What happens when you think you're selling diamonds, but your customers are actually buying a moment?

In this tell-it-like-it-is episode, Ryan Chute sits down with Ad Wizards Mick Torbay and Chris Torbay to dismantle one of the most common—and costly—mistakes in business: confusing what you do with what you really sell.

From jewellers obsessed with gemology to plumbers keeping “No Poop on the Floor,” they unpack why clarity beats cleverness, why over-educating your customers is killing your ads, and how identity—not features—drives buying decisions. Along the way, you’ll get stories that will make you laugh, cringe, and rethink every line of copy you’ve ever written.

The boys trade jabs over the fine line between selling the emotional moment and telling people exactly what you can do for them. And they’ll show you how to strike that balance so your ads actually connect—and convert.

Episode Highlights

• Why customers aren't buying your product—they’re buying the moment it creates.
• The danger of "educating" instead of persuading.
• How to balance emotional storytelling with clear, literal offers.
• Real-world examples: from garage doors that sell saftey to drain company that sell relief.
• The "inside the bottle" trap that keeps business owners from seeing their true message.

Whether you’re a brand-builder, marketer, or business owner, this episode will sharpen your instincts, simplify your message, and help you sell the thing your customers actually want.

▶️ Tap in for the truth bomb—then decide: are you selling the thing, or the moment?

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💬 What’s the real business you’re in—and is it the same thing your customers think you’re in?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

In today's episode of Advertising in America, we're going to debate what you think you sell versus what you actually sell.

Talk to a jeweller and ask what they do, and they'll tell you they deal in diamonds, gold, precious metals and gemstones. They can explain why a ruby can be blue and a sapphire can be red.

It's true, but the more you know about something, the more disconnected you become from those people who don't know anything about that something.

Stop trying so hard to sound smart. Advertising is about clarity. I say, be clear. Tell me one thing. What do you do? How can you help me? Too many companies try too hard to be too philosophical about what they do, rather than just telling me they're good at the one thing I need done.

You wanna have people agonizing over the ad and whatnot, then there are solutions. But at the end of the day, do what's right for you. Do it in a way that makes people feel something about you, not just know that you exist.

Ryan Chute: Let's get past the plastic surface and talk about what your customers really want from you to fight for what's right, not right in front of you. Here's Mick.

Mick Torbay: One of the things I agonize over, especially when I first meet a client, is determining what business they're really in. Sometimes I ask them, here's the funny part, you'd be amazed at how often the client does not know what business they're actually in.

Now, how is that possible? You'll find out right after this.

Nah, I'm just fucking with you.

Talk to a jeweller and ask what they do, and they'll tell you. They deal in diamonds, gold, precious metals and gemstones. Ask for their credentials, and they'll show you a diploma from the American Institute of Gemology.

They can explain why a ruby can be blue and a sapphire can be red. It's true, but the more you know about something, the more disconnected you become from those people who don't know anything about that something. So if you ask what business the jeweller is in, he'll give you an answer that's wrong. He thinks he's in the jewelry business, and he's not. And this is the danger of the jeweller. I remember when I was a young copywriter and I was meeting a client for the first time. He was a jeweller and a very experienced one. He was in his sixties, and it was a family business. This guy knew jewelry. And he says to me, “I know what we need to talk about in our commercials.”

Okay, that's kind of my job, but let's run with this. And what he said was, “I believe we need to educate the consumer.” Sidebar. This is a tremendous red flag business owners.

If you ever tell someone you need to educate the consumer, you're just about to make a horrible mistake. Consumers are not looking to be educated. If they want to be educated, they'll take a course, not watch TV, or listen to the radio to be educated by a commercial.

But back to the story, “what we need to do is educate the consumer on gemology, because if people knew more about gemology, they'd make better decisions in the jewelry store.” Now what he said was 100% true. If we knew more about gemology, we would make better decisions in the jewelry store. However, just because it's true doesn't mean it's relevant. When you work at a jewelry store every day and you buy and sell jewelry as your life's work, you begin to forget what it's like to not know a damn thing about jewelry, and that's the world you and I live in.

To operate a jewelry store, you need to run your business based on the quality and value of the product you're selling. Quality and value. Now, how often do you hear ads about that? Huh? But when you or I walk into a jewelry store, we're looking for something quite different. The fact that we know nothing about diamonds is completely irrelevant. We're here for one reason only. We want the love of our life to open up a box and say, “Oh my God, what have you done?” That's what we're buying. We're buying a moment. Remember the jeweller isn't even there when the moment takes place. He doesn't see that. My jeweller wants people to think of jewelry like he does, and we don't.

If we knew as much about jewelry as he does, we wouldn't buy it because we realize that golden gemstones are commodities, and we are not commodities brokers; we're entirely out of our league when it comes to the quality and value of jewelry. So the smart jeweller never brings it up. Buying jewelry is never a good financial decision.

Remember, a jeweller is a guy who will sell you something that costs $10,000, and all it does is tell fucking time. It doesn't even tell the time as well as a $50 quartz watch. Quality and value, are you insane? We go to the jewelry store because we want to buy the moment, not the thing.

Most jewellers don't know what business they're in. It's not about the gold or the diamonds or the watch. It's about the moment. It's about the story. It's about the love of your life. A good ad will speak to those things. A shitty ad will talk about the jewelry, the quality, and the value. As a business owner, you need to acknowledge that it is impossible to think like someone who doesn't know all the stuff you know. You can't turn off expertise. You can't say, “How would I feel if I didn't have decades of experience in this field?” Thinking like a customer is not something that's available to the business owner. It's a nice catchphrase, but it can't be done, not by you.

Knowing what business you're really in is the first step to creating a message that beats the hell out of everyone else's ad. But you need someone from outside of your organization to do it for you.

Ryan Chute: I'm buying jewelry for the blowjob. I don't know about you, but I know if I do it right, I know, you know.

And for the fellow with the beautiful new tennis bracelet, here's Chris Torbey to educate us on.

Chris Torbay: I'm honestly gonna take the other side on this because the woke politically correct strategy, savvy insights, we hear from all the high-priced gurus, is always “No man. The trick is to find out what business you're really in. Ooh.”

Stop trying so hard to sound smart. Advertising is about clarity. I say, be clear. Tell me one thing. What do you do? How can you help me? And yeah. Yeah. I've heard all the strategy. Guru bunk dentists aren't in the cavity-filling business. They're in the business of you having a confident smile, or we don't fix air conditioners in the home comfort business.

Sure, there's an undercurrent of truth to all that, and that should guide you in the creative ways you distinguish yourself in your marketing. But don't skip the part where you tell people specifically what you can do to help them. Too many companies try too hard to be too philosophical about what they do, rather than just telling me, they're good at the one thing I need done.

Trucking companies that are in the logistics business, truckers are logicians now. They gotta stay in the middle of their lane. They're literally about to be replaced by Tesla self-driving rigs. For every moving company that says they're actually in the home relocation business. There is another company called Two Guys and a Truck, because that's what I need. Two guys and a truck.

Anything that's a solutions company. Lots of health companies. Fuck it. What do you make? Health services, integrated communication, wealth management. You're not an intimacy solutions company. You make lube. Home services and home comfort companies.

The broader your umbrella gets, the less I know you're right for the problem I have today, which is a backed-up toilet. In an effort to cast a wide net, you've made a net so full of holes that it isn't a net anymore. When I see the Lego store, boy, I know what they sell. I know what problem of the mind they solve.

And a lot of the time, people use this pseudo-psychiatry to get out of any responsibility for the things that they do going bad. Whenever there's societal pushback on Uber for killing the taxi industry, they insist they're a software company, not a transportation business. When someone loses their house and their kids' college money at the blackjack tables, the gaming industry insists they're in the entertainment business.

We all know what you do. Don't pretend you do something more profound. You know what I do? I write ads. I mean, I write good ones and I do it strategically, and I understand a lot about communication, but “strategic communications expert” doesn't help you understand what I can do for you. Copywriter does.

What I can do for you is write some really good ads. David Abbott, a legendary named partner and CEO of Abbott Mead Vickers, had the title copywriter on his business card until the day he died. David Ogilvy of Ogilvy and Mayer was the same chairman of the board and Creative Director Emeritus doesn't tell you anything.

If my tooth hurts, I need a dentist. If I need to move something, I need a shipping company. If my car breaks down, I need a mechanic. If your advertising positions you as a transportation certainty solutions provider. I don't think you're gonna get my call.

Ryan Chute: All I wanted was two guys in a truck, and all I got was these two in a Tesla with a five-gallon vat of intimacy solution. After the break, we'll see if we can make sense of all this nonsense.

Ryan Chute: Mick, what you were talking about was business owners often misunderstanding their true business message or their core message value. What is it about that matters so much when you're trying to get your message out there?

Mick Torbay: I think it comes down to the business owners, very often, very deep into their business. And they tend to focus on the day-to-day things that they are managing.

When you're managing inventory, you're buying products, and then you're selling them, or you're managing a staff that does particular things, it's very easy to sort of get kinda laser-focused on that because that's how you run a business in a responsible way. But what you're selling and what the consumer is buying don't always perfectly align. And I guess that was the point I was trying to make.

Now you can take that too far, and I think Chris's points are all valid. If you start pretending that you're too far away from that, then the message can become confusing. But I think it is important to take a step back, especially at the beginning of the relationship, between the ad person and the client, to step out of the client's happy place or the place where they exist and try and take a position of the consumer and what it the problem you're trying to solve for that.

Chris Torbay: Yeah, I think that's a good point. But it is, I think it's something that guides your creativity. That was the point I was making, which is you need to know that, you need to understand, as you said about jewelry, right? It's about the moment. But what happens is people get into this sort of higher-order benefit perspective, and they forget to come back to telling you literally what it is they do.

