Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Somewhere in the rolling hills of the mind, where ideas crackle like distant lightning, there exists a truth as old as the spoken word itself: radio is magic. Not the cheap parlor trick kind, but the real stuff—the kind that bends time, shapes perception and places your voice directly into the minds of thousands. It’s the whispered spell, the incantation riding the FM and AM waves straight into the ears of your next customer.

But radio, like all great magic, must be wielded with skill. Many a business owner has thrown their gold into the airwaves only to watch it scatter like dust in the wind, never to return. Others, those who understand the true nature of radio, have turned their brands into legends. The difference is not in the money spent but in the wisdom applied. So, if you’re ready to enchant an audience, gather ‘round. Let’s begin.

Step One: Know Thy Purpose—The Golden Thread of Radio Success

Before you spend a single dollar, answer this: Do you want an immediate response, or do you want to own the market’s mind?

Most advertisers fall into the trap of expecting radio to behave like a Google ad—click, buy, done. But radio isn’t the realm of the impatient. It’s a long game, a slow burn, the voice that lingers in the listener’s subconscious until the moment of need arises.

Sure, you can run short-term promotions—clearance sales, grand openings, holiday blowouts. But the true power of radio comes when you’re not just another noise in the din of desperation. The true power comes when you become the first name they think of when they need what you offer. That’s called branding, and branding on radio is where the real magic happens.

Step Two: Understanding Format—Dialing in Optimal Frequency

Not all stations behave the same. Some stations are packed with loyal listeners who wouldn’t dream of changing the dial, while others are just white noise in the background of life.

The secret? Don’t buy based on the station you like—buy stations based on how likely you are to be heard frequently. Your personal taste is irrelevant. Find out listen times and the shows that are most tuned into to touch as many of the same souls each week, every week. 

• Talk radio? People who listen for longer periods of time. 
• Classic rock? People who listen nostalgically to feel good. 
• Country? People who listen to feel seen. 
• Top 40? People who listen to amp their energy to feel good. 

Some of them will be homeowners. So of them will not. Some of them will own homes in 3 years, 5 years, or never. The good news is you’ll never go out of business reaching the wrong people with the right message. They’ll always tell the ones who need to know. 

Your choice of station should align with your strategy of repetition with the right message, not your ego or limiting beliefs.

Step Three: Repetition Before Reach—The Law of Mental Imprint

Here’s why most radio strategies fail. They spread their radio budget across too much reach without enough repetition. The only problem is the brain doesn’t work that way.

The mind is a predictable thing. It will forget something irrelevant within 7 seconds. That’s why one ad heard three times in 7 days is infinitely more powerful than one ad heard once in the same week. 

You gotta hammer your message in, again and again, until you are no longer just an advertiser—you are a familiar voice in the listener’s life.

It is better to dominate one station than to burp once across many. The goal is never to be heard once. The goal is to be retained and recalled when the listener eventually needs your thing.

Step Four: The Message—A Story, Not a Slogan

Here’s another reason why radio ads fail. They sound like…radio ads.

They are packed with clichés, company attributes, and desperate pleas to “BUY NOW!” 

But the human brain is built for stories, not sales pitches. If you want your radio ad to work, make it a conversation. Make it a story worth listening to.

• Say something new, surprising, and different. (insert Billy Ray Hole Digging Yelp Reviews Radio Ad)
• Make them laugh, cry, or angry. (insert Millers Real Tech ad)
• Tell a vulnerable story. (insert Goettl Ad, Ken Goodrich first ad fathers funeral)

The best radio ads don’t sound like ads at all. They sound like as story.

Step Five: The Call to Action—A Gentle Nudge, Not a Sledgehammer

The worst thing you can do is scream at your audience. The second worst thing you can do is forget to invite them in.

Your ad should end with a simple, easy-to-remember call to action. Not a laundry list of phone numbers and website URLs, rather one clear path:

• “Why not fix the one you’ve got?”
• “Call ACME plumbing dot com”
• “If you’re hurtin’ today, call right away…”

People don’t write things down while driving. Make your call to action easy to recall, easy to repeat, and easy to act on later.

Step Six: Consistency—The Alchemy of Brand Immortality

The final step is the most important, and the one most business owners fail to sustain. Stay. The. Course.

Do not buy a few weeks of radio, see no immediate windfall, and pull out. Radio works like water wearing down stone. Persistent frequency with the right message will get you known, liked, and trusted in your trade area. 

• Nine weeks? Your brand registers in the brain of the listener.
• Six months? You’ve held their interest.
• One year? More people need your thing, and their current “guy” has let them down. 
• Two years? You own the heart of your listeners. Now, you just need to patiently stand by until they need what you sell. 

