Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“What will he write of us, Cissy, this young man who has taken it upon himself to tell our stories?” “I’m not a mind reader, Alice.” “He never met us. He didn’t know us. He has seen us only through the lens of books he little more than scanned.” “He will write what he will write.” “But I’m so tired of it all, these writers who remember only the scandals.” “I don’t think he’s like that. His book wi...

2008 is shaping up to be an unhappy year for most product and service categories.  If your year-to-date numbers are trending ahead of 2007, I salute you. Today’s Monday Morning Memo is for the remaining 96 percent of American business owners. Here’s what I want you to do: 1. Write in a vertical list the names of every competitor you face in your chosen product/service category. If you need he...

Answer: If you knew, it wouldn't be a blind spot. Accelerate the performance of your business in 2008. Find your blind spot and fix it. There are 7 common blind spots with 4 common causes. The most common blind spots have to do with… 1. customer profiling. What traits do your customers have in common other than the fact they all buy from you? Are you seeing your customers as they really are, or ar...

Courage… Curiosity… Intuition. In the biggest news since Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a beagle has taken top honors at Westminster for the first time in history.  Arooo! Aroo-Aroooooo! In the happy little village where I spend a lot of time, beagles are the symbol of curiosity and intuition, reliable guides to success in 2008. Haven’t you heard? Maintaining the status quo will yield a declin...

1. See your destination in your mind. “When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” – White Rabbit 2. Start walking. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC) 3. Think ahead as you walk. “It’s like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  – E.L. D...

I was freshly married to Pennie and barely old enough to see over the dash of a car but I wanted to show her the magical places of my childhood, so we saved up enough money for 3 tanks of gas and made the 200-mile drive from Broken Arrow to Ardmore, Oklahoma. I never knew my father’s father. A couple of photographs and a pocket watch are all that remain of the original Roy H. Williams. But my moth...

In the language of academics: The central executive of working memory is the new battleground for marketers. Writers are successfully surprising Broca, thereby gaining the momentary attention of the public, but an absence of salience remains. In the language of newscasters: Are your ads gaining the attention of the public but failing to get results? Find out why and learn exactly what you can do a...

January 28, 2008 John and Jane Doe 4321 Happily Thereafter Ave. Everytown, USA To the Companies Who Want Our Money, Yesterday’s selling techniques aren’t working so good. Have you noticed? We’re betting that your traffic has been trending downward for the past few months. Are we right? (If we’re wrong, keep up the good work. You’re doing all the right things.) But if your traffic has, in fact, bee...

In January of 2004 I launched a public presentation:  Society’s 40-year Pendulum.  Audiences from Stockholm to Sydney to Vancouver to Myrtle Beach will recall my statement, “2003 was the first year in a 6-year transition from the Idealist perspective to the Civic.” 2008 will be the sixth and final year of that transition. Labels like Baby Boomer and Gen-X and Soccer Mom assume a person’s...

Every business that tries to rise to its full height will bump its head on a glass ceiling they didn’t realize was there. That glass ceiling is created by the business owner’s core beliefs about the customer. Traditionally, 5 out of 10 customers will be in transactional shopping mode. The other 5 will be in relational shopping mode. Shoppers in transactional mode are looking for information, facts...

America split into 3 camps last year. Those camps came sharply into focus at Christmas. 1.   The Hunker-Down crowd cut back their purchases, uneasy about dwindling dollars and rising debt. Traffic in non-discount retail stores was sluggish as a result. 2.   The Full-Speed-Ahead crowd did business as usual. God bless’em. “Damn the torpedoes! I choose not to participate...

Whether it exists in the public consciousness or only in my mind, I can't be sure, but there’s an anxiousness about 2008 that gives me pause. We seem to be pushing our way to the edge. Presidency, economy, war. What will happen? I take a breath and close my eyes and remember the words of  Marcus Aurelius Antoninus  published 1800 years ago, “Never let the future disturb you. You wil...

I’m a big believer in the power of words. But when words aren’t backed by corresponding actions, talk is cheap. Have you ever felt a disconnection between what a company promised you in their ads and what they actually delivered? I carry a list of companies in my head called the “Never Again As Long As I Live” list. I’ll bet you have one, too. Was it the advertising of these companies that put the...