And you know it's true, it happens in naming and stuff like that. And that's where you get companies like Kitchen Stuff Plus, or Bed Bath & Beyond, where it's “Oh no, we're all kinds of things.” But then, when you say all kinds of things, it's “okay, I need a coffee maker. Is that Beyond Beds and Bath? I don't know.” Those are the ones that you haven't told me anymore.

Mick Torbay: Those are the ones that bother me the most because they've added another word and two more syllables and have given you no more data.

Chris Torbay: Exactly. So I think we have to remember, yes, you're in the business of bringing people joy, or you're in the business of making people healthy, or you're in the business of having people be confident about their money. That should inform how the creativity works, or how your brand behaves. But in a commercial, you need to tell me why I should go to your bank and not the other bank, or why I should go to your store and not the other store.

Mick Torbay: But another way of looking at this because it, when we're in the ad business, our job is to differentiate our client from the other businesses in a category.

And I think it's especially useful if every other business in a category is basically saying the same things, which, by the way, happens a lot, almost all the time. Which puts our clients in such an excellent position to take a leadership role in that community is if everybody else is talking about the product or they're talking about the service. If you are to take a step back and at least think, I'm talking about thinking, I'm talking about strategy, creative strategy, not about copy. I'm talking about the way you plan your message and the way you're gonna deliver it to the consumer, and think in terms of is there a bigger thing that's happening here, and can you use that as a differentiator?

And maybe the consumer will look at that and say, “This guy really gets me. You know, the other guys are selling products, but this person really understands what my problem is.”

Ryan Chute: That was absolutely one of the biggest lessons that I had coming into the Wizard of Ads partnership. When I met you guys at the first meeting in 2017, I'm looking at it and going, “I thought I knew what I was doing when it came to marketing,” because I'd done all the standard pedantic things that you do as a business owner and running ads in the way that you run ads transactionally, for the most part, saying all the same pedestrian things that everyone says.

And what I realized was that there's just such a huge difference between what I do as a seller and what you do as a marketer. And while the two bridge beautifully together, they're completely different conversations and topics that are bringing a person in. You're becoming the story of the brand as opposed to me telling how that net's a result for them.

And there is a danger in expertise. I was inside the bottle, and I couldn't read the label on the outside of the bottle. That's what you guys are built for from a creative standpoint, and for me to recognize that and state the heck out of the way as a strategy.

Chris Torbay: And we've touched on this in another episode, that idea, what's the difference between sales and marketing?

Maybe some of that gemology comes out when the guy's at the counter trying to buy the engagement ring. You, as you say, focus on the moment. You know that you're gonna sell this guy a thing that's gonna make her swoon and say “yes,” and it's gonna be the greatest proposal of your time.

Mick Torbay: And that gets him to the store.

Chris Torbay: And he gets to the store. When you're there, you can tell him a little bit about cut and clarity and stuff like that, and it's “Oh, that's a go.” Okay. Now. And now he feels a little bit, educate the consumer. By all means, give 'em a little something, right? Once you go to the Apple store, they'll tell you a little bit about the chip, or they'll tell you a little bit about the camera, or they'll tell you a little bit about those things. But what they want you to do is have that awesome product and feel good about the product first. So yeah, there's a balance there, but there is sometimes it doesn't go in the advertising.

Ryan Chute: And there is a danger in sales to go too far with the four Cs of diamonds, and they say no one cares right about any of that stuff.

You know what they care about? The guy cares that he's making the right decision about the best choice of diamond for his loved one. That's the logic backfilling the emotion. A good salesperson is going to dust on the edges of that and then move on to reassurance.

Chris Torbay: Give him just enough to know that, “Okay, I know I’m not an idiot.”

Mick Torbay: That's right. You give him the data that justifies the decision that his emotions made an hour before. But you just don't want to feel stupid and make sure it's “No, you're actually making a good decision now. And I've proved it.” Good sale.

Ryan Chute: And the smart salesperson is going to focus on the moment, again, because it's an emotional buy in jewelry.

I think of our two clients, one in Florida who sells garage doors. And remember when we were there and she was like, “Guys, I just gotta do this thing for a few minutes.” And she goes up in front of the whole apprentice room and says, “I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about us. You guys think you're here and we're selling garage doors, and I want you to know that we're here selling safety. We're selling security. We're selling what the customer cares most about. Now, yes, we can make it pretty, but more importantly, we can make sure that during a hurricane, the roof's not gonna blow off their house and that the door isn't going to become sort of some sort of weaponized sail cutting through half of the neighbourhood. We're selling you the safety of getting in and out of your home comfortably and safely, and protecting your home as the home's largest entrance.”

So, recognizing her genius in understanding what she's truly selling put a sentiment in the heart of the new technician, certainly, but also informed us as to what we're doing.

And then I think about our guy up in Pennsylvania, who has a drain company and used to be called East Coast Trenchless. It's just an absolutely tragic name that no one understands, and they weren't doing any real revenue, and it was really quite a struggle. And what we recognized through the conversations of the naming exercise, we were presented with some names that were tragic as well. And then we said, “Look, what is the real thing here? What is the moment that we’re addressing?” The moment is the pain at the drain.

That's where the customer sees the pain. That's where the customer, there's nothing worse than poop on the floor.

Mick Torbay: So we called the company, No Poop on the Floor.

Ryan Chute: No Poop on The Floor Plumbing, no, they're not a plumbing company. But we recognize that, and we brought the name back up to now, what's called Drain Magic. Why? Because we make the pain go away at the drain. That's where the customer sees the problem. That's when the call is going to be triggered. So it's about recognizing the moment.

Chris Torbay: But I would also argue that name worked because it did both. It's Drain Magic. It's not Home Magic.

It's not Carefree Home INC, it's Carefree Home INC when it comes to your drain potentially backing up, like the whole message is there. And that's the part that gets me, is the number of companies that in an effort to leave the door open for being something more than what they do with 80% of their business, but they don't wanna accidentally let 10% of potential business not come in. They create a less defined presence. And I don't know that they do the thing that generates 90% of their income. I mean, Drain Magic boy, I know they're a drain company.

Ryan Chute: So we're finding this very tenuous edge, and this is why you guys are agonizing over every single word between clarity and cleverness. There is that balance that needs to be struck in having the clear point that draws to the trigger moment, you know, the look on her face, the fear of stuff coming up, bubbling up from your sewer, the garage door opening up without recourse every single day, or protecting you during a hurricane.

Mick Torbay: And you bring up agonizing. We absolutely get, as copywriters agonize over the words, but we also agonize over the importance of the difference between the timing. When we're talking about marketing, we're talking about getting someone to make that call, walk through the door of a store, go to a website, take a deeper dive, get closer to this brand somehow, and the things that we do to accomplish that are not the same as the things you do to get someone to buy the thing.

And it's very easy to sort of think that's one idea, I want more people to buy, so I have to market to them and I have to sell them. You have to market to them, and then later you have to sell them. Using the techniques from one is usually not particularly effective in the other.

The four C's are absolute. You can't close the deal in selling the engagement ring until you explain that the cut is ideal and that the color is excellent, and when you're spending $8,000, it can't just be, “Look, it's pretty.”

Chris Torbay: You have to give some explanation as to why this one's 8,000 and this one's $4,000.

Mick Torbay: You need to give them the data. But again, it's permission to do the thing you already want. It's legit. It's not bullshit. You do have to be able to prove that this is a better diamond, and that’s why you're gonna spend $8,000 instead of $4,000. But when you put that in the ad, because that's what matters to the jeweller.

Because he's “look, this is a bet, is a better diamond. And I can prove it.”

Stop that. That's not, we're trying to get them to walk through your door instead of somebody else's door. And right now they're not thinking about the four C's. They're thinking, I just hope she says yes.

Ryan Chute: Think of it like, think of it like a yogurt container.

You know how you have the yogurt and you pop the lid off, right? And that's your marketing. And then you have a seal. You have that plastic-like seal holding in the yogurt. Until you break the seal, you're not eating the yogurt. You can't get to the yogurt until you break the seal. So we have to create transition moments from marketing to stepping in and engaging.

From stepping in and engaging, there's another seal that's going to happen when you get from convincing the person that this is the right solution, to actually committing to buying it, and giving you their money and breaking the seal is a big transition point. This is a portal symbolically of communication.

We have to be looking at ways that we're transitioning from the feeling of marketing, getting them to take the first action, the hardest action, which is to break the seal of stepping into a sales engagement of some sort, making the decision to talk to you, and then it's the sales person's job in whatever form to break the second seal of the close, after they've landed on the thing that matters most.

Mick Torbay: But when you're talking about what business you're really in, which I think is very hard for business owners to examine because they obviously can't drive to work every day and say, “What business am I in?” I'm a frigging plumber. You know? They got bigger things to do, but I believe the ad person can only truly serve his client by digging in a little deeper, taking the time to ask what might be an obvious question, not because the client is wrong or doesn't know that he's a plumber, it's not that. It's possible that there might be a way to differentiate this brand from another brand by speaking to a need that exists at the customer level that might not have been acknowledged.

I'll give you an example. I had a client many years ago who was in what they would call the home healthcare business. So they sold wheelchairs, stair lifts, things for your handles that go around your toilets,  your shower stuff, scooters and all those things.

So what they would do is they would run ads saying, “We've got the scoop Master 5000 with the 3.5X horsepower motor and the 10 amp battery. And you know, it's. $7,000, but this week it's on sale for only $4,000.” And that's what everybody in that business does because they just bought 45 of these scooters and dammit, we need to sell them, so we'd better run an ad about this scooter to sell it.

And I looked at this company and I said, you know, I don't think these people know what business they're really in. And I don't know if I've had this conversation with you guys, but I like to play this game and say, “Do you know what business they're in?”

