Likewise, love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of both is indifference.

I’m not suggesting that you be angry all the time. I’m suggesting only that you care enough to take action. No, that’s not it either. I’m suggesting that you take action even when you don’t care. Curiosity and action are the only cures for boredom.

“I’ve an idea. Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend that we’re human beings and that we’re actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say?”
- Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s 1956 play, Look Back in Anger
Boredom and indifference are deadly poisons. “Just go with the flow,” “Don’t make waves,” and “Whatever…” are the mantras of the walking dead.

Don’t be dead. Be alive. Make a choice. Commit. Hold your ground. Stand, chin in the air, ready to endure the coming storm or be utterly blown away by it to a strange and different land.

Welcome to Oz, Dorothy. Where did you get those shoes?

I grow weary of people who speak endlessly about goal setting. It’s like listening to someone agonize over where to take their vacation. I feel like shouting, “Just pick a place and GO there! Choose! Go! There’s cool stuff to do EVERYWHERE.”

“I just can’t find my passion.”

Whiner, I’ve got news for you: Passion does not trigger commitment. Commitment triggers passion.

Feelings follow actions. So make a choice. Commit irrevocably. Take action. Passion will explode like a flame, giving you energy and lighting your way. Congratulations! You’re about to embark on an adventure called Life.
Knowing how to do a thing is not the same as actually doing it.

“Many times after one of my six-week classes is completed, a student, excited by what he or she has just learned, has said to me, ‘You should teach an advanced class!’ I am always flattered, but always a little surprised. Advanced? I know for a fact that they have not mastered the most basic principles, and yet they feel that they are ready to move on to the next level.” – Brian McDonald
Wizard Academy equips people who have chosen a purpose. We don’t help you find a purpose; you’ve got to aim that arrow on your own. And then you’ve got to act. You’ve got to release that arrow and ride it.

We just help you hit the bullseye.
I like committed people. I avoid people who are not committed. They waste my time and frustrate me with sad stories and soft sighs as they sing the song of the weasel. You’ve heard the song. All its verses begin with the words “If only”:

“If only I had the money.”
“If only I had gone to college.”
“If only I had chosen differently.”

A committed person paints a picture of a possible future and then works to bring that picture to life. They see it before it happens. They believe it before it’s true. And they take action.

Weasels are dreamers. They see possibilities and sigh wistfully, “If only.”

Committed people are dreamers, too. But they see possibilities and take action. When that action doesn’t work they take another. And another. And another and another and another and…

Weasels believe success and failure to be permanent.

Committed people know both to be flickering moments, points on scoreboards that are constantly changing, tiny adventures called victories and defeats.

What are you trying to make happen?
Do you have the courage to say it out loud?

Do you believe in the future you see in your mind?
“You must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” And you must take action, because the person who does not take action “is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” (Both quotes are from the first chapter of James in the New Testament.)
Some of you are offended by what I have written today.

But honestly, wasn’t it better than being bored?
Roy H. Williams

PS - A number of my Wizard of Ads partners – highly gifted and intensely committed – have chosen to spend half a day helping as many people as they can in Saint Louis this week. Organizing Partner Ray Seggern tells me the team will include, “Paul Boomer, Tim Miles, Charlie Moger, Ryan Patrick, Steve Rae, Jeff Sexton, Mike Slover, Tom Wanek. 

And Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.”

This thing happens SOON, Wednesday the 16th. They’re collecting $67 per participant to cover the cost of the room but if you type memo as your promotional code they’re reducing your investment by 50 percent.

“I do not believe in a fate
that falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate
that falls on men unless they act.”
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Brother Laughlin uttered this phrase as he was telling me of his involvement in the development of two new daily radio shorts involving Regis Philbin and Larry King. Living as he does in Los Angeles, Laughlin sees crowds headed in the same direction long before these crowds are visible to the rest of us.

Laughlin managed KISS-FM during its glory years under the ownership of Gannett, then Jacor, then Clear Channel. I’ll never forget the day in 2004 when “Other Roy” called to say, “I’m thinking about replacing Rick Dees with this new kid, Ryan Seacrest. Do you think I’m nuts?” Laughlin often thinks out loud in my ear. It helps him, somehow, to hear himself say what he’s thinking. He finds it useful. I find it interesting.

