Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Persona-based writing is the new Targeting. According to what we've seen so far, ads that employ persona-based writing are outperforming yesterday's demo-targeted ads by an average of 81 percent. Website copy, direct mail letters, radio scripts and magazine ads that use persona-based language are pulling buckets of gold from the dwindling rivers of mass media. Persona-based ad writing is rooted in...

Every Nazi believed every other Nazi had character and integrity. Likewise, the Ku Klux Kooks and the Taliban believe themselves to be the high defenders of all that is holy and true. Your judgment of the “character and integrity” of others is rooted in the values you hold to be self-evident or in the religion to which you subscribe. Is it only those who believe as you do that have “character and...

Will you tell me the truth about yourself if I let you do it from behind a mask? I'm collecting impressions today and I'm willing to share my collected data with you. My hope is that we'll both will get a glimpse into how we measure ourselves, our friends, and our heroes. Want to give it a try? Which of the following characteristics do you most admire? Which trait is number two? Physical Ability O...

Why does every branch of medicine have pediatric specialists? Are kids a different species than adults? In a word, “yes.” According to Dr. David Nichols, “Children are susceptible to different diseases than adults. Their basic anatomy is the same as ours, but they experience a whole different set of problems.” Business life-cycles are like that, too. When young, a business must embrace  funda...

A visual image is a simple thing, a picture that enters the eyes. But a mental image is more complex. Assembled in the mind from information real and imagined, mental images are complex composites of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, opinion and mood, combined with associative memories, both conscious and unconscious. A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental im...

Contrary to popular belief, Americans don't hate advertising. We just hate ads that sound like ads. Do your ads sound like ads? Are you guilty of Ad-speak? Ad-speak is filled with polished words and filtered phrases that deliver no information and have no relevance. Ambiguous claims give Ad-speak a hollow sound. Do your ads mention your superior service, your friendly staff, or name the number of...

Do you feel that something might be wrong with your business but you're not quite sure what it is? Solving  the problem is the easy part. The tricky part is getting clarity on exactly what the problem is. Careless doctors treat symptoms. They don't worry about  why  your head is hurting, they just give you a painkiller. “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” But good doctors...

I was planning to write  When Marketing is a Mirage,  but that's going to have to wait. Because today I'm hearing the voice of John Steinbeck as he mumbles to his poodle, Charley, and ambles toward his pickup truck: “When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the...

To go from one state of consciousness to another… To move from an old opinion to a new… To travel from ignorance to insight and darkness to light… requires a portal. A portal is a transitionary device of sight or sound that functions as a sort of third gravitating body between the  this  and the  that,  pulling us toward itself, allowing us to bridge into the unknown from the k...

Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are both accepted as scientific fact even though they’re mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein spent the second half of his life searching for a unifying truth that would reconcile the two. Einstein was searching for String Theory. It not only reconciles General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, but it reconciles Science and the Bible as well. Listen to a grou...

Last Thursday  the  Wall Street Journal  published a story  about a new book written by two of our faculty members, hinting strongly that if the biggest advertising agencies on Madison Avenue would just buy a copy and read it, they would find the answers to all the questions that have eluded them. That story was a very big deal. On Friday the  Wall Street Journal  bes...

About 15 years ago I concluded that a medium-impact broadcast ad should be replaced only after the typical listener has heard it at least 12 times, and a low-impact ad should be replaced after achieving a frequency of 20. I arrived at these conclusions by carefully monitoring the results of radio campaigns of clients around the country. But the times have changed, and so have you and I. It appears...

We buy what we buy to remind ourselves and tell the world around us who we are. “Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man you can touch him at the core of his being.” – Bill Bernbach, legendary ad writer “...

Colorful and interesting people surround you in life, but in a graveyard, everyone becomes boring: “John Smith. Devoted Husband, Loving Father.” That's it? That's a life remembered? Where do they bury the interesting people? Where do they bury the reckless daredevils and tender poets and seductive femmes fatale? Where can I find their stories? When Dad died a year ago, my friend Woody Justice canc...

Each letter of the alphabet represents a phoneme, a tiny sound that joins with other tiny sounds to make the more complex sounds we call words. Words are mere shadows cast by ideas. But the ideas they represent are real. Numerals are images of amounts. But the amounts they represent are real. You see a person when you look in the mirror that no one sees but you. Other people see a person when they...

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain “I too have had my dreams: ay, known indeed the crowded visions of a fiery youth which haunt me still.” – Oscar Wilde Do you have a plan that makes y...

BANG.  Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg's new book hits the shelves of every bookstore in America today.  Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Well, are you? Many of you have heard me speak about society's 40-year pendulum and how we're currently in the middle of a 6-year transition from an Idealistic “Me” society to a more Civic-minded “We” perspective. If you've experienced my 90-minute Time Tunne...

The most famous quote attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville is, “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” Strangely,  Tocqueville never said it . He did, however, make a number of astounding pronouncements and predictions. Alexis de Tocqueville, that 25 year-old Frenchman who authored  Democracy in America,  traveled for...

Caterina dumps baby Lenny on her boyfriend, then moves to town and gets married to someone else. Neither Lenny's father nor his mother is willing to give Lenny their family name, so he is known only by the name of the mountain under whose shadow he was born: Lenny Albano. An unwanted child, Lenny grows up strangely in this remote, rural neighborhood without access to comic books or video games. Es...

Pricing  – If you're not worried that you're pricing it too cheap, you're not pricing it cheap enough. That's the best advice I can give you about Pricing in a single sentence. Never ask, “How much might someone be willing to pay for this?” Ask instead, “At what price could I sell a huge number of these?” Read the biographies of Henry Ford and Sam Walton and you'll learn that this was the one...

“You can be anything you want to be,” was once the anthem of America. But we seem to have twisted that sunlit dream into a shriveled demon that whispers, “Hurry, hurry, hurry and you can be everything you want to be.” Too much to do, too little time. Tossed and turned by a too-much world, we're as  tired  as a termite in a yo-yo. And all along, we were just trying to find our way home. “...

Nehemiah is a book of the history of the Jews. Have you ever read it? 450 BC  – It is the time of Socrates, just a few years before Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great: Nehemiah is a government worker who becomes distressed with the way things are and decides to do something about it. “Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewis...

A Very Interesting Ad The doctor's waiting room glowed with old magazines. As I stood there amidst this strange illumination, I noticed an ad for  IBM Consulting  that featured an executive woman peering thoughtfully into the distance. In the foreground hung the three questions that haunt every business that has ever achieved success: How do we keep our latest innovation from becoming ou...

I've noticed a disturbing trend. Maybe you have, too: Cashiers have become the new pitchmen. The old pitchman came to your door and knocked. He sold encyclopedias or vacuum cleaners or miracle soap. Whatever. But you were trapped by your own politeness. You couldn't think of a way to get rid of him without being offensive. So you gave him your time. And often, your money. The new pitchman traps yo...

You are a column of wax. Your purpose began as a spark, a flicker easily ignored. But you didn't ignore it. You turned to face it and your head caught fire. Grace Hansen admonishes, “Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid it will never begin.” In other words, be afraid you will never catch fire. Lethargy. Apathy. Malaise. Aimlessness. Depression: Five different words for the absence of a fl...