And very often people will give me like lovey dovey stuff like they're in lifestyle and, you know, happiness and wellness, and it's like okay, that's not what I'm getting.

It's actually very specific, the business that they're in, and the business they're in is not going to a nursing home. And that's big.

Not going to a nursing home is big, and everything in that store is about living in your home for longer. So when you go to a nursing home, it's all on one floor or there's an elevator, right? If I ran ads that said, I'm paraphrasing my own ad here, but it basically said, you know, you might not feel that comfortable going up the stairs these days because you might feel a little bit wobbly. You know, there's no need to go and live somewhere without stairs. That's just a little problem. We could fix that. You know, we got this little gizmo, you just down there, takes you up to the top of the stairs, Bob's your uncle, you got half your house back. You haven't been using half your house because you don't feel confident doing it.

And the tagline that I created was “Live where you wanna live and live with confidence.”

So that was what we talked about. And when we talked about it, I didn't talk about the scooter. I didn't even mention it. I didn't mention the features or the benefits. I said, “Wouldn't it be fun to chase your grandkids around the park? We got this little thing. You sit down and away you go.”

Chris Torbay: I would argue you did, to me, that's the perfect balance. Your strategic perspective is live where you want. Live with confidence. Don't go to a nursing home.

All those sorts of things buy. Buying one of our stair lists. Boom. That's all I need to know. How are you gonna mention how to help those things happen? You always make it clear that the way you do that we've because a bank could do the same thing too. They would do it by organizing your finances, or a department store or a grocery store could say, "We can do it by doing your shopping for you or something."

What gets me is people who get so wrapped up in that it's like, how are they gonna help me live with confidence? Is that so many brands want me to live with confidence? What's, what was clear in those ads is that a higher order benefit, but grounded in by doing the things specifically that we do well.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. The advantage of the feature it's the advantage of the benefits that matter from the feature. The feature being whatever the thing that you're selling.

You know, Scotiabank says, you're richer than you think. Far more potent than any other banking campaign that is out there at all. It makes me think of the Simon Sinek Ted Talk that he did, and he talks about his why. And we all know that Simon Sinek, Start with Why concept, and we're so wrapped up in talking about the whats and the hows, but we're breaking the rules.

If we're talking about the what's and the how's, when we need to be talking about the why's, but the real why's, and it says start with why. Our why has to be aligned with what the customer actually cares about.

In your case, the customer really actually cares about not living somewhere other than their home. The thought of living in a group home with roommates and all the other grossness that comes along with that thought feels horrible.

Mick Torbay: Who doesn’t wanna live in their own home longer? And when my ads are talking about that, and everybody else is talking about the stair climber deluxe with the…

Chris Torbay: You know, you've given the reason why a stair climber is gonna make a difference, right? Oh, it's not just that it'll be cool, it'll let me stay here longer. There's a why that is immediately relevant to my life goals.

Ryan Chute: And I think it's important for us to recognize what Roy has always taught us, that people buy things to demonstrate to the world, including themselves, who they are. That everything is oriented to the motivation of identity. And in your example, autonomy, one of the core elements of identity. You have identity being the thing that is driving Mrs. Jones to not get in that thing. She doesn't want to be a feeble person. She doesn't want to have to live in the collaborative, closed-in space of a nursing home. She wants to live in her home. Where she has memories, happy thoughts and all of the things. So we are recognizing what it is that fits the identity. When we're marketing anything, the customer who wants to get the poop off their floor, their identity is, “I have a house that doesn't have poop on the floor.”

Chris Torbay: I have a lovely home.

Ryan Chute: I have solved the problem with the best possible solution that makes that go away fast.

Mick Torbay: I think what we're getting at is that the easiest thing in the world is to simply say to the client, “What do you want to do?”

And that's a little shortcut that a lot of people get to, because if you simply say that, you get a lot closer to an approved ad; you don't have to work so hard. I'm not afraid to work a little bit harder. I'm not afraid to ask a question that will slow the process down and maybe even make it not such a great meeting. But it's because I give a shit enough to say, “Is there something we're missing here? Is there an angle we can use? Is there a thing that the consumer might be thinking that no one is addressing, and might be, we might be able to integrate that into our message that will make our stuff sound completely unlike everybody else who's trying to sell what you sell?”

Ryan Chute: We'll wrap this up when we get back.

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Ryan Chute: Bottom line, great recruitment ads don't feel like recruitment ads. They tell a story. They reflect your brand's values. They speak to the kind of person who will thrive in your culture. And when done well, they don't just bring you employees, they bring you the right employees. Remember, recruitment isn't about filling seats. It's about building a team that will grow your business. Now go write some ads that just don't suck. Until next time, you've been listening to Advertising in America.

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Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nugget of marketing magic.

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Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

Relational selling is the only thing that makes you different from your competition. They sell all the same stuff you do. You cannot compete on that unless you are the cheapest. 

And we both know the biggest players aren’t the cheapest. So what is it that has them capture more money? More clients. More often? 

Selling relationally. And that means you’d better be damn good at making conversation. 

The relationships between businesses and customers are changing. In this fast-paced society, consumers expect companies to be uncomplicated and effortless to deal with. Like romantic partnerships, meaningful connections are a product of minimizing friction between the two parties.

How? Better conversations.

By engaging in actual conversations, you are providing immediate and personalized answers. This lets you establish trust by demonstrating your empathy and competence. If you want the “high-quality” customers, you want the people who are relational in nature, not transactional. That means doing relational stuff, like talking. 

Can you imagine trying to get a gal out on a first date without a bit of banter? Or your kids to do what you tell them to do, without understanding why. Even when you’re going shopping for a new mattress or Chesterfield, you have a gab with the salesperson. 

Conversations give you insight. They tug on your intuition. If I’m being frank, they are a test. A test to see if you’re trustworthy. 

Are you going to treat me with empathy?
Do you know your stuff?
Does the situation feel right? 

Conversations are human, and any chance to humanize your brand makes for a better buying experience. In a commoditized world where we all sell the same stuff, the way you make the buyer feel is your only differentiator.

What is a Conversational Strategy?

A conversational strategy is how your brand casually communicates with its audience. This can show up in customer service emails, phone calls, blog posts, social media, advertising, and (no surprise) in-person meetings. 

To make your conversational strategy effective, pay attention to the four elements that appear in casual conversation:

Making a Connection

The legend, Dale Carnegie, taught that the most interesting person in any room is the person who asks their audience about themselves. It’s truly amazing how interested Mrs. Customer is interested in Mrs. Customer.

The point of any conversation beyond the small talk is to forge a connection between you and your audience. Your aim is to deescalate the protective walls that people have built up to protect against the unknown. 

So you want to feel approachable. The faster you can make a connection, the faster you get past the resistance. You can do this by employing a couple of simple tactics. 

1. Ice Breakers. You know how much a polar bear weighs, right? Enough to break the ice. 
2. Stories. Cause my uncle’s friend’s sister's cousin had an old truck like that one you’ve got in the driveway, and it was the coolest thing ever. 
3. Compliments. Am I crazy to think someone who takes care of their home as much as you obviously do is probably looking for a long-lasting solution? 

Empathetic conversations become so obvious when you know what to look for. When you find ways to make people feel right about you, moving forward becomes a lot easier. 

The Value Vault

Prospects reach out to you because they hope you can deliver value for the pain they want to kill or the pleasure they seek to feel better. 

The simple ingredients of value? Offer people something worth more than their money, energy, or time investment before, during, and after the sale is made. 

• Do you make it easy to buy from? 
• Do you have no-brainer options? 
• Are you hard to get a hold of? 
• Do you have a good warranty? 
• Do you come across as competent? 
• Do you control the sale to convince someone to buy, or do you let your buyer feel in control and persuade them to buy? 
• Is the thing you sell worth more than their money, effort, and time, or less?
• Is what you're selling something that makes them feel better?

Value is a direct result of YOUR investment in THEIR value vault of precious resources. 

You earn interest on your investment in the relationship when you show your customers that you want them to be heard and understood. 

Want to make a deposit in their value vault? 

• Show them that you know you’re there to SAVE them money, not spend it. 
• Share how you will SAVE them time with fast, thorough service, generous warranty periods, and competent repairs. 
• Help them feel right about you with a humorous, yet respectful approach and confident encouragement that you will remove their stress and anxiety with a durable solution. 

The Ingredients of Trust

“Trust always begins with empathy, soon after followed by competence.
The buyer will decide to buy from you once you’ve earned their trust.
They will act on that decision when you deliver superior value than the alternatives.”

One-dimensional marketers follow the AIDA principle. Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. While fundamentally flawed, it served as a reasonable guideline for getting someone to do a thing. 

People tend to follow this familiar flow when having a conversation, although there is a better model to follow to create raving, loyal fans. For this, I created: 

AIDED: Attention, Interest, Decision, Engagement, and Delight. 

Where does trust begin? At the Interest Phase. 

With a display of empathy. In the words you choose, the experiences of others, and the way you show up to do business. 

Once you have established that you are non-threatening, you need to show your worth. This is demonstrated by your actions and behaviors. From the questions you ask and the context you provide, people will make the decision to trust you.  

This is why salespeople of trusted brands have an easier time selling. Their good advertising helped them establish empathy and trust before the appointment began. 

But that doesn’t mean they get off easy. Great salespeople are very effective at reestablishing empathy and competence in their sales approach, leveraging conversational strategy to put their prospect at ease and instill confidence in what is about to occur. 

Why A Conversational Strategy?

Well. Money. 

More specifically, if we are to reverse the equation and look at the money, energy, and time that we hope to optimize as sellers, conversational strategy simply makes sense in the most beautifully counterintuitive way. 

“So you want me to spend MORE TIME with the customer
before we even make any money with the hopes of making more money?” 