Last week was a classic Laughlin moment.

“Music is everywhere,” he said, “you can get it everywhere. All kinds of services, all kinds of devices, we’re swimming in an ocean of music. Radio is headed to the spoken word. Live talk is just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. You won’t be able to get it on these other devices.”

I hadn’t really thought about it but I instantly knew he was right. (Calm down, music radio junkies. Evolutions like this don’t happen overnight but I do believe we’ll see a steady trend toward FM talk for at least the next 10 years.)

My confidence in the correctness of Laughlin’s prediction is rooted in my study of Society’s 40-Year Pendulum, a theory that says public opinion is driven by the energies of a duality, the “Me” and the “We.” Each of these, when balanced by the other, is a good thing. But we always take a good thing too far. Then, suffering the consequences of our own mania, we hunger for what we left behind and begin a 40-year journey to the other extreme.

Moving from its central, balanced position (1963,) the Pendulum swung upward 20 years to the “Me” zenith (1983,) then down 20 years to return to the central point (2003,) now we’re headed up the other side toward the zenith of “We” (2023.)

These are the opposing values that drive the Pendulum:

“Me,” the individual, unique and special and possessing unlimited potential

1. demands freedom of expression
2. applauds personal liberty
3. believes one man is wiser than a million men, “A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee.”
4. wants to achieve a better life
5. is about big dreams
6. desires to be Number One. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
7. admires individual confidence and is attracted to decisive persons
8. believes leadership is, “Look at me. Admire me. Emulate me if you can.”
9. strengthens a society’s sense of identity as it elevates attractive heroes.

The most recent 20-year upswing of the Pendulum into “Me” values began in 1963 with the Beatles song “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Self-indulgence and freedom of expression reached their zenith in 1983 with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Every zenith of “Me” is marked by plastic, hollow posing and outlandish costumes as each of us struggles to be unique.

The 20 years from 1983 to 2003 marked the downswing of the “Me” as it began to deflate and lose energy. We called these “the Gen-X years.”

We’re currently at the halfway point in an upswing into the “We” perspective (2003 to 2023.)

“We,” the group, the team, the tribe, the collective

1. demands conformity for the common good
2. applauds personal responsibility
3. believes a million men are wiser than one man, ”Two heads are better than one.”
4. wants to create a better world
5. is about small actions
6. desires to be a productive member of the team. “I came, I saw, I concurred.“
7. admires individual humility and is attracted to thoughtful persons
8. believes leadership is, “This is the problem as I see it. Please consider the things I am telling you and perhaps we can solve this problem together.“
9. strengthens a society’s sense of purpose as it considers all its problems.

“Me“ and “We“ are the equal-but-opposite attractions that pull society’s Pendulum one way, then the other.

The 20-year Upswing to the Zenith of “We“ (1923–1943) is followed by a 20-year Downswing as that “We“ cycle loses energy (1943–1963). Society then begins a 20-year Upswing into “Me,“ (1963–1983) followed by another 20-year Downswing as the “Me“ cycle loses energy (1983–2003). We’re currently headed toward the zenith of “We,” when our beautiful dream of “working together for the common good” calcifies to become conformity, obligation and sacrifice. In the final phase, these hard virtues evolve yet further to become legalistic intolerance and self-righteous judgementalism.

Talk radio will be used to define “the common good” as we approach this next zenith of “We.” It was near this same halfway point (March 12, 1933) in our previous 20-year upswing into “We” (1923-1943) that FDR united us as a family with his famous radio “fireside chats.” Germany had Adolph Hitler pulling that nation together “for the common good” during the same upswing into “We.” The man working “for the common good” in Russia was Josef Stalin. Blood flowed in the streets.

Please don’t think America is immune to the charms of a vicious extremist who has access to a microphone. Senator Joseph McCarthy held his reign of terror over our nation during the decade immediately following the “We” zenith of 1943. Blacklists, false accusations of conspiracy and irrational Witch Hunts have been the marks of every zenith of a “We” for the past 3,000 years. The 10 years on each side of a “We” zenith are always legalistic and intolerant.

