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Branding – as it is taught today – will at best cause people to remember you and have a mild opinion.

But unlike yesterday’s branding, today’s bonding is the beginning of relationship, the essence of loyalty and the foundation of community among human beings.

Bonding, when done properly, makes people feel connected to you. It is the little-known secret of marketing to millennials* and their parents.

Bonding creates community – surrogate family – connectedness – relationship – belonging.

When we talk about “community” in marketing, always remember: We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are.

“I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance. I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW. I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I down a glass of extra strong lager. I am handsome, I say, as I don my Levi’s jeans.” – John Kay

The personality you craft for your brand is essential to the bonding process.

The public will give you their time if you offer them entertainment.
They will give you their money if they feel connected to you.

In the days of the Old West, branding made a cow yours.
In today’s hyper-communicated society, bonding makes a customer yours.

Remember, it’s all about identity, a reflection of self.

“Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man you can touch him at the core of his being.” – Bill Bernbach

Bill Bernbach obviously understood bonding, as did my hero, John Steinbeck.

“Man is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things – property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobiles are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know – that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.”
– John Steinbeck, The Sea of Cortez

Lest you think Steinbeck wasn’t speaking of marketing, here’s another line from that same 1941 travelogue.

“These Indians were far too ignorant to understand the absurdities merchandising can really achieve when it has an enlightened people to work on.”

Millennials would have loved John Steinbeck.** He had perception, perspective and a piercing wit. With authenticity, clarity of vision and complete transparency, he spoke the bonding-language of millennials 60 years before they were born.

Ed Sheehan wrote Steinbeck’s obituary for The San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle:

“He was a writer of immense sensitivity in a man-shell of gruffness. The quality that distinguishes his work is an enormous compassion. He saw nobility in a hobo, felt the sadness of seasons and believed that dogs could smile.”

Unless you work with seasoned marketers with rich experience writing irresistible advertising, like Ryan Chute’s teams at Wizard of Ads®. Book a call.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

These are the words of an Entrepreneur who has an idea half-formed and a dream bigger than the sunrise. He or she believes that if you leap, a net will appear. Entrepreneurs are confident in the street-smarts they glean from their failures and their optimistic future vision lets them see beyond the awkward and ugly “proof-of-concept” phase to the glowing innovation that lies beyond it.

“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

These are the words of a strong Leader: the champion of the tribe, the perfect embodiment of commitment. He or she can be trusted to think on their feet, improvise when necessary and infuse co-workers with their passion. If you turn to the right – toward Excellence through Poise and Responsiveness – you will need strong team leaders.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

These are the words of an effective Manager: the guardian of the style guide, the protector of the status quo. He or she can be trusted to implement processes and insure that employees conform to policies and follow procedures. If you turn to the left – toward Excellence through Planning and Execution – you will need an effective manager.

Managers and Leaders are natural enemies.

The Manager thinks the Leader is reckless and undisciplined and sloppy.
The Leader can’t decide whether the Manager is a tight-ass robot or a pencil-pushing sourpuss who was weaned on a pickle.

Leaders thrive amidst chaos and feel handcuffed by order.
Managers are repulsed by chaos and feel empowered by order.

Most organizations are
begun by entrepreneurs,
grown by leaders, and later
optimized by managers.

Companies built on passionate Poise and Responsiveness are difficult to sustain long-term. Can you think of one that has kept the spring in its step and the sparkle in its eye for more than a decade or two? Poise and Responsiveness often give way to Planning and Execution so that systems and methods and techniques and procedures can be created, allowing consistent results to be obtained by average people.

Excellent people are hard to find, hard to keep and expensive to pay.
Average people are everywhere.

If your organization is suffering because you can’t find enough excellent people, you are probably a leader who needs to give some of your authority to a manager who will create systems and policies and methods and procedures.

Just sayin’.