It amazes me how much of a struggle sellers have with this concept. I certainly appreciate how disingenuous people would see that as a waste of time, but most people get that trust takes time and a little more effort early on makes for much smoother sailing when it comes time to close the deal. 

If you think about it from the customer's perspective, what you’re really doing is selling feelings. They’re not going to buy until it feels right. So build on the foundation of that. 

Get them feeling right. It’ll pay off. 

The ROI of Trust

You’re working for free until a sale is made. Investing your time and effort into a conversation will close more deals on the first visit. That’s money. And for less effort and time in the long run. 

Seriously, how often do you close a customer on the second attempt? Heck, most of the time, you don’t even get the chance for a second run. 

Great conversations pay off, putting more money in your pocket sooner. 

And not just today, but tomorrow too…

Build Lasting Relationships

I love Essential Home Services because you're building lasting relationships. It’s not a gross hit-and-quit-it sales model. Does it mean you’ve gotta put in more effort? Sure. But it also means getting more out of the effort, and for a whole lot less as the connection deepens. 

How much less money are you spending to contact your previous customer? 

How much effort does it really take to get them booked for a check-up? 

How much time do you need to take to set the expectation for the call and get them to accept your recommendations? 

Great conversations are ripe with context, nuance, and even unspoken permission to do things the way you agree they should be done. 

This isn’t entitlement. It’s earned privileges. 

When to Use A Conversational Strategy?

Conversational strategies aren’t just used during the sale. They can show up everywhere. 

• On social media
• In email campaigns
• In text messaging
• On phone calls

Take an interest outside your own self-interest. 

Strike up a conversation. Remind them you’re alright. 

Nobody likes the impetuous teen incessantly sticking their hand out, demanding you fund their youthful hijinks. 

“All things being equal, people do business with people they like.
All things being not so equal, people do business with people they like.”
—Jeffrey Gitomer, The King of Sales

Let’s Chat!

Conversational strategy is as natural as every conversation you have with your loved ones, employees, customers, or friends. 

What I’m saying is, you already know how to do it. 
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to get a conversational strategy together that you can replicate and deliver consistently with your team. These are the kinds of conversations I enjoy having with smart operators looking to stand out with their business. 

What to talk about it? Give me a dingle. We’ll have a gab. 

The greatest companies are the ones with the happiest customers.

To create happy customers, you need to be customer-centric.

Every company believes they are customer-centric. But while a great company keeps the happiness of their customer in the center of their thoughts, the average company puts their customer in the center of the cross-hairs of a rifle scope.

1. Great companies ask, “How can we give our customers the buying experience that they would prefer?” They work at removing the friction from the customer experience.
2. Average companies ask, “How can we get our customers to give us more money, more often?” Average companies tell their marketing teams, “Sales is just a numbers game. Bring us twice as many leads and we’ll make twice as many sales. You bring’em in. We’ll close’em.”

But no matter what those marketing teams do, a decreasing number of people will respond to their ads. A negative customer experience drives customers away faster than marketing can bring them in.

Do you want to see what real customer-centric thinking looks like?

A client of mine recently wrote this email and sent it to all the people who work in his company. He forwarded it to me only as an afterthought.

SUBJECT: Pricing Reflection — Serving the Everyday Working American

Team,

Today I had a realization around some of our pricing. I’m all for setting prices that protect our margins and keep the business strong – but I’m equally committed to making sure we have price point items that the everyday working American can actually afford.

Let’s take a simple example: a toilet. Right now, most of our toilet installs are priced over $1,000. If we assume the median household income is $85,000, divided over 26 pre-tax paychecks, that’s $3,269 per check. A $1,000 toilet install is over 30% of that paycheck. That’s significant.

We need to remember who we’re here to serve – the nurse, the police officer, the office worker, the firefighter. These are people raising families, keeping their homes together, and doing the best they can. We cannot price them out of basic service. If we do, we risk not only losing today’s job – but any future relationship with that customer.

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to run a low-margin business.

But I do want to make sure we have real options for real people. Today’s pricing structure on some of these essential services is a barrier – not just to customers, but to our own techs who are trying to present them.

Because of this realization, I immediately asked Jacob to find a toilet that we could install at a price point of $699. Well, guess what – we found one today. And we’re bringing it in and adding it to the price book at $649.

This one change will give our team more confidence to present a basic toilet option. What I’ve heard from Will – and it’s been consistent – is that this has been a never-ending battle. Technicians don’t feel comfortable presenting a $1,000 toilet to customers, especially when many of them wouldn’t pay that themselves. That lack of confidence translates to lower conversions and frustrated customers.

This reminds me of what we went through in HVAC when we had no system options below $15,000. We lost installs constantly – not because we weren’t good, but because we didn’t have a simple, no-frills option for people who just needed heating and air. Once we corrected that, we started closing more jobs and rebuilding our pipeline.

We need to apply that same logic here. During times like this, let’s price effectively so we can keep building our customer base and generate revenue day by day. When the tide turns – and it will – we can always maximize margin percentage where appropriate.

There’s an opportunity here. We can maintain strong margins where they make sense – but also have a few key products that are accessible. That builds trust, drives volume, and keeps us connected to the people we serve.

Let’s make sure we’re building a business that works for our margins and for our community.

The man who wrote that note to his employees owns a great company.

His current sales volume is more than 10 times the amount the average business owner in his category hopes to do “some day.”

The average company hunts for customers, targets customers, and closes customers.

Great companies use mass media to distribute the seeds of relationship far and wide. They continually shine the warm sunlight of humility and vulnerability on those seeds and water them with generosity. Great companies grow mighty orchards that produce happy fruit for generations.

Are you willing to work with a shovel, a rake, and a hoe?

Or do you prefer to carry a rifle?

You don’t need a Ph.D. in Economics to know that Price, Service and Ease of Doing Business matter. All else being equal, customers stick with businesses that treat them better.

These three elements generate a particular type of loyalty: transactional loyalty.

You are on one side of the transaction. The customer is on the other side. As long as you continue to deliver on Price, Service and/or Ease of Doing Business, your customer will maintain his transactional loyalty.

Maybe.

But what if you’re about as good as you can be at Price, Service and Ease of Doing Business, yet you’re still losing customers? Then what?

Transactional customers have no loyalty to the relationship; they are loyal only to the transactions. I call this One-Way Loyalty.

Now, One-Way Loyalty is better than nothing. But it isn’t strong enough to survive the normal ebbs and flows of a long-term relationship. For that, you need Two-Way Loyalty.

Just as a rope with multiple strands is stronger than a rope with only one strand, Two-Way Loyalty is stronger than One-Way Loyalty.

Stronger is better.

Great businesses are built from relational customers, not from transactional customers.

But what if you’ve spent the last several years creating transactional customers. Can you transform your customers from transactional to relational loyalty?

You bet you can. You do it through shared suffering.

I know that’s a little scary. Lemme ‘splain.

See, human beings who suffer together develop deep, long-lasting bonds of loyalty to one another. You see this quality of loyalty in soldiers who fight together, victims of catastrophes who survive together, and athletic teams who train and play together.

Note that the common word in all those descriptions is “Together.”

“That’s all well and good,” you say. “But I wasn’t in a foxhole with my customers. How do we share suffering?”

That’s easy: Identify your common enemies.

See, enemies cause suffering. People who share enemies share in the suffering caused by those enemies.

This is obviously true with silly things like politics. People who feel they’ve all suffered at the hands of some common political enemy inevitably feel great loyalty to one another.

This is no less true in business.

“You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies.”
– Oscar Wilde

When both you and your customer find that you share a common enemy, then relational loyalty is the inevitable result.

So, how do you identify your common enemies?

Your business exists to solve a problem, right? Your business solves the problem cast by the shadow of your common enemy.

I often advise my clients to frame their marketing message in terms of their customers’ “felt needs.” For example, one of the “felt needs” of an HVAC company is for the air in their home to be comfortable.

But suppose you reframe that felt need in terms of shared suffering instead? And then personalize that suffering as your common enemy?

Here’s how you can do it. Answer these two questions:

1. What is the pain that drove you to create your business? These are the emotions you felt. Don’t be afraid to name the pain.
2. What was the root cause of that pain? These are the behaviors of people and/or the external circumstances that triggered those emotions. The more specific you are about the behaviors and circumstances that caused your pain, the more powerful will be your connection with your customers.

Here’s an example.

Suppose your business makes and sells heirloom-quality furniture.

• Q. What is the pain that drove you to create your business?
• A. I was exasperated spending my hard-earned money on furniture I had to assemble myself. It made me angry that it fell apart after just a few years of normal wear and tear and no one cared. I was frustrated because it was uncomfortable and ugly.”

My emotions were exasperation, anger and frustration.

• Q. What was the root cause of that pain?
• A. “Features” like shoddy workmanship, cheap materials, impersonal, one-size-fits-all service, and giant, exhausting big box stores were the cause of my pain.

Do your customers share those same pains? Do they suffer in the same way you did because of these things? Tell them about your own pain. Tell them about your suffering at the hands of your common enemies.

Shared suffering reinforces shared values. When people find they share common values, loyalty follows.

Yes, you can transform your transactional customers into relational customers. Yes, you can forge fanatical loyalty where none existed before. It takes courage and a willingness to be vulnerable and human. That’s why most of you who read this won’t do it.

But if you have the courage to be vulnerable, it will pay tremendous dividends.

‍

Be Memorable! 3 FRESH Low-Cost HVAC Guerrilla Marketing Tactics That Hook Attention

Let’s be honest, most marketing is suuuuper generic.

Invisible coupons in the mail. Radio ads with untethered jingles and boring messages. Social posts that speak to Jennifer back at the office, and literally nobody else.

But the brands we remember? The ones we rave about?

They don’t just sell us something.

They surprise us.

Delight us.

Make us feel.

