks...

Everyone wants to make the same three things,” the Princess said, “money, a name, and a difference. But our actions are dictated by the one we want most.” You can make a name for yourself – become famous – or you can make a lot of money in complete obscurity. Either way, people will consider you a success. But famous people with piles of money seem always to be haunted by the need to mak...

Most people believe in The Way Things Ought to Be. Others embrace The Way Things Are. Arguments, terrorism and war happen at the intersection of these Ways. “Here’s what you ought to do.” “That’s just not going to happen.” “Okay, then we’ll fight.” An even weirder, three-way intersection happens at The Way I Remember It, The Way You Remember It, and The Way It Actually Was. Sta...

ahrenheit  Revisited Pennie and I were at the airport in San Francisco about to board a flight for home. I needed a book to read. I’d been thinking about the halfway points in Pendulum theory as well as pondering a phenomenon I’ve decided to call Information Saturation. Both are heady topics. I needed to take a break. The two halfway points of our most recent “Me” cycle were 19...

How Much Are They Holding You Back? The pervasive fantasy in business today is that you can tweak your way to success. Tweakers believe you need only “monitor your metrics” to ratchet your way to the top of the mountain. “Hold your position, then make a tiny change and click up to the next level.” Tweakers find comfort in numbers, decimal points, percentages and line graphs. Don’t get me wron...

Travel agencies were eliminated as a business category when the Digital Age arrived. Likewise, encyclopedias found they were no longer needed. Soon we were opening the newspaper each morning to read headlines we already knew about. Newspaper doubled over in pain and fell to its knees. The Yellow Pages got dusty and catalogues quit arriving in the mail. “Why print on paper when we can put...

A New Book is in the Making. Want to Be Part of It? More than 1,000 businesses will be featured in this book. Each will have fewer than 100 employees. On average, they’ll have been operating for at least 20 years. We’re going to ask them about their advertising. Research tells you what  ought  to work. We’re going to ask these businesses what  actually  worked. A...

How much do your name, logo and color scheme really matter? A schmuck falls off the balcony on the 30th floor. A putz is the guy he lands on. A putz is passively stupid; ridiculously unlucky. Could a company succeed with a name like Putzmeister? Could a company win if its logo was indistinctive and boring and  literally  gray? Putzmeister was founded by Karl...

I am, by profession, a communications consultant. I craft strategies, write ads and buy media. My clients ask for my advice. They even pay me for it. Advice is dangerous to give. If you are thinking, “Yes, it’s dangerous to give advice because your advice might be wrong,” you probably haven’t worked full-time in a focused specialty for 30 years. Yes, there is a chance my advice might be...

Every “Me” cycle in society begins with: 1. a beautiful dream  of freedom from restraint 2. a hunger  for self-expression 3. a search  for individuality Our last “Me” cycle began in 1963 and reached its zenith in 1983 when freedom from restraint had evolved into conspicuous consumption and individuality was being “self-expressed” through costumes, big hair, disco and phony...

A Look at Choices and Consequences You wrestle with lions daily. Lions are powers outside yourself: circumstance and serendipity, fate and phenomenon, bad luck and good. A lion can oppose or assist you. It can be your enemy or friend. A gang of lions is called a  pride.  Interesting. Unlike lions, tigers are solitary. Your tiger is your own, inner ferocity: Determination....

From Unstructured Data June 25, 2012, 8:29 PM Step 1:  Create a monster by networking 16,000 ultrafast computer processors. Step 2:  Feed the monster 10 billion images chosen at random from YouTube videos. Step 3:  See what happens. What Happened:  The monster taught itself to recognize cats. “We never told it during the training, ‘This is a cat.’ It basically invented the...

Jack became dull when he failed to free the beagle in his brain. You let your beagle romp and play, don’t you? Don’t you? The beagle in your brain connects nonlinear events – think of these events as a collection of dots – to reveal fantastic patterns. Intuition. Humor. Leap of Faith. These are just three of the beagle’s names. The beagle is not limited to paired opposites but...

“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.” – David Ogilvy A creative problem-solver consciously or unconsciously realizes the problem at hand has already been solved – ma...