But if your organization is feeling a little stale and out-of-touch and behind-the-times and you feel it needs a transfusion of energy, you’re probably a manager who needs to give some of your authority to a leader.

A leader is a highly productive troublemaker, an artist who knows which rules to break, which procedures to change, which policies to end and which mountain to climb.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
— Pablo Picasso

There really are two roads to Excellence.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.  

Your company is approaching an intersection. The light is green.
Turn left and you’re headed toward Excellence.
Turn right and you’re headed toward another kind of Excellence.
Go straight and you’ll arrive at Mediocrity.

Most companies go straight ahead because if they turn left or right they’ll be moving toward one kind of Excellence but directly away from the other kind and something about that feels vaguely wrong to them. Fearful of what they’ll be leaving behind if they turn to the left or right, they plunge straight ahead in a counterproductive compromise.

I’ve seen Mediocrity. It’s bland and boring and beige. You definitely don’t want to go there.

Compromise leads to Mediocrity.

Let me give you a glimpse of the scenery you’ll find on the left and on the right.

Turn left and you’ll reach Excellence through Planning and Execution.

1. Policies will revolve around efficiency and the reduction of waste.
2. Processes will be streamlined and standardized to minimize costs and problems.
3. Few decisions will be left to front-line employees.
4. You will need workers that are task-oriented, happy to conform to your policies, implement your processes and follow your procedures.
5. Customers will love that you are reliable and consistent.
6. Management will be focused on planning the work and working the plan.
7. Your success will be scalable because the need for talent and passion and commitment will have been replaced by systems and methods and procedures. A burger and fries at McDonalds is precisely the same at each of their 36,000 locations.

Turn right and you’ll reach Excellence through Poise and Responsiveness.

1. Policy will be to serve each customer in the manner they prefer to be served.
2. Processes will be about going the extra mile.
3. Big decisions will be left to front-line employees.
4. You will need workers that have talent and passion and commitment.
5. Customers will love the attention that you lavish on them.
6. Management will be focused on long-term relationships and the creation of a tribe.
7. Your success will rise and fall according to your ability to recruit and retain excellent people. They will cook your burger with the meat you prefer, the bun you prefer and serve it with exactly the combination of condiments you prefer. They will call you by name as they present it to you and bring you an extra cloth napkin because these burgers are really juicy. They’ll refill your drink, ask about Alfie your dog and tell you about the special dessert the chef prepared when he heard that you were going to be here today. Of course you love this place. It’s excellent.

Never forget: anytime you’re moving toward one kind of Excellence, you’re moving directly away from another kind.

The important thing is to choose.

Have courage. Follow your heart. Turn to the left or right.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.  

Blockbuster Video had 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees and $5.9 billion in revenues at their peak in 2004.

Then the installation of cable modems made streaming video possible.

Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection on September 23, 2010.*

Technology is a freight train that doesn’t care who is standing on its tracks.

Flashback – In the year 2000, 4.4% of American households had a home connection to broadband; by 2010 that number had jumped to 68%.¹

Let’s look at 2005 in particular. Katrina wasn’t the only hurricane that year. Hurricane YouTube and Hurricane Facebook also made landfall. Then, when Hurricane iPhone hit us in 2007, the whole world began recording and uploading pointless drivel. Reactionary prognosticators, drunk on technology, predicted that social media would completely replace traditional advertising.

Have you noticed that no one is saying that anymore?

But business people still like to think the web is the great equalizer because every customer is carrying a mobile device and every business has access to the same social media platforms.

But it’s not the platform that gives you success. It’s the content.

How good is your content?
Is there an audience for what you have to say?
How well are you saying it?

One of the great myths of marketing is that promoting a business though social media is cheap and easy. But the people who are using social media successfully will tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. If you want to play at today’s table, you’ve got to stack real money on it. And even then, there’s no guarantee you’re going to win.

Last week I hired a major-league video guy to work for me full-time because I don’t want to be seen as a Wiffle ball player swish-swish-swishing the air with my little plastic bat. I didn’t hire him to create videos for my clients. He won’t have time for that.