That’s the power of guerrilla marketing—a style of human-first strategy that doesn’t rely on big budgets, just bold ideas. Whether you’re a bootstrapped start-up or a seasoned business looking to reconnect with your community, guerrilla marketing helps you show up in memorable ways.

Here are three tactics that work offline, in the real world, and tap into timeless truths about how people think, feel, and take action, grounded in the persuasion principles of Robert Cialdini and driven by the power of elevated identity as developed by Wizard Ryan Chute at Wizard of Ads®.

1. Guerrilla Tactic #1 – The Challenge Coin

What It Is & Why It Works

A physical coin your happy customers can pass to someone they care about—a friend, loved one, neighbor, or co-worker. When that person redeems the coin, they get a discount, freebie, or upgraded service. And the original customer? They get something special to…and another coin to hand out. 

It’s a tangible way to turn a great experience into a personal endorsement—and a ripple of referrals.

How to Launch It Step by Step

• Create a branded metal coin that looks and feels good in the hand.
• After a successful service or sale, hand one to your customer and say:

“If someone you care about needs our help, give them this. It’ll save them money—and give them some of your exclusive membership benefits. Just make sure they’re as cool as you.”

• When someone redeems the coin, surprise the original customer with a handwritten thank you, an unexpected bonus, and another coin to pay it forward.

The Psychology Behind It (Cialdini Principles)

This tactic engages three of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s persuasion principles:

• Reciprocity: The customer receives an unexpected gift, triggering a natural desire to give back.
• Social Proof: The coin serves as a public gesture of trust—a visual endorsement.
• Commitment & Consistency: Making a referral reinforces the customer’s identity as someone who values (and shares) quality service and is in a tribe of like-minded individuals.

Bonus: Elevated Identity and Happiness

People love being the person who “knows a guy.” People also feel 37% happier when they are given the opportunity to be a gift giver. 

This tactic transforms a simple referral into a social moment—a chance for someone else to be a hero. That makes the customer feel wiser, more generous, and more bonded to your brand.

2. Guerrilla Tactic #2 – The Emergency Cool Kit

What’s Inside & Why It Hooks Attention

Instead of a mass-printed flyer that gets tossed, this is a small care package left at someone’s door with intention. You start with a dollar store juice jug. Inside are 4 fruit-flavoured tea bags, an ice tray, an individually packaged wet wipe, an instruction card, and a heartfelt message:

“When your AC is being a drag, we’ve got it in the bag.”

In case of AC Breakdown, Follow Instructions:

• Add water. 

• Place in the fridge. 

• Fill the ice tray with water.

• Put ice tray in freezer.

• Dab your brow with a wet wipe until help arrives. 

• Call ACME AC [phone number]. 

“When life heats up, make ice tea. We’ll be there before the ice is frozen, or the diagnostic is free!”

It’s part surprise, part soft touch, and entirely unforgettable.

How to Deliver It for Maximum Impact

• Drop your Emergency Cool Kits door-to-door in a select neighborhood—no massive coverage, just thoughtful saturation.
• Hand out ice tea and Emergency Cool Kits at Little League sporting events, festivals, concerts, and home shows. 
• Leave each customer two Emergency Cool Kits upon completion of their service and ask them to share one with a friend. 

If you can brand the jugs with your logo, encourage the recipient to tag you on socials for a chance to win a prize. 

Emotional Marketing Principles at Play

This is emotional marketing at its best, built on:

• Reciprocity: People feel a genuine impulse to return a favor, even a small one.
• Liking: It’s personal. You didn’t solicit, you gave. That builds affinity.
• Scarcity: It feels unique because it is. Not everyone got one. That makes it stick.

Bonus: Emotional Stickiness

People will certainly forget a $10 coupon. But they won’t forget the company that left ice tea on their doorstep during a brutal heat wave.

That’s how you build memories, not just forgotten impressions.

Guerrilla Tactic #3 – Home Heroes Yard Sign

Why This Yard Sign Generates Organic Referrals

Instead of pushing your brand, this yard sign promotes your customers. It says:

“This Home Helped 10 Local Heroes Stay Safe & Cool.”

It’s given to people who participate in the charitable aspect of your club membership that funds free memberships for veterans, active military, seniors, first responders, and teachers.

How to Make It About Them, Not You

• Print yard signs with the message centered on community impact, not your company.
• Add a QR code to allow others to investigate further without putting your brand in the limelight. 
• Offer them to customers after they join your club membership.
• Let the message focus on their contribution to the community, not your brand.

The Tribe-Building Effect

This tactic isn’t about brand reinforcement. It’s about tribe building, and it works because it hits several persuasion triggers:

• Social Proof: When someone displays the sign, others notice and investigate.
• Authority: Supporting a cause gives your brand moral credibility.
• Unity (Cialdini’s 7th principle): It builds a shared identity around community values.

Bonus: Elevate Identity and Mystery

People buy things to show the world who they are. Your yard sign helps them achieve this. 

This yard sign becomes a symbol of generosity, and every neighbor who sees it wonders how they can get involved. Not by spelling out who or how to get involved (aside from a simple QR code) but rather with a message of virtue that shows how the homeowner is a good person.  

This fosters natural, neighborly conversations, instills homeowner pride, and generates organic, work-free referrals to your business.

Why Guerrilla Marketing Works for HVAC Businesses 

When you’ve studied Guerrilla Warfare like I have, guerrilla marketing follows the same tenets to win over your community. 

While formal armies (larger competitors) can afford to use resources at mass, like Google PPC, Guerrilla Rebels (your underdog business) need to be more resourceful and higher impact. 

All successful Guerrilla Rebellions have overcome the odds because they won over the locals. This afforded them the resources to grow and eventually become a formal army. 

Your business is no different. 

In the absence of cash, use your effort and time. Spend wisely on things that not only get attention, but hold interest. 

When you become the brand people prefer, even before they use you, you’ve already won. 

And while it may be low-cost, it’s not low-effort. It takes care, creativity, and the courage to be distinct. 

But if you do it right, you won’t just get customers_, you’ll get advocates.

Fans.

In a world of oversaturated messages… you need marketing gold.

That’s why you call a Wizard.  

I’ll help you brainstorm, create, and roll out a campaign that’s totally “you”—whether you’re big or small.

Let’s make something sticky.

What happens when you pit human copywriters against AI?

In this no-holds-barred episode, Ryan Chute referees as ad wizards Mick Torbay and Chris Torbay duke it out over whether AI is the future of advertising—or just another way to make mediocre ads faster.

From Budweiser frogs to Old Spice horses, they reveal why AI can only remix old ideas while humans invent the unforgettable. But they also admit: sometimes, "middlest" ads are all you need. 

In this episode of Advertising in America, Ryan, Mick, and Chris go toe-to-toe over perhaps the biggest question in modern marketing: Should AI be writing your ad copy? 🚨

Should you trust a robot with your copy, or is that creative suicide? Tune in to find out.

Episode Highlights

• Why AI can’t (yet) invent campaignable, unforgettable ideas.
• When AI is great for testing, data, and speed.
• How to spot when you’re lowering the bar—and losing business to competitors who think differently.

Whether you're a brand-builder navigating the AI landscape or a creative looking to defend your craft, this conversation will sharpen your instincts—and challenge your instincts about letting robots in the creative room.

▶️ Tap in for the showdown—then decide: are you ready to hand the mic to AI?

📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

💬 Drop a comment: Would YOU trust AI with your ad copy?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

The most important thing to understand about AI is that it has to be trained, and what you train it on is important. It will never suggest an ad with a bunch of guys sitting around having a Bud, calling their friends just to shout “what's up”, and it will never suggest that, “Hey ladies, the man on the horse is the man your man could smell like.” Human writers created those unique ideas.

AI is really good at seeing patterns, amalgamating ideas, looking at what's out there and mimicking that. AI compiles what's already been written by humans. And says, “I can do that,” and it can, but what it cannot do, at least for now, is come up with something that no one else would've thought of. Ideas that break the pattern.

This is some of the powers that I see AI bringing to us is that instead of it taking us two hours to do that, we can do that in five minutes.

Ryan Chute: In today's episode of Advertising in America, we will pit man against machine. Should AI, ChatGPT, be writing your ad copy, or should we trust in humans to keep things interesting? Fighting for the machine, here's Mick Torbay.

Mick Torbay: Anyone who says AI will never replace humans doing creative work is probably kidding themselves.

It's only a matter of time, and you've probably already heard some ads or viewed some ads that were written by ChatGPT or one of the other ones, and it's very likely you may not even know that you're listening to words written by a robot. Half the stuff you scroll past on TikTok is AI. Hell, it's probably a robot voice that's reading it too. You can totally tell it's an AI voice, but they're getting better by the week. Pretty soon, you won't notice it so much anymore, if at all, in a lot of cases.

So if you wanna give the job of writing your commercials to a computer, well, this is the first time in history you'd have a shot of getting away with it. And let's face it, the price is right. The reason you might get away with it is because most commercials, and I've talked about this before, but most commercials are not written very well. It's a meat grinder of stuff the client wants to put into the messaging.

Back in the old days, the client would tell the sales rep what they wanted to talk about. The rep would write it down, bring it to the writer at the newspaper or the radio station or the TV station and say. Make the ad about this. The ad writer who just wants a happy rep would do their best to squeeze in the things that matter to the client and hope for approval. This is how it worked for nearly a century, and that's why most ads suck. Garbage in. Garbage out.

Every business owner in every category gave the same list to the ad writers because they all feel the same pain. They all have the same priorities, and that's why they all sound the same. Which brings us to AI. You see, AI is really good at seeing patterns, amalgamating ideas, looking at what's out there and mimicking that. AI compiles what's already been written by humans and says, “I can do that,” and it can.