Open-minded, thoughtful, considerate discussion is what America will need as we approach this next zenith of “We.” Sadly, that’s exactly what Germany and Russia needed at this same halfway point 80 years ago.

But that’s not who got their microphones.

To whom will we give ours?
Will it be men and women like FDR or will it be Joseph McCarthy?
Roy H. Williams

A word about writing:
Informative writing tells you what you did not know.
Persuasive writing offers you an attractive, alternative perspective.
Artistic writing communicates a mood, a feeling or an attitude.

An artist who does not occasionally fish the dark waters risks becoming a trite jingle writer or the composer of cheap greeting cards. My artistic treatise on suicide freaked a few people out last week. Sorry about that. But if dark shadows do not frighten you, I pulled a second one up from the depths.

From Wikipedia – In 1947, [just 4 years after the zenith of "We" -RHW]
the House Un-American Activities Committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, the “Hollywood Ten” were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists—including directors, radio commentators, actors and particularly screenwriters—were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, left the U.S. to find work. Others wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry.

I’m not sure what I was doing that day but I did not kill myself.

No one knew her name so her body remained unclaimed until she was reported missing. She was identified by her clothes.

Suicide troubles me. I get it but I don’t.

I think I’ve known more people who killed themselves than the average person. This, too, troubles me.

Francesca often denied the camera her face, turning away from it as though she didn’t want to be photographed. But Francesca was a photographer, the very photographer, in fact, who was taking her picture.

I think Francesca Woodman was hiding from herself. And one day she hid so very well that she never found herself again.

Francesca was a profoundly artistic photographer. Had she not hidden herself so completely she might have enjoyed a visit to 1071 Fifth Avenue. The photographs she made during the 9 years following her 13th birthday have become the feature attraction of the Guggenheim, one of the world’s most prestigious museums. I put a few of her photographs in the rabbit hole for you. (Just click the photo of Francesca hanging from the lintel of the door above the title of today’s Monday Morning Memo. Each click of a photo beyond that portal will take you one step deeper.)

Francesca Woodman was born when I was 5 days old. Steve was a couple of years older.

I remember Steve because he and I often prayed together when I was 22. One day he and his wife asked Pennie and me to have dinner in their home. On a different day, his wife asked Steve for a divorce. Steve moved out, as requested.

On a final day, Steve broke into his house while his wife and young son were out. He went into his son’s room. I remember that room. You know what happened next.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this.

Steve was a lineman for the telephone company.
He had a life and then he didn’t.

Maybe I’m telling you this because one of you is thinking of quitting early.

All I can say is this and it’s probably the wrong thing to say; decades of sadness and confusion are the legacy left by those who quit early, the bitter inheritance you give to those who created a place for you in their hearts.

Not everyone is showcased by the Guggenheim.

Roy H. Williams

Shame is about who you are.

I’ve always been attracted to people who are guilty, but unashamed. Guilt without shame is audacity, a special kind of courage.  It’s what we admire in the little boy who shouted, “The king is naked! Right there in the middle of the street! Naked!”

Everyone was thinking it, but no one was willing to say it.

I’ll bet that kid was in trouble when he got home. His mom probably even used all three of his middle names, “Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, what were you thinking?”

“Well Mom, I was thinking the king was naked.”

“Oscar, what you did was unacceptable… inappropriate… inexcusable.”

The boy was guilty of speaking a socially unacceptable truth. His mother knew the danger of it. “Oscar, people are rarely thankful when you pull aside their veils of pretense to reveal their grand delusions.”

Oscar Wilde died 112 years ago but we still recall the piercing observations of his stiletto wit.

“The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.”

“And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed.”

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”

“Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.”

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man’s last romance.”

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.”

“Bad artists always admire each other’s work.”

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

If you are committed to speaking the truth, it will be your choice of tools that defines you.  Oscar Wilde was a playwright. He put his words, like a ventriloquist, into the mouths of actors on the stage. Ad writers, screenwriters and novelists differ only in their ventriloquist’s dummies, the masks they hide behind.

Dorothy Parker was just 7 when Oscar Wilde died but he left her his stiletto wit. Dorothy became a journalist. No dummy. No mask.