I would have used Sunpop Studios, the online-video company owned by my sons, but they don’t have the ability to give just one client the number of weekly man-hours my projects will require. So they hired my major-league hitter for me.

If you’re serious about engaging the public, you need better video than you can get from that “really tech-savvy college kid” you know. Everyone knows that kid. Heck, I know that kid wearing 12 different faces but the kid can’t swing the hammer. He’s not limited by intelligence or talent. He’s limited by experience.

Hammers don’t build mansions. Skilled carpenters do.

Low-cost video equipment is a hammer. You can do marvelous things with it if you have the skill and experience.

But you can also smash your thumb.

My sons have demonstrated to me that an experienced professional using inferior equipment can make major-league videos, while an amateur using the best equipment on earth will make Wiffle ball videos.

No one looks up to a Wiffle ball player.

You need to begin adding video to your web presence.

And you need the help of pros to do it well.

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

Facts are stacked like bricks to become a tower. Do you see it?
But a story is a wave that takes you on a journey and leaves the memory of the tower far behind.

Facts are solid.
Stories are seductive.

You will find the facts in the paragraphs below.
You will find the stories in the rabbit hole.

A Harvard graduate, Maria Konnikova received her Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia. She is the recipient of the 2015 Harvard Medical School Media Fellowship and is a Schachter Writing Fellow at Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center.

Let me put it a little more “Texan.”
Harvard Medical School believes in Maria enough to give her money.
The Motivation Science Center believes in her enough to give her money.
These big-league institutions are helping to fund her research.
Conclusion: Maria Konnikova is neither a poser nor a lightweight.

In her new book, The Confidence Game, Maria explains how cognitive scientists are proving that stories are the most effective way to get people to change their minds.

Eric Barker of Wired magazine was impressed with Maria’s book and followed it up with an interview. He talks about it in his blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

“When people tell us stories we tend to let our guard down. We don’t think we’re being ‘sold’ something, so we tend to go along for the ride. We quietly lose motivation to detect lies.”

“When psychologists Melanie Green and Timothy Brock decided to test the persuasive power of narrative, they found that the more a story transported us into its world, the more we were likely to believe it… The more engrossed a reader was in the story, the fewer false notes she noticed. The sweep of the narrative trumped the facts of logic. What’s more, the most engaged readers were also more likely to agree with the beliefs the story implied.”
– Maria Konnokova, The Confidence Game

Eric Barker’s additional research included the following nuggets,

“Nothing beats a story when it comes to convincing you of something…”

“Our brains are wired to respond to stories…”

“Paul Zak, the director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, has found repeatedly that nothing changes our emotions and behavior like the flow of a good story…”

“Keith Quesenberry at Johns Hopkins studied more than 100 Super Bowl ads to determine what the most effective ones had in common. The answer? They told a story.”

Will you give me a couple of extra minutes today if I promise to teach you something valuable?

I want to help you understand what is – and is not – a story.
I want to help you attract more customers.

I’d like you to compare this week’s MondayMorningMemo – the one you’re reading now – to last week’s memo, Herbert and the Bullfight.

Herbert and the Bullfight tells a story.
This week’s memo does not.

This week’s memo uses simile, “Facts are stacked like bricks…” and metaphor, “a story is a wave…” to make statements of fact more colorful.

But it takes more than color to tell a story.

You met several characters in this memo – Maria Konnokova, Eric Barker, Melanie Green, Timothy Brock, Paul Zak and Keith Quesenberry – but none of those characters took you on a journey. You never felt what they were feeling or saw the world through their eyes. You never identified with any of them.

Nothing happens to them, so they remain unchanged.

A story…

1. has a character
2. with whom you identify
3. and a pivotal moment. (The best stories have a series of them.)
4. As a result of these moments, the character –  and you – are both changed.

