Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Mabel is a widow deep in poverty with two hungry children of her own. Washing other people’s laundry ten hours a day, Mabel earns barely enough money to keep them fed. To keep a roof over their heads, she works for a real estate man who moves her and the children from shack to shack  “to clean them up and make them salable.”  But poor though she is, Mabel can’t watch a baby go unloved, s...

No one wants to be average. But everyone wants to be normal. What's up with that? You can't imitate your way to excellence.  It can be achieved only by breaking away from the pack, abandoning the status quo. But breaking away from the pack is also the way to spectacular failure. Are you beginning to understand why there is so little excellence in the world? A weird person who succeeds is call...

Relentless repetition was once enough to drive your message home. But it isn't quite that simple anymore. The impact of your message in this over-communicated hour depends largely on the structural basis of your statements. A statement is either fact-based or values-based. A fact-based statement must be true or false. If true, it is a correct statement. If false, it is incorrect.  But it is a...

Do you want more free time? Then you must buy it.  Free time  is never free. There are only four ways you can buy free time: 1. Work fewer hours.  Learn to say no. You'll have more free time immediately. Cost:  Lost opportunities, reduced income. 2. Develop systems,  methods and procedures that save time. Cost:  Time and money spent in developing those systems, method...

We Baby Boomers had beautiful dreams back in the '60s and '70s, but we didn't do much about them. It was enough back in those days just to “Visualize World Peace” and sing wistfully about a brighter tomorrow. Remember John Lennon's song,  Imagine? Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people Sharing all the world… You m...

It was a term once used to describe exceptional jazz musicians. African-Americans spelled it “hepcat,” while their white counterparts heard “cat” and assumed “hep” to be a modifier. Hence, “hep cat.” In 1942 Bob Clampett created the first color  Looney Tunes  cartoon,  The Hep Cat,  featuring an unnamed feline that would later develop a lisp and become known as Sylvester, (deri...

Media fragmentation and the evolution of social values are forcing advertisers to spend more and more money to reach fewer and fewer people. Two weeks ago  I mentioned the possibility of using non-traditional media  (NTM) as a supplement to your advertising. One of the most effective forms of NTM today is Corporate Art. Think of it as advertising, but of a permanent sort. What are the la...

I am, for the moment, alive and well as an ad writer. But I feel I'm being stalked by iPods, cell phones, instant messaging, and increasingly fragmented media choices. And they're all gunning for my life. Over-communication rides rampant across the mindscape of America, putting greater-than-ever pressure on ad writers to create ads that produce results. Today I will teach you how to write such ads...

Do you remember the  Seinfeld  episode where Jerry, George and Elaine are waiting for a table in a Chinese restaurant? The plot revolves around the fact that George is desperate to make a phone call but the other guy won't get off the pay phone. That was 1991. The fact that somebody might have a phone in their pocket was unthinkable. How about the  Bubble Boy  episode where Jer...

COURTESY NOTE: This is one of those days when I write about something other than business. Have you ever been in a K-Mart during a “flashing blue light special?” The sad circus begins when an employee rolls out a chrome cart with a rotating blue light on a pole about 8 feet high. A voice on the intercom says, “Attention K-Mart shoppers,” and then tells you know how lucky you are to be in the store...

Okay, let's be clear about this: I'm proud of myself today. So proud, in fact, that you might want to skip reading this memo because all I'm going to do is strut. It could become sickening. Seriously. Frankly, I can't believe you're still reading after a warning like that. First it was Dr. Burkhardt Maess of the  Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience  who proved my longstanding...

One of these days I'm going to calculate the odds of pulling away from a drive-thru window and actually finding what was ordered in the bag. For 3 years I've been calculating the odds of getting extra lemon for your tea when you add the phrase “lots of lemon, please” in America's better restaurants. Currently, this request will get you some small quantity of extra lemon 47.4 percent of the time; u...