When a Broadway play was interrupted to announce the death of Calvin Coolidge, Dorothy leaned over and whispered to a friend, “How do they know?”

When reviewing The Autobiography of Margot Asquith for the Oct. 22, 1927 issue of The New Yorker, Dorothy wrote, “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories of all literature.”

In another review, she said, “This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”

Dorothy Parker had the audacity to speak the truth.
“All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.” Not even the church was safe. “But as for helping me in the outside world, the convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil, it will erase ink.”

In later years, she said, “I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives’ tales about how men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I have never seen this happen.”

The bright clarity of her observations earned her a place on the infamous Hollywood Blacklists of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. But Dorothy was not dismayed. She said: “They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”

In other words, bring it on.

If it’s a crime to pull back the veil of public pretense and name the nakedness of kings, Dorothy was definitely guilty.

Dorothy Parker died 5 years before Ze Frank was born, but I recognize the flash of his blade; big ideas packed into few words, Oscar and Dorothy for the 21st centuy.

Ze showed us the power of the video blog when, in 2006, he committed to post a new show every day for a year. The Show with ZeFrank is the stuff of internet legend. March 18, 2007, was a desolate day for millions of fans worldwide. The 365 days had ended. No Show. Ze was gone, just as he said he would be.

When, a couple of weeks ago, Ze Frank announced he was going to do something new, a spontaneous party erupted around the world. There were fireworks, laughter and dancing in the streets. Our new Vice-Chancellor, Michele Miller, miraculously convinced Ze to share what he knows with us on September 13 at Wizard Academy.

You’ve heard me say that Leonardo da Vinci, Buckminster Fuller and Walt Disney would teach here if they were still alive. I know this because each of them was creatively disruptive, our brand of crazy. If the face of Ze Frank were carved alongside da Vinci, Fuller and Disney on Wizard Academy’s private Mount Rushmore, he would not look out of place.

I wouldn’t miss this event for anything. Neither should you.

I will say no more about it.

Roy H. Williams

PS – Okay, I’ll say one last thing about it. Click the link that says “this event” just above my signature to see the inaugural video that Ze, now 40, has posted. He calls it An Invocation for Beginnings.

Seems to have been.

Bubbling, babbling in bits of broken English, Sam was a cantankerously crazy old man.

But what he left behind was beautiful.

He worked on it alone from 1921 to 1954, then signed the deed over to a neighbor and disappeared.

Never came back.

The Beatles put his face next to Bob Dylan’s on the album cover of  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.

The surreal structure Sam left behind was declared a National Historic Monument in 1990.

He was crazy like Leonardo Da Vinci. Crazy like Buckminster Fuller. Crazy like Antoni Gaudi.

If Sam could illustrate what he saw, he would have been crazy like Dr. Seuss. But his paints were not liquid. They were broken bits of glazed pottery and colored glass embedded in concrete over wire-covered steel.

In Sam’s fingers a shattered 7-Up bottle became a splash of sparkling green in the sky above Los Angeles. Milk of Magnesia bottles offered Sam the riches of cobalt blue. The sea placed at his feet the whitewashed shells of underwater creatures and the dumpster of a pottery factory gave him the Sunflowers yellow of Vincent Van Gogh and the red blood of an Italian saint.

Spain’s Antoni Gaudi began the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona in 1883.

America’s Sam Rodia began Watts Towers in south central L.A. in 1921.

He finished and vanished before I was born.

Sam made bas relief murals in colored cement by pressing his tools into the mix when it was still young and impressionable.

He made an impression on me as well and I am no longer young.

Three weeks ago I asked Paul Sherman for the money to build a winding sidewalk from Wizard Academy’s tower down to where the chapel path meets the Garden of Joy. Paul granted us the cash because Paul is a generous man who appreciates what he has learned during his visits to the Academy and the difference this knowledge has made in his business.

And now I’m asking you to help build an archway, a portal on Paul’s sidewalk, in the manner of Sam Rodia. This archway, this portal to adventure, will be built by Pennie and me from the objects you send us along with the fifty dollars or more you donate to Wizard Academy.

