Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Two young people are given the same directive by their boss.   One of them, palms upward, says, “But I don’t know how.”   The second one doesn’t know how, either, but quietly thinks, “I’ll figure it out.”   The first one grows up to become a  manager  who believes  training  to be the key to success. “Go to college. Learn to do things correctl...

1. No man is an island.   2. Every man is an island.   John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island” in 1624. The entire passage reads, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore n...

A brief summary of this episode

I’m going to explain a sophisticated ad-writing technique to you today, but I have confidence you’ll understand it perfectly. Learn to incorporate it into your writing and your ads will produce better results, generate more comments and make people smile. Tight-asses will criticize you, of course, but hey, they’re tight-asses. We’ll begin with a couple of examples from a flyer I edi...

Life is a journey on water. We spend our lives floating between the sunlit scenery of the conscious mind and the shadowy depths of  the unconscious  below. Dr. Richard D. Grant tells us our relationship to the unconscious is exactly our relationship to water. 1.  We need it by the cupful to survive. 2.  A plunge into it is refreshing. (Art speaks to the unconscious.) 3. &n...

There’s not a lot you can learn from the Road Runner, but the Coyote knows the secret of wealth.   In September, 1949, the Coyote –  Carnivorous vulgaris  – built a catapult. But instead of launching him toward the Road Runner, it launched him straight up into a stone outcropping.   The Coyote crawled out of the hole and went back to work.   In December, 195...

I concluded a recent Monday Morning Memo entitled  “Melvin the Lion”  by saying, “We won the game when we picked the wiener dogs. This is the dirty little secret of advertising:  you determine the success of the campaign when you pick what you’re going to promote.  Have you been settling for precision lawn chairs and lawnmowers? Repent of your sin. Demand the wiener dogs....

John Steinbeck began writing a novel in the summer of 1957 and abandoned it the day after Christmas. I was born 93 days later. Those two events were unconnected before today. Steinbeck wrote the first 114 pages of his novel before setting it aside. He had already completed 25 novels, including  The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men  and  Cannery Row.  He...

“Bitter arguments often result from a lack of definition of terms.” This is one of the first lessons the Cognoscenti are taught in  the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. Cognoscenti  Skip Moen  – an Oxford scholar – gave me a tragic example of this during his most recent visit to Wizard Academy. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help me...

"The winner is determined when..." A couple of weeks ago Sean Taylor attended a high-class function to receive the Melvin Jones Award on my behalf. Melvin Jones founded the Lions Club International and his award is the highest honor the club can bestow. You can’t win the MJ Award unless you’re a Lion – which I’m not – so the board of directors voted to make an exception for me. Yes, yes,&nbsp...

I was explaining to my apprentices the difference between cost-based accounting and customer-based accounting. “Cars in 1908 sold for about $2,500 apiece. Nearly 2,000 entrepreneurs became car builders between 1886 and 1908 and each of them began with the question, ‘How can I build a stronger, faster, more desirable car?’”  But none of them could build and sell a car for less than $...

Discover the Buried Treasure Last week I spent long hours preparing nine ad-writing apprentices for what lies ahead. Strangely, each of them signed up for this excruciating 7-week adventure for the same reason; they wanted to escape the handcuffs of specialization. None of them are new to marketing. The first 4 are full-time advertising professionals with deep experience in: 1.  fin...

From Things You Carry in Your Mind  A Chinese proverb extols the strength of the written word: “The palest ink is better than the best memory.”   “Ah, yes, Xiao,”  (Shee Ow, ‘Little One,’)  “but the written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents.” The second chapter of the book of Genesis tells us God created all the animal...

Marty Markowitz. Know the name? I thought not. Marty is the borough president of Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five municipal corporations. His domain stretches nine miles by eight. Marty’s not even a mayor, yet more people live under his authority than lived in the whole of America in 1776.* Mathematics would argue that Marty is therefore more important than George Washington. There’...

How to Become a Wise Man (Wise-ard) Ignorant people aren’t stupid but merely uninformed; a marvelous advantage when you need a perspective from “outside the box.” The truly naïve are so thoroughly “outside” they’re not even sure what you mean by “the box.” When you consult specialists within your industry, you’re talking to the builders of the box, the guardians of the box, the fait...

The Secret of Self Definition Corporate mission statements all sound alike because companies stand for pretty much the same things: “We believe in honesty, quality products, a positive work environment and a fair profit.” Yawn. You and I write mission statements because we want people to like us. Our pattern-recognizing, touchy-feely right brains see a newcomer and ask, “How are we alike...

“Well, it’s a non-stop blitz of advertising messages. Everywhere we turn we’re saturated with advertising messages trying to get our attention… We’ve gone from being exposed to about 500 ads a day 40 years ago to about 5,000 a day today… It seems like the goal of most marketers and advertisers nowadays is to cover every blank space with some kind of brand logo or a promotion or an advert...

“No one is sincere except for me and you. And lately I’ve had my doubts about you.”   We’re staring into the face of a trend. I told you in Dec. 2003 that we were moving into an era of “working together for the common good” and that the transition would take 6 years. Thousands of you from Stockholm to Sydney to Las Vegas to South Carolina slipped into the hour-and-a-half multimedia...

“The best radio ads entertain the public and generate favorable comments.” That kind of thinking is why most radio ads don’t work as well as they should. I know it’s counterintuitive and disconcerting but the ads we hate often work better than the ads we love. What are you trying to make happen with your radio ads? Have you been confusing compliments with results? You’re probably dismaye...

I tried to write some tips about business growth for you this week. I really did. But I found myself drawn to this, instead. – RHW  “Most of one’s life… is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.” – Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963 “Our minds are lazier than our bodies.” – Francois, Duc de La Rochefouchauld, 1613-1680 You probably have a limiting factor in your life that’s holding...

I detest the Positive Thinking cult. Yes, you read that correctly. But I am supremely optimistic.  I see the Positive Thinking cult as the religion of Hubris; man worshipping himself. “I am my own god. I control my own destiny. There is nothing I can’t be, nothing I can’t do, nothing I can’t accomplish. I am limited only by my own thoughts.” Sorry. I just needed to put that on...

Not a Chance. People don’t really change their minds. They simply make new decisions based on new information. In the absence of new information, there will be no new decision.   Give a person the same information you’ve given them in the past and they’ll make the same decision they’ve made in the past.   Want a new decision? Provide new information.   This new information...

discovering the science behind every art Art is the language of relevance. Science is the language of credibility. Art is interpreted by feelings. Science is what’s left when feelings are gone. Art is the language of the brain’s right hemisphere; science is the language of the left. And the tug-of-war between the two gives us a funny, dual consciousness; the heart whispers one thing while the...

Relevance and credibility are the matches and gunpowder of advertising.   Relevance is a glowing promise that can ignite the flame of desire. Credibility is quiet power: Details. Facts. Proof. The flame of relevance without the gunpowder of credibility is empty, glittering hype; fluffy and without substance. We see a hollow promise, the brief light of a match in the darkne...

I’ve been thinking a lot about aging. Now I’m a cliché for sure: a middle-aged man contemplating all the things in his life that will likely remain undone. The weirdest triggers send us off on these melancholy journeys. By “us” I mean pampered American men. Today’s introspective journey was triggered when Dale Betts asked me about the  12 Stages of Seduction.  He remembered reading...