The companies that win on the radio don’t quit when they get bored. They don’t quit when the audience isn’t responding fast enough. They keep showing up until the market needs what you sell.

Be the Brand They Choose to Remember

Radio is not a game for the timid. It is not for the impatient, the fickle, or the boring. But for those who understand its power, it’s an exponential amplifier of influence.

Master the craft, tell the right stories, stay the course, and one day, someone will need what you offer. And when they do, your name will already be there, waiting in the quiet corners of their mind, ready to be remembered.

If this sounds too hard for you, or you struggle with what to say to get and hold attention, I’m happy to help you. I have 80 writers and media negotiators available to get you noticed in your town. Let’s have a chat and see if radio is right for you and if you are ready for radio.

Endorsement ads are easily separated into two categories: live reads and true personal endorsements. One is more effective than the other. Which are you getting? Are you sure?

The power of personal endorsement ads

Not since the days of Arthur Godfrey (Google it, kids), has anything on radio or television eclipsed the power of personal endorsements; a trusted friend persuades you to try something new. Good endorsers are hard to find, but so worth the search. Good ones weave engaging narratives featuring your business that rise above the din of other ads.

Unfortunately, what’s sold as “personal endorsement” is too often merely a “live read” by someone who has little to no connection with the client or what’s being sold. It’s just another ad delivered with all the warmth and sincerity of a generic on-hold greeting.

An objective standard for a subjective product

Each endorser is a special case demanding unique coaching. But, since each endorsement is its own special snowflake, how do you give them uniform evaluation? 31 years of experience creating endorsement copy points and coaching talent has taught me to watch for how well six components are integrated in personal endorsement ads.

Before we get started, though, let’s first assume you have a branding strategy in place; endorsements are a tool, after all, not a strategy. With that said, check that your endorsement ads integrate all six of these components:

Six components of an effective personal endorsement

1. Relatable: Choose a personality who’s relatable to your customers. If you’re selling mortgage services, an apartment-dwelling disc jockey would be a bad choice. Do you really believe Shaq drives a Buick?
2. Believable: When you first meet the personality, do they show a genuine interest in what you’re selling? If not, walk away. If they try and fake it, run. Listeners don’t blame personalities for a weak endorsement. They blame you.
3. Specific: Provide specific proof points to substantiate the endorsement. It could be a first-hand experience the personality had with you, customer quotes, or something the endorser really likes. Specificity adds impact.
4. Contextual: Personal endorsement ads happen in the here and now. Let your endorser give your message context; weather, holidays, events, news stories, etc. Anchoring your message to the real world reinforces authenticity.
5. Credible: Your endorsement’s credibility is in direct inverse proportion to the number of endorsements made by your personality—and others on the station. Endorsements work best in limited supply. What do you call a girl who kisses all the boys? Make sure your personality isn’t one of those.
6. I quotient : My favorite secret sauce of effective endorsements comes down to a single vowel: I. The more your personality uses it, the more effective your ad is. I like it. I use it. I recommend it. I know you’ll like it. Boosting I’s boosts involvement which boosts your ads’ persuasiveness.

Grade your endorsement ads on a curve

There are several other lesser components I watch for, but these are the do-or-die ones every ad needs. Used together, they give you a set of measures for evaluating the quality of your endorsements ads. Just remember: perfection is rare and not entirely necessary.

Few ads score perfectly. That’s okay—as long as you continue working with your personality to improve week to week. Yes, week to week. Personal endorsements are like orchids in the greenhouse of advertising. They need much attention but deliver beautiful results.

Beware the downside of endorsement ads

One more point: Before going all in on these ads, please take this warning to heart: Endorsements work incredibly well—until they don’t. Think how bad behavior by Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods tanked their endorsement deals with Nike and others. Even Arthur Godfrey’s value took a nose dive after a famously bad decision.

Okay, you’re not Nike and Godfrey’s long gone. But, your local personality’s endorsement value is equally volatile. That’s why I recommend clients also run alternate non-endorsement campaigns in conjunction with endorsement ads. Endorsers are human, after all. And, your show must go on.

Billboards: A Smart Play or an Expensive Roadside Decoration?

Essential home service business owners often wonder: Should I be using billboards?

They see competitors plastering their names across highways and feel the pressure. "If they’re doing it, maybe I should too?"

But here’s the truth:

🚫 A billboard by itself is almost always a proper waste of money.
✅ A billboard reinforcing a strong radio or TV campaign? A powerful brand multiplier.

Billboards don’t create demand. They reinforce retention and recall by anchoring a message people have already heard. If a customer hears something catchy on the radio and then sees it again on a billboard, this is brain candy.