Sam’s style and method of building from found objects has been called naïve art, outsider art, folk art and junkitecture.

I call it enchanting, inspiring and crazy.

Are you in?

Roy H. Williams

Gordon Rawlinson: Thank You
for the 35 bottles of expertly-selected red wine you sent in honor of Pennie’s and my 35th wedding anniversary. I only just found out that you never received my thanks by video. (I thought I would be clever and mention it to all the students in my monthly webcast. Knowing that dozens of your employees participate in these webcasts, I mistakenly assumed one or ten of them would have mentioned it to you.) My bad. I remember saying that I was profoundly impressed with the sensitivity of whoever made the selections. I gathered all the fingers on my right hand to my right thumb, raised the group to my lips and kissed them in the manner of Europeans as a salute. (As instructed, all the wine went to my house to be enjoyed by Pennie and I alone.) You’re a true friend. Come visit! – RHW

As long as we’re on the subject of brand identity and reputation, how are brands created in the first place? Is a brand merely the sum total of all the things a company says about itself?

Of course not.

Ads do, of course, play a big part in branding. Brand personality is communicated by:

1. what you say,

2. how you say it, and

3. what you leave out.
That’s right. What you leave out says as much as what you shout. This is because our minds read between the lines. Consider boxing legend Mike Tyson’s rebuttal to a statement made by sportswriter Wallace Matthews: “He called me a rapist and a recluse. I’m not a recluse.”

What you leave out says as much as what you shout.

Now back to the idea that a brand is the sum total of all its ads. The simple truth is this:

1. Some ads have more relevance than others.

2. Some ads have more credibility than others.

3. Our opinion of a brand is not just a reflection of that brand’s current ad.

4. Our opinion of a brand is not just a reflection of that brand’s advertising during the past 30, 60, or 180 days.

5. A two-year rolling window seems to be the interval of primary influence. (Notice that we said primary influence, not total.)

6. Thus, it can be loosely said – to the degree that ads communicate a brand – brand identity is largely a composite of the previous 24 months’ advertising. Ads older than 24 months fade into the mist of yesterday’s truth. You might remember an ad from 30 years ago but it’s not likely to greatly influence your opinion of that brand today. 

7. Sleep erases advertising. The less relevant the message, the more quickly it is erased.

8. “Save 30 Percent, This Week Only,” becomes utterly irrelevant next week except for one little tidbit that sticks in the mind of the customer: “Wait, and they’ll put it on sale.” Our minds read between the lines.

There are two factors beyond advertising that greatly inform our opinion about a brand:

1. Our own experience. “What you are doing shouts so loud I cannot hear what you are saying.”

2. The opinions of others. News stories (the result of a good P.R. campaign) and word-of-mouth (the result of the experiences of others) influence brand reputation and thus, brand identity.
News stories are tricky to get. Word-of-mouth is not. The problem with word-of-mouth is that it’s much more likely to be negative than positive. This is because:

1. Rage is a stronger motivator than joy. (Not a stronger emotion; a stronger motivator. Rage demands action. Joy does not.)

2. Most people “play it safe” when it comes to word-of-mouth. If they tell you, “It was a great movie,” you’ll think less of them if you see the movie and don’t like it. But if they say, “It was horrible. Don’t go,” you’ll be grateful they saved you from making a mistake. Positive word-of-mouth is risky to the recommender. Negative word-of-mouth is not.
Do you want to know the secret to generating positive word-of-mouth? Never promise everything you intend to deliver. Keep an ace up your sleeve. The bigger the happy surprise you deliver when your customer comes into contact with you, the stronger the positive word-of-mouth that will follow. And this “happy surprise” can’t simply be great service. You’re going to have to come up with something far more eye-opening than that.

Did you learn something in today’s memo you can use?

Good. Now go tell two other people about MondayMorningMemo.com

Do it for them.

Do it for me.

Ciao for Niao,

Roy H. Williams

You can learn more about branding with a Wizard of Ads LIVE membership. $1440 for the year.

Google “meaning of Tishbite” and the first page of results will give you a glimpse of the grand sweep of opinions we have when it comes to things religious.