Earth's population reached 1 billion persons in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in '59, 4 billion in '74 and 5 billion in late '86. And on October 12th, 1999, Earth's population surpassed 6 billion. The number of passengers on Spaceship Earth has doubled (from 3 billion – 1959, to 6 billion – 1999,) in 40 short years. But we're not discussing population growth today, I'm just opening your eyes...

Last week a client achieved 42 percent of his market potential. Never before had I seen a business break the 40 percent barrier. It was kind of like seeing someone run a four-minute mile. I knew it was possible in theory, but I never thought I'd actually see it. Ben had come to Austin for his annual marketing retreat. After the usual pleasantries, he said, “Traffic is flat, sales are flat, and I'm...

If you want to glimpse the inner forces that drive an organization, you need only observe their methods and listen to their words. Especially when they're not paying attention. Words and methods reveal motives. Listen to a person carefully and you will hear the beating of their heart. Do what they do and you'll become who they are. So be careful whose advice you take and whose methods you adopt. Y...

Marketing was easy in the old days. You had ABC, NBC and CBS, a local newspaper and half a dozen radio stations. That was it. There was no Fox, no WB, no cable channels, no FM radio and no such thing as a cell phone. You had to find a phone booth and a dime. When pay phones jumped to a quarter it was taken as a sign of the antichrist. I'm talking about the 1970s. Fax machines and VCRs did not exis...

Sometimes I go to funny places in my mind. Do you ever go exploring? Lately I've been imagining a world without oil. No oil for cars, no oil for 18-wheelers, no oil for jets. Not even any oil for construction equipment or ambulances. Same world, but smack out of oil. Can you see it? The funny thing is that it will happen. When that day comes, we may or may not have harnessed a renewable source of...

Have you ever noticed how unhappy people always want to share their unhappiness with you? It may come in the form of a whine, a complaint, a rant, or sanctimonious “constructive criticism,” but come it most certainly will. The thing to remember when an unhappy person begins spraying unhappiness is this: It's not really about you. It's about them. And the wounds they carry. So try not to internaliz...

When business is slow, the wise business owner wonders what might be wrong with his business. The average business owner thinks only that something is wrong with his advertising. As I said last week, I believe it was advertising salespeople who taught business owners to think this way, saying, “The secret is to reach the right people. You've obviously been reaching the wrong ones.” But who, exactl...

For years, advertisers have attempted to target “the right customer” through carefully selected media vehicles. Mailing lists aimed at specific demographic, geographic and psychographic profiles have fallen short so often that a 3 percent conversion rate is considered a big success. Carefully selected TV shows and radio formats have failed to deliver equally as often. And now email opt-in lists ar...

If natural resources determined the wealth of nations, Brazil would be the richest country on earth and Japan would be the poorest. But resources have little to do with building a healthy economy. Prosperity happens when the swimming pool installer sells four pools in one month instead of the usual two and says, “I'm going to buy myself three new suits and a big television.” Then the TV salesman c...

Are you one who believes the reliability of research is assured when the sample size is adequate and the respondents are properly qualified? If so, “research” will likely lead you to some tragic conclusions if it hasn't done so already. The problem with most research is that it's done by mathematical types who have little appreciation of the nuances of language. Ask a witness, “How fast were the c...

Features and benefits, features and benefits, features and benefits. We've polished our pitches to such a degree that we've dimmed our abilities to persuade. The customer is only half listening because the inner self is asking,  “What are they not telling me?” Those who have heard my 90-minute presentation about the ongoing evolution of Western communication style are familiar with the proble...

“…And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?'” – from  the 1st book of Kings, chapter 19 When Elijah focused on his own strength, his knees got weak, his hand began to tremble and his heart melted away. But as long as he kept his v...

When your business category is dominated by a single brand and all the other brands put together don't equal them, it's time to create a counter-brand. Counter-branding – business judo – is rare and dangerous. But when you're overwhelmingly dominated, what have you got to lose? Prior to the creation of their “Uncola” counter-brand in 1967, 7-Up had survived for 38 years as a lemon-lime soft drink...