Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

After 4 Years of Fighting It Did you recently – finally – begin to receive the Monday Morning Memo after having subscribed some time ago? We’ve been trying to get it to you, really we have, but the internet gods have not been kind to us. We've known for 4 years that thousands of you have been unable to receive the Monday Morning Memo through no fault of your own. Today I’ll tell you how...

The 2009 Labor Day Message of the Wizard of Ads When I was a boy, I noticed that people often remember things as having been better – or worse – than they really were. I would listen to friends and family and think, “That’s not what happened at all. I was there.”Call me jaded, but I came to believe that the average American is mildly self-delusional, forever attempting to sculpt a realit...

The Alligator and the Mockingbird Few people are as tiresome as the person who lives life in a minor key. Pessimistic people remind me of Eeyore the donkey: “I don’t think we can do it.” “This idea will never work.” “It’s probably going to rain.” On the other hand, few people are as terrifying as Eeyore’s opposite.  Have you ever known a person with Fatal Optimism? “If we just think happy tho...

Or,  The Secret of Being Discovered The warm-up band is leaving the stage amidst thunderous applause, bowing and waving to the crowd, throwing kisses, fists pumping into the air. Now it’s time for the headliner, the living legends, the singers you came to see. A drummer takes the stage and launches into a repeating musical figure. He’s joined by five other musicians who enter one-by-one,...

“Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business… ‘Free’ has the power to create a consumer stampede.” – Chris Anderson,  Free: The Future of a Radical Price A few weeks ago I announced that Bard Press – America’s most successful publisher of non-fiction books – had decided to give away 20,000 advance-reading copies of&nb...

We've invented a machine that lets you select your mood. This astounding device can be adjusted to make you feel however you’d like to feel. It’s called a radio. The distinct advantage of humans is our ability to attach complex meanings to sound. The most important sounds are called words. NOTE: The written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represen...

A Look at Management vs. Leadership A group of students from the University of Texas recently asked Corrine Taylor to set up an interview with me on the subject of leadership. My schedule hasn’t allowed me to do that interview yet, but their request did trigger some thoughts on the subject. Maybe I’m splitting semantic hairs, but businesspeople who say “leadership” usually mean, “being a good...

How to Turn $100 into $100,000 Magellan was a misfit, a visionary with a better idea, a curious explorer of things unknown.  He would have fit right in at Wizard Academy. But a similar outlook on life isn’t the only thing that connects us to Magellan. There’s a tangible connection as well. More about that later. Magellan was 13 years old when Columbus returned triumphantly to Queen Isabella a...

and Get Real Skinny The Full Plate Diet is an incredibly cool book. And because you’re a friend of Wizard Academy, you can have a no-charge advance copy. That’s right. No charge. Nada. Zero. Zip. The publisher – Wizard Academy board member Ray Bard of Bard Press – is giving away 20,000 pre-release copies to trigger a nationwide buzz. The Full Plate Diet will be in every bookstore in America in Jan...

A close friend told me last week why his wife doesn’t like me: having seen me speak before a crowd, she is convinced I lack humility. I am a boastful man, arrogant and unprincipled, merciless and cold. She’s not the first to have said these things. I see her point and I make no argument. Marketing is a high-stakes competition for the time and attention of the public. Every business asking for...

Did you know I’ve been writing these Monday Morning Memos for 15 years now? And in all that time: 1.  There’s never been a Monday when I didn’t send a Memo. 2.  I’ve never repeated a Memo that had been previously sent. I’m going to break that second rule today because I think it’s what you need. Last week the Wizard of Ads partners gathered for 3 days of planning and train...

What will be your customer's memory of you? “It [the Cheshire Cat] vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.” –  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  (1865) I never ask the graduates of Wizard Academy, “What could we have done differently? How might we improve?” To do so would be to...

Maybe it’s because I was a young adult in the Dress-for-Success, go-go 80’s and retain vivid memories of those hollow days. Maybe it’s because Pennie and I had close friends who stepped on the landmines of “Get Rich in Real Estate With No Money Down,” “How To Make Millions Selling Soap,” and other glistening schemes promoted by effervescent conmen with perfect teeth who said, “You can do it. You’r...