You can make billboards work like this for your business, too.

The Real Role of a Billboard in Home Service Marketing

1. Billboards Work When They Reinforce a High-Frequency Message

Asking a billboard to be an effective first-touch marketing tool is like asking a fish to climb a tree. Billboards are great at being a reinforcement, a memory anchor.

🔹 The radio tells the story to stir an emotion.
🔹 The billboard reminds them of that feeling.
🔹 When they need your thing, they remember your brand in a positive light.

Think about it:

• If someone hears a message about your company 10 times on the radio...
• And then sees that same core message while driving...
• When their AC fails, your brand is the first positive thing they remember in their time of need.

Just like Pavlov’s dog learned to associate a bell with meat paste, your customers will associate your brand with their need paste.

Example: Fix it Frankie

Frankie’s Ma always said, “My Frankie can fix anything.”

It’s a warm, familiar, and sticky phrase. If someone hears this slogan on the radio all the time, then sees a billboard that simply says:

🛠️ "MY FRANKIE CAN FIX ANYTHING."
🛜 Visit FIXITFRANKIE.COM

‍

It’s not just an ad—it’s a mental hook that brands Fix it Frankie into the prospect’s memory.

That’s how you use billboards correctly.

2. Billboards Make Sense When They Cost Less Than a Wrapped Truck

If you have to choose between a wrapped service truck and a billboard, wrap the truck first.

A wrapped truck is a moving billboard:

✔️ It’s seen in driveways, at job sites, and in traffic
✔️ It gets hundreds of daily impressions
✔️ It directly connects the brand to the service

A billboard just sits there. If the billboard costs more than a wrapped truck, it’s may be a bad deal.

Best Strategy:

🎙️ Run high-frequency radio or TV ads on mass media channels at the correct repetition.
🚛 Wrap your trucks and drive them around town.
🛣️ Use billboards as message reinforcement or when trying to penetrate a new service area.

3. Billboards Work for Tactical Messaging (Hiring & Offers)

A billboard is not great for explaining things, but it’s perfect for quick, bold messages like:

✔️ Recruiting:
💰 "ARE YOU A FRANKIE? NOW HIRING HVAC TECHS"

✔️ Special Offers:
🔥 "FREE CLUB MEMBERSHIPS FOR SENIORS"

✔️ Emergency Services:
💡 "Broken AC? Guaranteed 1-Hour Appointments"

A single, clear message drives action. A cluttered billboard with too much info? Wasted money.

4. Billboards Work Best in High-Traffic Areas

A billboard isn’t overly useful if people see it infrequently. It ideally should be placed where the same audience will see it repeatedly.

✅ GOOD Locations:
✔️ Major commuter highways and crossroads
✔️ Traffic bottlenecks (stoplights, exits)
✔️ Near high-service areas

❌ BAD Locations:
🚫 Rural highways with low traffic
🚫 Hidden by trees, buildings, or vehicles
🚫 Areas outside your service zone

The more exposure your prospects get, the more you reinforce your embed cues. If they rarely see it, it remains invisible.

How to Make a Billboard Work: 4 Golden Rules

1. One Message, One Focus

A billboard is not a business card. If people can’t read it in 3 seconds, it’s ineffective.

🚫 Bad Example:
"Smith & Sons HVAC – 24/7 Emergency Service – Free Estimates – Family-Owned – Financing Available – Call Now! 602-555-HVAC — Visit SmithAndSonsHVAC.com"

✅ Good Example:
🥵"MY FRANKIE CAN FIX ANYTHING"
🛜 FIXITFRANKIE.COM

2. Make It Instantly Readable

✔️ Bold, high-contrast text
✔️ No fancy fonts
✔️ No tiny details

If they can’t read it at 60 mph, it’s not a billboard—it’s wallpaper.

3. Trigger Emotion, Information is Invisible Ink

Billboards aren’t about what you do—they’re about how you make people feel.

🚫 “We Offer HVAC Services in Phoenix”
✅ 🔥 “HOT AS HELL? CALL 555-COOL!”

🚫 “Now Hiring Technicians”
✅ 💰 “GET PAID TO LEARN HVAC!”

Emotion drives recall. Facts are forgettable.

Are billboards worth it for your essential home service company?

✔️ YES—If:
✅ You already have wrapped trucks
✅ You run high-frequency mass media (radio/TV)
✅ You use them for reinforcement, not first-touch marketing
✅ They are placed in high-traffic areas

❌ NO—If:
🚫 You don’t have a strong auditory campaign
🚫 You hope a billboard alone will grow your business
🚫 You can buy a truck and wrap it for less

The Winning Formula:

🚛 Wrap your trucks → 🎙️ Run mass media → 🛣️ Use billboards as reinforcement.