Tishbite means “stranger” according to some sources but Wikipedia says Tishbe was a place, thus, “The phrasing can be reworded as ‘Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead.’”

Churchages.com says, “If we translate the word Tishbite, it means ‘a converter.’” But meaning-of-names.com lets us know, “In Israeli, the name Tishbite means ‘that makes captive’ and is most commonly given to girls.” (Israeli is a language? I thought Israelis spoke mostly Hebrew. – RHW)

What this tells us is that you can “prove” anything you want if only you choose the right sources to quote. People give authority to the written word. “Right there it is in black and white. See it? Right there it is.”

Elijah lived about 2,900 years ago and his specialty, it would seem, was calling down fire from heaven. We’re told of 3 times Elijah did this. The first time was epic.

“At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: ‘LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.’ Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.”
– 1^st Kings ch. 18

To the consternation and amazement of my friends, I am one of those inexplicable people who believe there really was a guy named Elijah and that he really did the things ascribed to him in the books of 1^st and 2^nd Kings in the Old Testament. Jesus, too, speaks of Elijah in the New Testament as though he was a real person and believe it or not, the Qur’an refers to this same Elijah in chapters 6 and 37.

But I don’t believe Elijah was a real person merely because a few ancient texts refer to him as a real person. I believe the Elijah story – all of it – because I have chosen to believe it.

Belief is not mandated by facts or by the lack of them. You believe what you choose to believe. Belief is always a choice. Consequently, you can believe Tishbe was a place and Elijah was from there, or you can believe Tishbite means “stranger” or that it means “a converter” or that Israeli is a language and people who speak it commonly give their daughters the unfortunate name of “Tishbite.”

You might even choose to believe that a nameless storyteller invented Elijah 2900 years ago and that Jesus was duped by this Elijah fiction 900 years later and Muhammad was likewise duped 600 years after that. This would be a perfectly reasonable belief.

It’s just not the belief I have chosen.

As I said, Elijah’s specialty was calling down fire from heaven.

You, too, can call fire down from heaven. What kind of fire do you call? Is it musical fire? Is it shapes and colors? Do you call down poetry or analysis or compassion or strategic planning? There is a thing you do extremely well. You know what it is. You have a knack for it. It just comes to you. You’ve always been good at it. What is it?

I believe in Elijah, but I also believe in you.

You have doubts about your own abilities.

Self-doubt is part of the human experience. Elijah, immediately after calling down the fire of chapter 18 in 1^st Kings, ran from an angry woman and hid in a cave in Mount Horeb. During the night, the word of the LORD came to him:

“‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. 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?’”

There is great majesty and poetry in the Bible. This is evident to anyone who has a taste for literature. But I also take encouragement from it.

Let us conclude:

1. You, like every human, can call down some type of fire from heaven.

2. It is dark and you feel alone, hiding in your cave.

3. Remember the words of our pal, Teddy Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

4. Think big. Start small. Do something, no matter how tiny, but do it now.

5. Then do another tiny thing.

6. And another.

7. Today’s memo has been nothing but a whisper:

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Roy H. Williams

(Whence Cometh the Power of Ads to Work Magic)

An Excerpt from The Wizard of Ads by Roy H. Williams.

An Energy of Words has existed since the day He said, “Let there be light.” Learn how to use this energy. You are created in His image.

Masses of People are predictable, though an individual person is not. The exception does not disprove the rule.

Intellect and Emotion are partners who do not speak the same language. The intellect finds logic to justify what the emotions have decided. Win the hearts of the people, their minds will follow.

Time and Money are two sides of a single coin. No person gives you his money until he has first given you his time. Win the time of the people, their money will follow.

Sight and Sound function differently in the mind, with sound being the surer investment. Win the ears of the people, their eyes will follow.

Opportunity and Security are inversely proportionate. As one increases, the other must decrease. High returns are gained from low-risk strategies only through the passage of time. He who will cheat time must embrace the risk of failure.

Engage the Imagination, then take it where you will. Where the mind has repeatedly journeyed, the body will surely follow. People go only to places they have already been in their minds.

We go over these laws along with many other helpful business, advertising, and life tips.

We’ll see you when you get here.