How to Get Customers to Give You Their Time. Portals create intrigue in paintings, photographs, literature and movies. Architects use them to lengthen the time we spend in landmark stores and theme parks. Portals say, “Come on in. Stay awhile.” Dr. Nick Grant, a close friend, was examining a group of photographs in my  Accidental Magic  collection when he said, “Oh! You’re a portal...

I write today with some hesitation, the same hesitation I felt 2 weeks ago when I wrote about  the romance of shadows and the piercing of horizontal planes.  You may recall that I asked, “Was this stuff interesting for you or did it go over your head?” Three hundred and ninety-one responded with variations of “More! More!” and only 2 said they didn’t quite get it. If the 391 spoke f...

How Will You Measure Success? June 1, 2009 Listen A The keeper of my calendar told me a few weeks ago that David Rehr had called to schedule a day with me in Austin. I scratched my head and wondered why. David served as a congessonal aide on Capitol Hill when he was young, then he took a broken-down trade group, The National Beer Wholesalers Association, and turned it into one of the most pow...

Romance of Shadows, Curiosity of Vertical Planes  Illumination and Proximity are 2 of the 12 languages of the mind. Your feelings about an item are affected by the way it’s illuminated. Feelings of romance, intimacy, prestige and adventure are triggered by the hot spots and shadows of a campfire, a fireplace or a candle in a dimly lit room. Hot spots and shadows send signals that are ric...

The Tinkerbell Effect describes things that exist only because people believe in them. Remember Tinkerbell, the fairy in  Peter Pan  who is revived from near death by the belief of the audience? [Tinkerbell has drunk the poison meant for Peter Pan.] PETER PAN:  Her light is growing faint, and if it goes out, that means she is dead! Her voice is so low I can scarcely tell what she is...

A year before the birth of Barack Obama, John Steinbeck bought a pickup truck, named it “Rocinante” and went looking for America. His final book,  Travels with Charley  (1962,) is a journal of his thoughts and memories as he drove that pickup 10,000 miles across 38 states looking back across the years of a lifetime. Steinbeck remembers an incident that happened during the 1940s...

As you know, I’ve been trying to get one of my favorite business authors to the Academy to host a 2-day event. Today I’m pleased to announce that July 28-29 you can meet and be mentored by the great Jon Spoelstra. Jon is going to teach you how to thrill the public and rock your bank account. He’s going to teach you how to Market Outrageously. Marketing Outrageously is fun. Marketing Outr...

Your unconscious writing style is how you write when you’re simply being yourself. You also have a formal style and you might even have a whimsical style. But three styles is usually as good as it gets. Language, however, is extraordinarily plastic. You can make it do anything you want. With a little conscious effort, you can speak and write in a thousand voices. The possibilities are intoxicating...

Minor key life is the mournful echo of a hollowed-out gourd, bleached in the sun, hard and empty. Life should be lived in a major key, drenched in the colors of nature, quivering with energy, throbbing with purpose. Last week I showed you  how to extract liquid color pallettes  from famous paintings. This week I’ll show you a similar technique using words. It’s the one taught by  Ch...

How to Choose Colors April 13, 2009 Listen A We learned last week  that numbers are a language. Things communicated in numbers can be spoken in no other language. And because numbers are language, numbers can lie. Color, too, is a language. We use the language of color to reinforce – and contradict – statements made in the languages of shape and symbol, illumination and proximity. Hues,...

Activity Based Accounting, Part Two The key to  Activity-Based Accounting  is never to separate the numbers from the activities of the people represented by the numbers. When numbers in a business lose their connection to people and their actions, the numbers are no longer trustworthy. Never forget these 3 things: 1. Not all facts are helpful. 2. You lose sight of the big picture when yo...

How Wal Mart Killed K Mart and Best Buy Beat Circuit City I spoke to a small auditorium full of business school grad students at the University of Texas last month. They were fascinated by my case study of Transactional vs. Relational customers. I saw their eyes widen and their heads move up and down slowly as I explained how the Relational shopping mode is the foundation of all branding. But then...