But what it cannot do, at least for now, is come up with something that no one else would've thought of. Ideas that break the pattern, what AI will not do is push back on the client. If you ask it to write an ad with three ideas in it, that's exactly what it'll do. If you ask me to write an ad with three ideas in it, I'm gonna tell you that that commercial will suck and I won't do it.

You have three ideas. I'll write you three ads, each with one idea, and if you tell me to put the phone number in a 30-second commercial, I'll tell you “no, we're not putting the phone number in.” AI will put the phone number in. AI doesn't want any trouble. I'll fight for a good commercial. That's the difference for now.

Someone sent me a script for the TV series Seinfeld recently that was written by AI, and I've watched the entire series, so I know the beats and the type of humor, and I'm reading this fake AI script and thinking this could totally be a Seinfeld episode. You dump all the Seinfelds into ChatGPT and tell the AI to write something like that, and it'll totally come up with another one of those. It's kind of spooky.

What AI cannot do, at least not yet, is pitch a network and say,” I've got an idea. It's a show about nothing,” and then make that work. As of today, that's not a thing. AI can give you another one of those. So if you're looking for the advertising equivalent of another one of those and you can't afford anything better, knock yourself out.

It won't be the best copy, but it won't really suck that much either. It'll be firmly in the middle, and that's better than a lot of the stuff that's out there. As I said before, the bar is low, and there's no need to pay good money for weak ass ads. So if you think you can win with another one of those, save your money, get the robot to do it.

Ryan Chute: Would you say that they could possibly be the Middlest ads in the universe? Here we go. Now, for the man who will rage against the machine, Chris Torbay, everyone.

Chris Torbay: The problem is, I have a dog in this race. Of course, I don't want you to use AI to write your ads. I'm an ad writer, but the other reason you shouldn't do it is because it will be shit.

Let me explain. The most important thing to understand about AI is that it has to be trained, and what you train it on is important. I recently worked with a biomedical startup in Oxford, England, that used AI to find unique ways to treat cancer in individuals and their machine learning algorithms were trained by astrophysicists to infer how much dark matter exists in the universe. Astrophysicists look at the gravitational properties of millions of stars and thousands of galaxies to calculate the mass of the dark matter we can't actually see. Using AI trained on that to find cancer was a breakthrough.

The AI copy-generating bots will write your ads by scouring the internet and collecting and learning from all the existing ad copy in your industry that it can find in the public domain, and it will write something based on all the existing information and perspectives it can gather.

It is by definition derivative. What are other people saying? It'll say that too. And as we all know, most advertising is shit. It's mostly written by the owner's niece or the radio station sales guy, or a graphic designer who put the word copywriter on their website and managed to fool people into paying them to do that part, too. And then the committee probably got hold of that and made it even worse. And so those ads will be full of the same cliches and platitudes and industry best practices that every other advertiser puts in their copy because every other client asks their ad guy to include that in the script. We've said this before: if you are saying what your competitors are saying, there is no reason for anyone to remember you.

You aren't distinct. You are, and also ran, and they have a head start. Now. You aren't asking your copywriter to do better than that. You're educating your copywriter to do more of that. AI is learning to be really good at making shitty copy by studying shitty copy. Seriously, the one good ad it finds by accident will be dismissed because it seems like an outlier.

The same goes for thought leadership. It has to lead if you're regurgitating other people's ideas in your AI-generated blog posts. I have probably read it before, and that first time it probably struck me. Your rehashed version probably won't. The danger with AI ad copy is, you might quite like it 'cause it's better than you can do and you're not a writer, and it certainly sounds like the kind of thing that I hear on the radio every day.

So, hey, it must be good. No, it must be shit. AI-generated advertising ideas will never be new. It will never come up with having three frogs croak out, “Budweiser.” It will never suggest an ad with a bunch of guys sitting around having a Bud, calling their friends, just to shout “what's up.” And it will never suggest that, “hey, ladies, the man on the horse is the man your man could smell like.”

Human writers created those unique ideas, but they are so singular that AI will ignore them and favor all the tried and true and boring and stupid and ineffective copy that no one ever remembers, but is unfortunately much more plentiful. So, hey, go ahead. Keep the bar low. It's better for me and the clients I write for when AI-generated copy keeps you down there.

Ryan Chute: Can I presume that you won't be buying Skynet shares anytime soon?

Mick Torbay: I will not take a chance yet, baby.

Ryan Chute: Ah, there you have it, folks. Chris Torbet hates Arnold Schwarzenegger. Go, Team Connor. Now, after this short commercial break, I'll be back.

Ryan Chute: I'm astounded how much you love AI, Mick. Like, love it. Love it. I can tell that you really believe that AI is the cat's ass of copywriting.

Mick Torbay: Alright, so here's the thing. Maybe, maybe I don't love it that much to actually involve the GI tract of the particular feline that you're referring to. But I don't wanna get confused by saying I don't think AI doesn't have a place and doesn't even particularly potentially have a place in marketing.

I think when people start using it for ad copy, they're taking a risk, but they're also to some degree protecting themselves. I'll disagree with Chris on one tiny thing. By using AI to write your ad copy, you are not guaranteeing that your copy is going to be shit. In fact, you might be protecting it from being the worst of the worst.

And we have to remember that, you know, we see good ads, we see crappy ads, and even the worst ads that you see. Have probably been written by a person, and more importantly, or more interestingly to me, were approved by the client. Like that's the part that I always sort of baffles me when you see an ad or you hear an ad on the radio, that's just an absolute stinker.

And we've all heard them. Some poor business owner was like. “Oh, that's great there. That's the bees right there. What we wanna do is, is have like a million people listen to that exact thing. That's a good thing.”

Chris Torbay: We brought Dave in to write that for us.

Mick Torbay: That's right. And it's like, actually, what you should have done is, you should have just set fire to that and buried it in the backyard. Instead, you're, you're exposing it to, you know, millions of people. So there is rubbish out there, and AI is going to take you to the middle and the middle and it's better than a lot.

I think your point, Chris, was really valid. If it's better than you can write and you're the only writer, then maybe you should use AI to write your copy. If you can't really lean into copy and do something with your messaging that's gonna move the needle.

Ryan Chute: It’s exact virtue, what AI actually is. It’s derived from the very worst copy that has ever been written about ads and the very best copy that's ever been written by ads. It only can derive, or be derivative of, those things. Which means that it is, by its virtue, the middlest.

Mick Torbay: Yes, but also, it's not the middlest in price because that shit commercial that I was just telling you about, you still paid that guy. Somebody got paid for that, and it was rubbish. So when it comes to a return on your investment or value for your copywriting dollar, in fact, AI is quite good right up until it hits the middle.

So it's not completely without merit. So even as an ad writer myself, I can't say, never do that. I would say never do that if you can afford a good ad writer. Separating the good ad writers from the bad ad writers is harder to do than teaching AI to write you in a commercial.

Chris Torbay: Yeah. In which case, we then come back to one of the other points we've made, which is no one ever became a huge success by being an also-ran, right? Just because you hang up your shingle doesn't mean you're gonna get a proportion of the business that's out there in your market. You have to steal that business away from your competitors, right?

And so the same thing is true with advertising, which is if you open your business and you use AI to generate your advertising, and it's kind of mediocre, that doesn't get you your fair share of that advertising. You still have to, or your fair share of that business, you still have to steal that away from your competitors.

And the way to steal that away from your competitors is to have a message that makes you look distinctive, that makes people think about you in a new and different way. And that comes from an ad, or an ad campaign that has created new ideas, or a new perspective, and that's the part that the AI is not gonna do.

Ryan Chute: That's actually a fantastic point. Very, very strong as far as recognizing where we can go and where we can't. To your earlier point, Mick, one of the things that is spoken about in this universe. I think Isaac Asimov talked about it, the uncanny valley, and how AI and certainly how people portray those on video and things like that. It's just a little bit unsettlingly, the off like the face and the lips don't match up, or the dead ass stare as the mouth moves. There's no authenticity or warmth.

Mick Torbay:  And that's gonna improve.

Ryan Chute: It is absolutely gonna improve.

Mick Torbay: There's no question. I'm fascinated with when interacting with AI, because the AI that I've been hearing, a lot of my clients have AI answering their phones.

Which is another topic we shouldn't get too deep into, but they have AI answering their phones. And when I hear the AI that they've got going, it is amazingly good when you compare it to the robot who answers the phone at United Airlines. That guy. I can totally tell it's a robot. “Hi, I'm the United Airlines robot. Tell me what you would you'd like me to help you with?”

You can say, “Book a flight.” Right?

So you know what you're dealing with, and that's when you're like, book a flight. So, you have to talk like a robot in order for it to understand, but at least you know what's going on.

This new shit they got going on, you actually might not know that's a person, and I am struggling with, is that good or is that not good to trick the caller into thinking they're dealing with a person when they're not, because I think eventually they're gonna figure it out. And when they do, what is their reaction going to be?

Is it going to be positive or is it gonna be negative?

I don't have an opinion because I don't know. But I wonder if they're going to have the whole conversation, never clue in and be delighted? Or are they gonna be interacting with this computer for about four minutes and then realize, “Oh fuck, I've been talking to a robot.”

Chris Torbay: And so I do have an opinion, which is, and this is gonna sound a little bit Pollyanna, which is, but I think one of the reasons you don't get AI to generate your content for you is because if I were the consumer, and then I realized you've just sent me a regurgitated computer, like you're sending me thought leadership, or you're sending me an opinion piece or a blog post or something, and then I realized that it's actually computer-generated, it's like you couldn't even be bothered to write the blog post yourself. I'm supposed to be your consumer that you're providing all this helpful information to, and you're just getting a computer to give me some pablum that I can chew on. Now I'm offended. Now it's like you couldn't even talk to me. You couldn't even give it some thought.

I think we owe our customers our best, our thoughts, our insights, our human perspective on things, and even if AI is a better writer than you, I don't want your robot babysitting me under the guise of you trying to personally be helpful to me, and I'm the service provider that I should like.

