Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Every person on earth belongs to several cults. Calm down. I’m not talking about what you think I’m talking about. I’ll start at the beginning. Cult:  any group of people who share a devotion to an idea, activity, or identity. Cults become toxic and dangerous  only when the devotion of the group is  (1.) to a specific individual, (2.) focused on the destruction of an enemy. Culture:...

Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, and Me I never write click-bait headlines, but I wrote this one just to prove I can. Brad shines from Shawnee, Ron comes from Duncan, and I bailed from Broken Arrow. We’re all Okla-Homeboys. Now that my click-bait headline has done its job and convinced you to keep reading all the way down to this third paragraph, I will transition to the real reason I wanted to speak with y...

These are stories of a bright day, a dark night, and a monster. The story of the bright day happened last year just before Christmas. You may recall that I told you about finding an undiscovered 400-year-old copy of the 1605 edition of Don Quixote at a used furniture auction in a village in New England. This is the rest of that story. After I bought that book (and 18 other books nearly as old,) I...

Twenty-nine years ago, Carl Sagan wrote a book called  The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark  (1995). One of the observations Carl shared in that book is particularly troubling: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The b...

Lots of people have been asking me the same 3 questions. QUESTION ONE: “Who were your mentors?” Mentor is a word I never use. It smells of apprenticeship, that wafting, submissive aroma that arises from a servant who adores his master. By this definition, I have never had a mentor, but I do have many heroes I study from a distance, and I have a lot of friends who have spoken valuable things i...

Aim their laughter like a cannon that booms out over the water. Aim their sorrow like a rainbow that follows a storm. Aim their anger like a lightning bolt that kills a man standing under a tree. Be careful not to stand under trees. People would rather be angry that bored. This is why we pay attention to politics. People would rather be frightened than bored. This is why we watch scary movies. Peo...

Any person who relays messages to you from the boss, is now your new boss. An excellent messenger might relay exactly what the big boss asked them to tell you, but only after they have reframed it, recharacterized it, and added their own slant. Every messenger does this. Whether they do it consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant. Whether they do it maliciously or innocently is irrelevant. What...

There is a time to get started, and there is a time to wait. When you have thought carefully about it, take action.  But when you haven’t thought about it, wait. The important is rarely urgent,  and the urgent is rarely important. Do not become a slave to the merely urgent. Perception is to see things that not everyone sees.  Intuition is to recognize connections, and the patterns t...

When you are having an adventure, you wish you were safe at home. But when you are safe at home, you wish you were having an adventure. Every adventure is marked by setbacks, disappointments, and difficulties. Without trouble, there can be no adventure. Our love of movies, video games, and sporting events proves our craving for adventure, for what are these but a celebration of people overcoming s...

My friends know that I have not used – and do not plan to use – ChatGPT, although I do endorse it for people who do not love to write. I love to write. Undissuaded, my friends urge that I should at least allow ChatGPT to gather and compile data for me to edit. I like to gather my own data. Jeffrey Eisenberg gave ChatGPT this prompt: “In less than 500 words what advice would Roy H Williams give his...

“If the founder of an organization does not empower the next generation of leadership to carry the enterprise forward while he is still viable as a leader, the organization he founded will cease to exist within 10 years after his death.” I have no recall of how I learned that information, but I have known it for nearly 40 years. My confidence that it is true tells me that I trusted the source. I w...

A successful mechanic shop brings in about $500,000 a year. But whether or not the shop owner makes any profit on that $500,000 isn’t determined by how good they are at repairing cars, but by how good they are at running a business. And even those shop owners who are good at running a business might not be good at converting telephone inquiries into customers. You realize I’m not just talking abou...

The Growing Up Years: Ages Birth to 20 When a man is in his teenage years, people with good intentions will ask, “What are your plans for the future?” Fewer than 10% of us have a real plan at that age, but we make one up so that we don’t disappoint those who believe in us. I tell teenage boys the truth when I sense they are feeling adrift. “It is rare to know at your age what you want to do with y...