Good advertising is relevant. This means the customer relates to it and feels connected.
Good advertising is credible. This means it agrees with the customer’s beliefs.

Facts are presented by salespeople in the hope of changing a customer’s beliefs. They’re hoping the customer will make a new decision based on this new information. And this method often works. But only after you have convinced the customer to give you their time.

To win the customers time, you must offer them entertainment.
Well-told stories are entertaining.

The salesperson who wins the customer’s time
is the one most likely to win their money.

Have you been bludgeoning your customers with facts and data?
Try stroking them softly with stories.

Storytelling is a sport that requires training and practice.
It is an art that requires boldness and restraint.

Are you ready to learn it?

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.

The Internet rose to its full height in 2005 and cast a bright shadow across the land. It became our newspaper, our telephone book, our encyclopedia and our primary mailbox.

Whole categories of advertising where swept away by that tsunami.

Radio suffered the least damage of all the major media. She has proven to be far more durable than I had suspected.

In their recent study of annual trends, Audience Insights reported some interesting findings. President Jeff Vidler summarized,

We see absolutely no change in broadcast radio’s share of in-car tuning in the past 5 years. AM/FM radio is still dominant in-car, representing 66.2 percent of in-car listening. The growth of alternatives such as satellite radio and streaming audio appear to be coming at the expense of personal music (iPods, CDs and other libraries,) not broadcast radio.”

Prior to that report I had no data beyond my own observation, but I knew that radio is continuing to reward its regular advertisers with a robust and hearty return-on-investment.

And now I will tell you a story.

Once upon a time, no one could own shares in more than 12 TV stations, 12 FM radio stations and 12 AM radio stations. We called this “the 12/12/12 rule.”

We didn’t want anyone to be able to control the news.

But this good law went “poof” in 1996 and consolidators immediately began gathering up radio stations by the armful. Big-business efficiencies were brought in to what had previously been a Mom’n’Pop category. Profits soared and Wall Street said, “Let’s do this thing. She looks doable, doesn’t she?”

Corporate Radio was born with a full set of teeth but it had no reflection in the mirror.

Investors have their own way of looking at the world. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but you can always be certain you’re talking to The Money when they do something that hurts like hell and then tell you, “It’s just business.”

But Radio has never been “just business.” Radio is music and laughter and opinions and news and discussions and interviews with interesting people. Only a few minutes per hour are “just business,” and when a radio station is run correctly, even those few minutes can be entertaining and valuable and informative.

Investors are a funny breed. They work themselves into a frenzy and then suddenly lose all interest.

CBS announced in March that they plan to sell or spin off their radio assets this year. The goal, according to Les Moonves, is to “unlock value for our shareholders.” He indicated that radio has become “slow-growth” and “a drain on resources” that can be better directed to content production and digital endeavors.

Cumulus pushed out founder Lew Dickey as CEO last autumn but that management shakeup didn’t stop the stock slide. Cumulus shares lost 80 percent of their value in 2015. The Washington Post recently quoted one debt-holder as saying, “The most logical thing is to break it up and sell it.”

And now investors in iHeart (previously known as Clear Channel) are saying the same thing. Add it up and you’ll see that we’re talking about more than 1,400 radio stations possibly hitting the market all at once.

Radio stations have lost their appeal to investors.
But they haven’t lost their effectiveness for advertisers.

In 2001, America Online was worth $226 billion. In 2015, Verizon bought AOL for just $4.4 billion. Somewhere along the way, it lost 98 percent of its value.

In July of 2005, News Corporation, the parent company of FOX Broadcasting, bought Myspace for $580 million. In 2011 they sold it for $35 million, recovering just 6 cents on the dollar. It lost 94 percent of its value in just 6 years.

I have no idea how much money these 1,400 radio stations will bring or even if all of them will be sold. I’m not pretending to be able to predict those numbers. But I definitely smell an opportunity for innovative local ownership of radio stations again.

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.