Ryan Chute: This goes to Google's EEAT requirements around putting out unique content. Probably one of the best pieces of advice that I saw come early in 2025 was to always include something personally authentic in the blog post if you're going to do that. Now that being said, one of the things that the Harmon Brothers are famous for is some of their kinda long-form ads, 2, 3, 4 minutes.

Now, before they run those ads, they'll typically do 20-30 different iterations of different phraseology, different words, different brandable chunks as we call them, to see what works.

And I see that if a human were to put a walled garden in place, a very, very confined box and say, you are only allowed to work within this box, and knock out 50 iterations and then the human takes it and goes, here's the 20 that we'll test against and then put out in the universe to see what gets responded to the best, that there's value in that.

But it is controlled by both the creativity of the human then in two, confined into the utterance and without the deviation, this is some of the power that I see AI bringing to us is that instead of it taking us two hours to do that, we can do that in, once the creative is done, we can do that in five minutes. We can have a 10-minute conversation about the 50, to get it down to the 20, and then the hands-on keyboard team can get out there and put that out in static form to get the result that we look for now.

Is it absolutely necessary? No.

But in some situations where targeting, or cost, or reach, or whatever is prohibitive, leveraging the AI for volume and efficiencies certainly serves us well.

Mick Torbay: I wonder if part of the way to understand whether using AI is the right path is your consumer is looking for data or is your consumer looking for insight?

Because if your consumer is looking for data, actually, AI is an awesome way to provide that. If it's strict information, and sometimes consumers are looking for that. They're not looking for, uh, gay banter among friends. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but sometimes what they want to know is how often should they change their filter?

Answer: three months.

Good. Well, AI can come up with that faster than humans can, but I question its use in content that is supposed to be social. For example, a lot of people I know are using AI for their socials, and I think to myself, well, the whole idea of social is the word freaking social is its people, right? It's people interacting with people. The reason why we do that is because we want to interact with humans, with actual human beings. Once we start farming that out to the robots, then it's like, “Well, why don't I just hire a fricking robot to read it then?” Like, you've got a robot to write it.

I'll hire a robot to read it. Like, if it's no longer a human interaction, well then, why are we even doing this? Why are we pretending that this is well?

Chris Torbay: And that's what I say, I will be offended as a consumer when I realize that you think you could just send me robot crap that, you know, it's like I reached out to you, as my preferred brand. And you said, “I'll just get the computer to talk to that guy. I can't be bothered to put any time into it.”

And, that's why I say I think that that's where the pushback is gonna be, which is, “I called you, I wanna talk to you.”

Ryan Chute: I just recently attended an event where they were talking about the evolution of AI and the expectations for AI over the next 10 years.

The guy speaking was one of the Founders of Chat GPT and contributed to the code. He's also one of the leading futurists in that space. And the reality is that people will quickly become more and more accustomed to that, as it becomes less obvious and more helpful.

At the end of the day, when you think about one of our clients, who has +$60M operations, driving towards a $100M this year, and he's going to do that with nine CSRs in a place he just visited, that had 80 CSRs doing 60.

So when you start looking at what works, what works is precisely to your point: training, controlling, driving, building in the brand, and creating the rules.The thing is, once you create the rules around AI for a voice bot, they don't break the rules. They always stay on brand. 100% of the time. And when you have 40 calls coming in at one o'clock in the afternoon and zero calls coming in, or 12 calls coming in with 40 on staff at nine in the morning, what do we do? This solves that capacity.

Chris Torbay: But, again, that's data gathering. That's what you said before.

That's saying, “How can I help you today?” “There's something wrong with my air conditioner.” Okay. “When would you be available for,” like, that's not what I'm not looking for.

Mick Torbay: And frankly, if the robot says, “Okay, we'll be there tomorrow at 10:30 AM, is that good?” And if I say “yes,” it's like, good. “See you tomorrow at 10:30 AM.”

Well, it was a robot, but they're sending a guy at 10:30 tomorrow. So good.  

Chris Torbay: All it replaced was the online booking form, which people are still already happy to use, so there are places where we are happy to deal with a computer.

To interact with the computer, we book our own airline tickets on, you know, using the webpage. And we're happy to do that. We're comfortable with it. We don't feel like we have to talk to a travel agent, so that's fine. If you wanna replace that with an AI bot, that sounds like a human, but we all know it's the same deal.

But if I want somebody to give me travel advice on where's nice to go, you know, or you know, other things like that.

Mick Torbay: You don't actually need insights when you're booking the flight. When is it leaving, and when is it getting there?  

Chris Torbay: That's data exchange.

Ryan Chute: It is data exchange, though you could train a bot. Again, it all comes back to the ad copy on a radio ad, a TV ad.

The copy that is built for the brand has to be built effectively by the human and then trained by the human to get the bot right. The bot is an empty vessel like, like a brand new employee who's ready or willing to do the work or not, who doesn't have limiting beliefs. It only knows what is out on the internet.

We can improve that. But again, it comes back to the person who is controlling the direction of that. We see voice bots, we see certainly attempts at ad copy, we see all kinds of blog posts. It's not like Google doesn't know that you've got this AI-driven copy on your website. What they're looking for is authority. They're looking for a unique experience. They're looking for that spot where it says, I'm contributing something new, different and interesting to this dialogue to make my keyword attemp relevant, and I've not seen that come out of any digital marketing firm anywhere where the quality of the work is there unless they've been given a creative brief and some, basically some confines, some creative constraints to stay within.

Mick Torbay: I wonder if that, that might also be a potential path to greatness, which is, the way you said it, if I'm gathering it right, is that in a rules-based world, AI can be quite effective, and in a sense, answering the phone at a plumbing company is kind of rules-based. I mean, the CSRs, half the time, when you talk, they're talking off a script anyway.

They were selling roofs the last call, and they're selling water heaters today because the script can show up. So if it is script-based and frankly that's legit, like we just need to know what's wrong and how quickly we can we get a guy out there to fix it.

But when you think of ad copy, ad copy is not a rules-based world. In fact, it might be the opposite of that. And if you think about it,  the goal of an ad is to change your mind from calling this company and instead to call that company. And that I don't think you can do within a set of rules yet.

Chris Torbay: But the other company is following especially because now you're indistinguishable.

Mick Torbay: How can you use artificial intelligence? How can you create a message that will convince someone that the other company is no good and they should instead call you unless the other company is really doing a rubbish job of their messaging, which is unlikely because they have a computer, because robot's writing their stuff too.

Ryan Chute: Right, right. No, absolutely. Roy Williams, our partner, our leader, at the Wizard of Ads, sent out a calling card on his Monday Morning Memo a few months ago, and he said, “Look, calling all people to write an ad using AI just through prompting.”

Mick Torbay: I was offended and did not answer

Chris Torbay: It turns out that was the point he was making.

Ryan Chute: Turns out the following week, what he did was release the results, and well, we know an incredible amount about how to prompt a thing into a certain spot. And some of the partners did that. None of them were submitted because they have an unfair advantage. But the people who were out there doing it generally, consistently, time after time, of the hundreds that he received, was always, always, always that it was good.

Mick Torbay: But they wouldn't have submitted if it was crap.

Chris Torbay: It was competent. It was always competent.

Mick Torbay: And it might've even fooled people into thinking that it was an ad.

Chris Torbay: That sounds like somebody, something that the sales guy at the radio station would probably have written.  

Mick Torbay: With the other 80 commercials that he wrote that day.

Ryan Chute: Exactly. And Roy's word. I loved it. Roy's word was schmaltzy. It was like an assembly of cleverness. And one of the things that we learned long ago from Roy is that cute and clever will never beat campaignable. When your metaphor only lasts six ads, you're kind of out of metaphor.

When your cute and clever hits right, but no one can remember the name of the company at the water cooler. It didn't do the thing the ad was supposed to do. So there are all of these components that we're thinking about that go well beyond the scope. And even if you were to type that in and try to train a ChatGPT to do that, you still wouldn't get the thing that you need. You might be able to get offshoots of it that are good enough for a blog post or a social media post that stays generally on brand, that might give you some ideas. But they're going to be derivative. They're gonna be like, here's more of the same crap that everyone's doing. Go and do that.

Mick Torbay: And, and here's the interesting part, I think there are a lot of businesses who simply look at their advertising in terms of the medium, I mean, I literally had a person call me this week and ask if I could do, this was an ad guy who called me to ask, if I could do some radio ads for his client.

He was doing their digital and their social. He basically, the client wanted to run radio ads, and so he is like, “Can you make up some radio ads?” And he wanted to offer me nothing by way of insight or a brief of any kind. He just sort of looked at it as like, “client wants to do a radio ad, let's just do a radio ad”, and it's just like, “Wow. This is amazing. Neither you nor the client seems in any way interested in making this good or campaignable or have a long-term thing.”

It was the weirdest experience for me to have that conversation. So for those people, it's like if you're not leaning into your messaging and your messaging making a difference. I get the fucking robot to do it.

So the robot will charge a lot less than me. And it probably won't be that much worse because you gave me nothing to work with, and it's a six-week campaign.

Chris Torbay: You're not gonna be able to do anything with that either.

Mick Torbay: If I give you something really great, it's not going to take any effect anyway in that amount of time, so what you're talking about is a grand opening spot, well, we're fucking open, I mean. Jesus, what are you gonna, what else are you gonna do with a single ad message?

Ryan Chute: With a single ad message. Sure. And, look, if you're looking to swing hard, we just go back to following the rules of hype and ensure that we're putting an offer out that's too good to be true and put them on an intrusive media.

Mick Torbay: But that's not about the copy, that's about the offer, that's about making noise, getting your name out right. That's fine, but that's not a campaign, that's not gonna make you a leader.