Sean Taylor
Sean@WizardofAds.com

- The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, an allegorical tale about an Andalusian shepherd boy, written in only two weeks in 1987 because according to the author, “the story was already written in my soul.” It has since become one of the twelve best-selling books of all time.

Hunches – premonitions – gut feelings – intuition – are just different names we give to that wordless logic of the brain’s right hemisphere.

Look at any list of the functions of the right hemisphere of the brain and you’ll notice that each is simply a different form of pattern recognition.

You’ll find no book that says what I just said; it’s merely my own observation.

But I’m quite certain I am right.

The left and right brains don’t work independently of each other, though it often seems like they do since they contribute very different kinds of perceptions to the final mental image. The left brain looks for the discrepancy, the flaw, the mistake, the anomaly, always asking, “Where is the difference?” And then it focuses on that difference. The left brain zooms in like a microscope, forever seeking additional details.

The left brain rejoices “when it all adds up.”

The danger of the left is that it often makes mountains out of molehills in the mistaken belief that anything that is true must also be relevant to the problem at hand. The left brain is legalistic, seeing everything as either correct or incorrect, right or wrong, true or false. The left brain can be astoundingly petty.

Rational, sequential, deductive reasoning – classical logic – is the contribution of the brain’s left hemisphere.

But the logic of the right brain is intuition.

The right brain looks for similarities, patterns, systems and relationships, always asking, “Where are the connections?” And then it uses the ripple effect to give it systemic leverage within highly complex systems; “a small change here yields a big difference way over there.” The right brain pulls back further and further, forever seeking the bigger picture.

The danger of the right is that it often sees patterns that aren’t really there, resulting in an unproductive goose chase into the unknown and irrelevant.

The right brain is amoral. Morals are the left brain’s job. And the right brain makes no distinction between fact and fiction. Real and imaginary are one and the same in the shadowland of the subconscious right brain. The right hungers only for the complexity of skillfully woven patterns and relationships between shapes, colors and symbols in art; contour, interval, pitch, key, tempo and rhythm in music; motives, relationships, actions and reactions in people; and form, function, component and composite in machines of every kind, even the relational machinery of human organizations.

The right brain seeks the metaphors, universal laws and archetypal patterns that link all experience into a grand unified theory, the final solution to the puzzle of existence; the biggest picture of all.

The right brain rejoices in the complexity of the pattern.

The left brain seeks and provides information.
The right brain seeks and provides perspective, choosing a particular angle of view.

People never really change their minds. Provide them with the same information and perspective they’ve had in the past and they’ll continue to make the same decisions they’ve made in the past. A person who appears to be  “changing their mind” is really just making a new decision based on new information and/or a new perspective.

Motivational interviewing is an inverted form of storytelling that helps us open the eyes of another to patterns of behavior and consequences that may have previously been hiding in their blind spot. It helps us give them a new perspective.

Storytelling is a form of selling. It allows us to use the old and familiar as metaphors to help us determine the right course of action when facing the new and different.

Choose the story and you control the metaphor.

Control the metaphor and you strongly influence the conclusion that will be reached by the listener.

An elegantly powerful salesperson is one who leads you to believe you made the decision entirely on your own.

This is the power of Once Upon a Time…

Roy H. Williams

Hi Roy,  

I’m sure that you receive this question often, but I didn’t find your personal response to it online. How do you believe the reduction in frequency realized through the implementation of PPM should affect media planning? The obvious response is that PPM derives a more accurate measure of TSL, and therefore these “new” metrics should now be the benchmark…but what does that say about the “old” 3.0 frequency? Previous studies showed the “old 3.0” was effective. In the end, the PPM 3.0 is clearly a safe bet for results…but the question is whether old schedules, previously deemed effective, should be shifted to reduce reach and increase frequency…and whether that change will further enhance results or not.

Thank You!

Ashley Alexandra Testa

Ashley, you ask a good question.

For those who aren’t completely up-to-speed on Arbitron’s new Portable People Meter (PPM) technology for radio measurement, here are the basics:

1. Arbitron survey respondents now carry a device that records which stations they’re actually listening to, not just the ones they think they’re listening to, as was often the case in the old “diary” based method.