Concorde was a child of the 60s. Flying 11 miles above the earth at twice the speed of sound, this jet was literally faster than a rifle bullet.  London to New York in 2 hours and 53 minutes. The Concorde isn’t flown anymore. During a routine take-off in July, 2000, Concorde blew a tire after hitting a small piece of metal on a runway in Paris. A chunk of the tire knocked a hole in the w...

These are the noises companies make as they’re going down the tubes: 1. “Our only problem is traffic.” Slow traffic is a symptom, not a disease. Look for its cause. WHY is traffic slow? Is it because the public doesn’t know about you, or is it because they do? Is the problem with your advertising, or is there something wrong inside your business? 2. “That’s not our customer.” The businesspers...

Some people say a recession is coming. Others say it’s already here. Experts say the best way to start a recession is to predict one’s on the way. So hey, I’m not predicting a recession, okay? REMEMBER! If a recession sneaks up on us in 2008, do NOT blame it on me. Did your elementary school have fire drills? Step 1. Get in a straight line. Step 2. Walk orderly down the hallway and out the door. S...

In the Land of the Way Things Ought to Be I’m handsome and wealthy and strong and free. But in the Land of the Way Things Really Are I’m struggling and awkward, a bit bizarre. I threw a party, invited my friends From the Land of the Way It Might Have Been. They were heartbroken. A man named Regret Said they had gotten all they would get. An Ambassador came, toupee in hand From nostalgic Way-It-Use...

America’s Thanksgiving holiday originated when the Pilgrims gave thanks to God for sending them an Indian friend named Squanto. This much you already knew. What you didn’t know is that long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, this same Squanto had been captured by two English sea captains, George Weymouth and John Hunt, and abused as a slave for fourteen years. Squanto had been free less...

TIGER ONE: Are you trying to Grow a business, Build a career, Overcome an obstacle? “Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.” – Joan Wallach Scott Ferocity is a wondrous tool. STOP. Read no further 1.   if you are proud of your passivity, 2.   if you are offended by reading a vulgar word (as opposed to...

I thought Bill Clinton was a good president for the same reason I thought Ronald Reagan was good; both were excellent head cheerleaders. Their politics, personalities and characters were different, but each had a similar ability to keep things from spinning out of control. Every organization has a head cheerleader. Their business card usually says “manager.” The head cheerleader’s job is to keep t...

When  The Cluetrain Manifesto  was published in 1999, it smacked of silly futurism, like Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone and Dick Tracey’s TV-wristwatch. Both of which are now possible. Likewise, the societal shift predicted by  The Cluetrain  is already happening. Can you feel it? Here’s a look at a few of the  95 Theses  of  The Cluetrain Manifesto.  These stat...

Procedural Memory  is the key to your brand being automatically remembered. Accomplish this through Relevance x Repetition. Symbolic Thought   is how to make a brand meaningful. Access this by linking the unknown to the known. Particle Conflict  is the way to make a brand interesting. Achieve this by adding an element that doesn’t belong, but fits. There’s a trend in marketing today...

“I’m a surfer,” she said as she extended her hand. It almost broke my heart. Her husband had moved her into a tiny fixer-upper on the tear-stained cheek of an Oklahoma town. With a young child dangling from each of her arms and a third one on the way, she needed us to see her as she had been. “I’m a surfer.” Please understand that in my heart I’m reckless and free under an open sky. Please. I need...

Think too deeply about customer profiling and you’ll soon fall into niche marketing. And the problem with niches is they’re not created equal. Have you chosen a niche too small? Reis and Trout inadvertently popularized niches in their extraordinary 1981 book,  Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind.  That book taught us to consider the strengths of our competitors and the “positions” they...

People are more interesting than non people. Mingle a bit of wood, paint and cloth, then drench the pile in sparkling imagination and a new person leaps onto the stage. Few techniques in communication are as powerful – or as often overlooked – as personification:  ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects. It turns dead corporate brands into living persons. Who are the Keebler Elve...