To Hollister and Gideon, You have arrived at that age when everyone you meet will ask you about your plans for the future. I am older, happier, and probably more successful than those people, so ignore them. Listen to me. Knowledge is important, but experience is what really matters. School can give you knowledge, but it cannot give you experience. Experience is the name we give to our mistakes. S...

“Telling the truth more powerfully than is completely accurate” is to think and speak of a future event as though it has already happened. Some people call this “manifesting,” but I am uncomfortable with that word because it conjures the image of a person literally speaking things into existence, an ability that I believe is God’s alone. Yes, I am of that ancient belief that the Big Bang began whe...

Two-letter postal abbreviations don’t have periods after the letters, so when I titled today’s Monday Morning Memo,  “Reno is West of L.A.”  I was not using L.A. as the postal abbreviation for Louisiana. Carson City – the capitol of Nevada – is likewise west of Los Angeles, as are 5 other state capitols. Juneau, Honolulu, Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia are the capitols of Alaska, Hawaii,...

You see a lot of crap during 40 years as an ad writer. You see big, steaming piles of predictable ads written by amateurs who assume the audience is required to listen. You see frozen piles of heartless ads that speak to ideas rather than to people. You see the scattered shrapnel of ads written by highly creative but trigger-happy typists who don’t understand the necessity of  strategy. Amate...

As you increase your words, you decrease their impact. Communicate your thoughts in short sentences. Those thoughts will be remembered, and you will, too. Shorter hits harder. I read a book by a man who is a deep thinker, a great strategist, and a good writer. His strengths are that he can identify, organize, and communicate key ideas. But those ideas would hit harder if the man could write tighte...

Kings and pirates both wear swords, but for different reasons. A king wears his sword as a symbol of the army he commands. A pirate wears his sword so that it will be at hand when he needs it. Pirates have a high tolerance for risk because they have nothing to lose. Kings have a low tolerance for risk because they have everything to lose. A pirate says, “No pain, no gain.” A king says, “No pain, n...

Every time you make a declarative statement,  you choose one of only 9 sentence structures. You have been doing this unconsciously for as long as you have been able to speak and write. Today I am going to teach you how to do it consciously. Ten minutes from now, you will be able to speak and write with greater impact. You must first choose a  perspective.  First person perspective &...

The tectonic plates of America are shifting beneath our feet. Can you feel the tremors? I’m not talking about the foundations of our continent. I’m talking about the foundations our nation. Our continent is rock, soil, and water; mountains and prairies and oceans white with foam. Our nation is a people; a family that we love. And if I might continue quoting Kate Smith for a moment, we would be wis...

My reputation is built largely on the fact that I cheat. I openly admit my cheating, but no one cares, because the way that I cheat is not unethical, immoral, or illegal. I realized in 2017 that Warren Buffet and I do exactly the same thing. Here is how he describes it: “Ted Williams wrote a book called  The Science of Hitting  and in it he had a picture of himself at bat and the strike...

In the Monday Morning Memo for Oct. 10, 2022, I wrote, “Do you want to be one of the world’s great ad writers? Don’t read ads. Read the poems, short stories and novels written by the winners of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes in Literature.” My friend Tom Grimes –  the waterboy of Amarillo  – texted me this insightful correction: “I’ve heard you teach in class that magicians, stand-up come...

There are two ways to become invisible, and both are easily accomplished. To become invisible to yourself:  get lost inside your own head. When you ignore other people, it never occurs to you that they can see you. This is how you become invisible in your mind. To become invisible to others:  say what people expected you to say; do what they expected you to do. This will blur you into th...

[The wizard has been writing twice a month for  Radio Ink  magazine for more than a quarter century. The column you are about to read will be distributed to every radio station in North America – more than 10,000 of them – when it is published in a few weeks. –  Indy Beagle ] Traditional wisdom would suggest that a writer offering advice to Radio professionals should focus on h...