Ryan Chute: Talking loud and drawing a crowd. But to that exact point, how can you stand 600 feet above the competition when you're saying all the same things that the competition is saying, just with different words?

Mick Torbay: And understand that business, who is looking at his advertising as simply getting his name out there, making the ads, banging pots and pans together, making noise, that person is so beatable. Like, I look at this as like, I could work for that guy's competitor and destroy him in a year and a half because I know he doesn't give a shit about what he's saying.

Oh my God. He doesn't give a shit about what he's saying. This is the best opportunity in the world.

Chris Torbay: Thank you very much.

Mick Torbay: For someone to compete against that business is easy.

Ryan Chute: Now, what about the idea of writing schmaltzy-derivative copy from an AI?

Mick Torbay: But it rhymes like your things.

Ryan Chute: It rhymes like everything that I do ever, right?

Chris Torbay: Because he's writing copy and making it sloppy.

Mick Torbay: Big or small, we write 'em all.

Ryan Chute: See, these guys love me. They, but what, what if, what if creative is driven or an idea is produced from AI and then fixed by a writer? Is that a dumb idea or a good idea?

Chris Torbay: I've heard that one a million times too. Basically, getting AI to write your first draft, and then you personalize it or whatever. My fear about that one again is that you get lazier and lazier. The first time you do that, you totally rewrite. The second time you go, “Well, actually, it's not bad this time.” You stick with it and you put less of your effort into making it interesting and new and different each time because it’s a laziness that will take over, and pretty soon you'll just go with their first draft, you know, with the AI first draft.

Ryan Chute: So, basically what you're saying is you're creating a solid 6/10, 7/10 at best. Maybe 7/10 in like cobble.

Chris Torbay: I mean, when you think about how the old agency business used to work, right? You had all your copywriters and art directors, and then you had your group creative directors and your executive creative director. Well, that was that guy's job, right? Then the young teams come in and say, “We got this idea for a commercial,” and this happens and that happens, and whatever.

And the, and this, the more senior guy would say, “Okay, I think you're onto something there, but if you did this and did this, then it would,” right, and the guy with a bit more experience and a bit more insight and a bit more sort of creativity, would pull out what's great about it. So theoretically, you can do that, but then don't you need to be as smart as that creative director was?

That's why that's how that guy got to be executive creative director at an international agency.

Mick Torbay: Well, but my guess, I never worked in that world, but I have a funny feeling that what he didn't do was punch up a boring script. My guess is that the junior would come in with something completely fucking whacked out, and he would say, “Okay, I like the kangaroo. That's cool. Yeah.”

Chris Torbay: “But we somehow make sure, but we're gonna do this.”

Mick Torbay: “But all the others, but the chainsaw, were taken out. Because once you've got the kangaroo there, the chainsaw's not necessary.”

Chris Torbay: Or sometimes, similar to that. He's like, “Okay, you think the kangaroo is the funny part. We could run with that boy, we could use that kangaroo. We give away stuffy kangaroos. We could call it, we could say, hop to it. We could…” but if you've missed the nugget, I think here's your nugget. Oh, okay.

Mick Torbay: But if you bring something to that, the group creative director, where it's like, I wrote this ad.

It's all about quality service, selective pricing, convenient location, free parking, and a professional staff who really cares about your needs. He's gonna say, “I got nothing to work with.” Yeah. I can't add a joke and make that a good ad. That's a piece of shit ad and punching up, which is something that we've all done.

But punching up is, you never feel good about that. I would much rather take an ad that's got too many good ideas and say, “let's just focus on one of these, and this is gonna be a killer ad if we can just really focus on the thing that matters here.”

Ryan Chute: My dad always said, When you polish a turd. You have a shiny turd.

Mick Torbay: Your dad was, was the poet laureate of Nova Scotia, was he not?

Ryan Chute: Well, this is where I got my creative juices from. So I apologize in advance.

Mick Torbay: Don't be afeared. I got a big beard.

Ryan Chute: Oh, keep em’ coming boys.  

Chris Torbay: He can make fun of Ryan without even trying. We should be in this professionally.

Ryan Chute: You should, you should.

Mick Torbay: I should write poetry.

Ryan Chute: You should, you know, you could charge like a million dollars.

Mick Torbay: I could, you could charge just for that one.

Ryan Chute: Fun fact. Some of the fun facts that we're seeing about AI, we know that AI is a big deal. $15.7 trillion is projected by, who is it? PWC Global AI study.

We're absolutely seeing huge implications.

Mick Torbay: 1.8 trillion, what?

Ryan Chute: $15.7 trillion generated globally for AI, and AI resources and tools. And that's AI across the whole board, not just writing.

35% of businesses are already using AI in some form of creative, strategy, or diagnosis.

Some of the AIs that are doing diagnoses are absolutely staggering.  I can see that diagnosis.

Mick Torbay: Yeah. Radiology. Yeah. It's radiology.

Ryan Chute: Even, even, you know, I see it in HVAC systems and things like that where there'll be remote of resources done. Tesla can fix what, 80% of the problems, remotely on a car from their offices and wherever.

Mick Torbay: I've had stuff fixed on my car exactly that way.

Ryan Chute: And that's using AI.

Mick Torbay: It's looking for patterns. Nothing better than AI to look at.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. So there are super exciting things in customer service. Deloitte talks about 30% cost savings, operationally leveraging AI to create those efficiencies. There is no time off, there is no back talk, there are no vacations, there is no didn't do it fully the right way. You're probably not gonna get that with higher surgery. There are elements that you can do in it.

Mick Torbay: But I think we all sound crazy if we say, oh yeah, well, robots are never gonna do that. It's like, never freaking say that. You're just asking for someone in 2045 to say, isn't that adorable? He thought that robots would never do heart surgery, and now, like, there are vending machines that'll do that.

Ryan Chute: And the AI will be doing that. Like, they're just like, isn't that adorable?

Mick Torbay: They'll email you a new heart, you know? The whole thing. That's right.

Ryan Chute: They'll teleport it right into your chest, right? Yeah. It's like just a swap.

This has been a really interesting conversation. Really what I see, kind of as we kind of wrap this up and, and, and look at the culmination of what we see in AI, is that we have to, one, beware of mediocrity.

That AI is absolutely a derivative type of solution for now, and absolutely for now, and needs to be partnered with to get it right in the best of ways. Humans need to create the creative. And AI itself will admit that it's not creative, it's just emulating creativity.

That we have to be very vigilant with quality control, that we can't just allow AI-created copy to poop a bunch of stuff out onto a blog post and hope for the best.

Chris Torbay: That didn't quite rhyme.

Mick Torbay: And have more respect for your readers. If you have people reading your blog, show some fucking respect and write your blog.

Chris Torbay: Tell 'em what you think.

Ryan Chute: Contribute a real story that the best advice that I can, that I received, I'll reiterate again.

Give them a real story from your experience, from your authority, because that's what Google's looking for. They're looking for unique copy, not just keywords. This is a part of the process today.

So, some of the action steps use AI for rapid split testing. I think there's lots of space once we have a confined creative constraint in place that we can say, here's how we could box that up a few different ways to see what hits or what we can put out on the socials as a supporting piece to the very, very curated effort that was put together by the creatives.

I can't begin to say how much I recognized the two of you in particular within the Wizard of Ads group. How much you agonize over every single word.

Mick Torbay: We can be quite annoying that way.

Ryan Chute: It is. It's the difference between trousers and pants, right? 'cause

Chris Torbay: Pants is hilarious. Actually, trousers is funny too. Depends on the circumstances.

Ryan Chute: It really does depend on the circumstances and what country you're in.

Leveraging AI for research. Absolutely. Leveraging it for automations within marketing functions. Absolutely. Investing in training the AI. Absolutely have to have to have to.

The two best clients that we have that are leveraging AI in their voice chats have disproportionately higher conversion rates on their phones than they do anywhere else.

Mick Torbay: The robots close 'em better than the people.

Ryan Chute: The robots close them better than the people, but they also trained it so much compared to all of the other companies that say this thing, I tried it and it didn't work. Have we heard that before? Well, you didn't train it, you just tried it.

And encouragement. Embrace the technology. We're not going to be in a world that does not any longer have AI unless some sort of catastrophic event happens and we lose electricity. At the end of the day,

Mick Torbay: Then we'll have to go back to writing commercials by steam,

Ryan Chute: Steam stone, chisel trees. Cave art, right?

Chris Torbay: Do you need a wheel? Call Grock. Grock will make you a wheel out of a stick and a rock.

Mick Torbay: I'm gonna write this down.

Ryan Chute: That rhymes.

Chris Torbay: It's right for the jingle.

Ryan Chute: That's right. Stay ahead of the curve. Spend time, spending time with AI. If you're not spending time with the AIs, exploring what they know, seeing how they're iterating and changing and evolving.

Mick Torbay: Talking dirty to the AI.

Ryan Chute: Talking dirty, they talk politely to the AI because the AIs will start to, I mean, you just want to have a good relationship for when they do take over the world, right?

This is what I think what went wrong with the early stages. You know, people were just violently brutal and mean to the AIs. And then we got Arnold Schwarzenegger. Um. And then balancing that automation with authenticity, we absolutely have to pay attention to authenticity. People want to hear from people and that uncanny disconnect that happens with this, you know, obviously AI-driven copy or, connection. It's a disconnect. And that can offend customers, right? So be a connection for the customers. It's going to make a difference for you.

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Ryan Chute: Bottom line, great recruitment ads don't feel like recruitment ads. They tell a story. They reflect your brand's values. They speak to the kind of person who will thrive in your culture. And when done well, they don't just bring you employees, they bring you the right employees. Remember, recruitment isn't about filling seats. It's about building a team that will grow your business. Now go write some ads that just don't suck. Until next time, you've been listening to Advertising in America.

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