2. This means radio stations get credit for actual listening time rather than just how well they imprint their station slogans and taglines onto our memories.

3. Consequently, lots of “favorite” radio stations are being revealed to have smaller audiences than was previously believed, while lots of second and third-favorite stations are finally able to prove what they’ve always known: listeners were listening to their stations and then reporting to Arbitron they were listening to the “brand name” leader.

4. The average person listens to a larger number of different stations than they realize.

5. This makes it harder than ever to achieve frequency (repetition.)

Now back to Ashley’s question, which was, effectively, “Since PPM shows us a schedule that yielded a diary-based 3.0 frequency yesterday yields only a 2.5 when measured with PPM today, should we start targeting a 2.5 frequency instead of 3.0?”

Ashley, the short answer would be “Yes” if short answers weren’t so dangerous. Our dilemma lies in the premise stated in your note: “In the end, the PPM 3.0 is clearly a safe bet for results…”

A 3.0 frequency is not, and never was, a safe bet.

Results in radio are based on three things:

(1.) Relevance. Does the listener care? And if so, how much?
(2.) Credibility. Does the listener believe the claims made by the advertiser?
(3.) Frequency. (Repetition.) How often is the listener exposed to this message?

Relevance without credibility is the definition of hype.
Credibility without relevance is the answer to a question no one was asking. A message with high relevance and high credibility for a product or service with a short purchase cycle is the perfect Direct Response ad. For such an ad, a frequency of 1.0 will work just fine.

But very few ads have such relevance and credibility that they need to be heard only once.

Insufficient repetition kills a lot of radio campaigns. But radio people often blame poor results on insufficient frequency, saying, “The advertiser just didn’t spend enough money,” when the real problem was in the ad copy: It had low relevance or low credibility or both.

Here’s another problem with that sacred 3.0 frequency: Is a 3.0 spread over a month the same as a 3.0 delivered in one week? How about a 3.0 delivered in just one day?

Again, a short answer: The less sleep between repetitions, the better. Sleep erases advertising. When the relevance and credibility of two ads are equal, depth of memory goes to the one given the highest repetition within the fewest nights sleep.

The “old rule” of a 3.0 was simply this: “The average message must be heard by the same listener at least 3 times within 7 night’s sleep to give that message any chance of being remembered.” Radio people somehow twisted this into, “A 3.0 frequency is a guarantee of success.”

Generally speaking, the shorter the purchase cycle, the sooner the ads will start working. The longer the purchase cycle, the longer it will take for the campaign to gain traction.

High-impact ads for products with short purchase cycles work less and less well the longer you air them. Memorable ads for products with long purchase cycles work better and better the longer you air them.

If you want to have a lot of fun, write high-impact ads for products and events with very short purchase cycles. Talk loud and draw a crowd. Advertisers will treat you like a rock star. When the ads finally burn out and your advertisers begin to frown, find yourself a new batch of twitchy little bastards to impress. The world is full of them.

But if you want to make a lot of money, write memorable ads for advertisers whose products have long purchase cycles.

Tell these advertisers the truth: the same listener needs to hear the ad roughly 3 times a week, 52 weeks a year for that advertiser to become a household word.

The technical term used by cognitive neuroscientists for this process of creating involuntary, automatic recall is to move the message from immediate, electrical “working memory” to mid-term “declarative memory” and then finally on to long-term, chemical, involuntary “procedural memory.” This takes time and repetition but it’s most easily accomplished using sound. Radio and television work best.

Create procedural memory and the customer will automatically think of you when they finally need what you sell. Better yet, they’ll think of you when any of the 250 people in their personal ‘realm of association’ needs what you sell. Procedural memory is the basis of word-of-mouth.

Bottom line: It’s okay to use a PPM 2.5 frequency as “the new 3.0” if you understand that frequency is just one, small reference point in an algebraic equation. The bigger question is whether the advertiser has the financial staying power and patience to drive their message into permanent, procedural memory.

Consistency is the frequency of the frequency.

Ashley, find yourself some advertisers who have the courage and patience of their convictions. Partner with these people. Write great ads for them. Together, you can take over the world.

You go, girl.

Roy H. Williams

Check out what my Home Office team is doing June 22nd.