When used strategically, billboards don’t just get your brand noticed—they ensure you get remembered.

TL;DR – Billboards Only Work When They Reinforce a Message

🔹 Radio/TV is the storyteller.
🔹 The billboard is the reminder.
🔹 When the need arises, your brand is the first they recall.

That’s why Frankie’s Ma said:

"MY FRANKIE CAN FIX ANYTHING."

And that’s why it belongs on a billboard. 🚀

You’ve seen the billboards exclaiming, “Does Billboard Advertising Work? Just Did.” These signs often fill empty spaces on billboards that couldn’t be sold, but here’s the reality: they didn’t “just work.” A successful billboard campaign requires a careful mix of elements, with a compelling message being the most critical.

As consultants, we frequently hear, “I tried billboards once, and it didn’t work,” which mirrors sentiments about radio and TV advertising. The truth is simple, yet often overlooked:

1. Long-term Repetition (Frequency): Success isn’t achieved overnight. Consistent exposure over time is essential. Lengthen your time horizon.
2. Widespread Visibility (Reach): Your message needs to be seen or heard by as many people as possible, repeatedly.
3. Engaging Content (Message): Without a compelling and entertaining message, even the best placement will fall flat. And you only have eight words to say it on a billboard.

Any mass media advertising can yield results when these ingredients are in place. Unfortunately, many campaigns fail because advertisers expect immediate returns from a one-off effort, neglecting the need for sustained visibility. Additionally, if the message doesn’t resonate—if it answers questions no one is asking or is cobbled together from clichés—it’s likely to be ignored.

The effectiveness of billboard advertising, like any marketing strategy, hinges on understanding and implementing these key components. By committing to long-term strategies, maximizing reach, and crafting messages that truly engage and aren’t saying the same thing as everyone else, businesses can transform their advertising efforts from forgettable to unforgettable. Remember, successful advertising is not just about visibility; it’s about making a lasting impression.

“Does Billboard Advertising Work?” Absolutely, just do it properly and be prepared for the results.

‍

Growing a business requires two types of marketing strategies: Overarching Marketing Strategy and Message Strategy.

1. Overarching Marketing Strategy

This is the big picture—a plan that considers the nuances of your business, industry, customer behavior, and buying style. It’s about reducing friction for customers and identifying and alleviating your customers’ fears.

2. Message Strategy

Once the overarching marketing strategy is in place, the message strategy focuses on crafting the best words to build an emotional connection with your audience; often through story.

Part 1: Why You Need an Overarching Marketing Strategy

Running a business without a marketing strategy is like embarking on a road trip without a map. You might eventually get where you’re going, but the journey will likely be longer, more expensive, more stressful, and full of unhelpful detours.

A good marketing strategy answers three essential questions:

1. What should you say?
2. Where should you say it?
3. How and how often should you say it?

Here are a few foundational questions when building your marketing strategy:

• Can you stimulate demand?
• Can you reach the customer easily at the time of purchase?
• Can you win the customer’s heart before they need what you offer?
• Can you use media to efficiently target the customer?
• Should you do direct response or branding style messaging?
• Is trust important? What contributes to trust?
• Do we target Transactional or Relational shoppers?

Can you stimulate demand?

Purchases are either triggered by an external event or an internal desire.

For example, a plumbing company cannot convince a homeowner to hire them to fix a sink that isn’t broken. And a moving company cannot convince a homeowner to move.

The goal of businesses who sell products/services that are externally triggered is not stimulating demand but ensuring customers think of you first and like you the best when the triggering event occurs.

For products with internal triggers—those driven by emotions, desires, or ego—you can actively stimulate demand. This requires addressing three key points:

1. Why they should buy
2. Why they should buy now
3. Why they should buy from you

Here are a few more examples to drive this home.

• An engagement ring is an externally triggered purchase.
• A Rolex is internally triggered.
• Shoes can either be internally or externally triggered based on the customer. Some customers could be internally triggered to buy Air Jordans, while other customers could be externally triggered when the hole in the sole of their shoe gives way to pavement.

Can you use media to efficiently target your customer?

Customers often turn to Google during their “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT). If they don’t already know or trust you, you’ll be competing with others who are willing to pay top dollar for leads. The solution? Reach them before they get to Google.

Media generally falls into two categories: Targeted Media and Mass Media.

Targeted media: narrow reach at a higher cost

Mass media: broad reach at a lower cost

Targeted Media

Targeted media (like PPC, search ads on specific sites, some direct mail, etc) tends to be much more expensive than mass media on a per-impression basis and serves a different purpose.

Purpose 1: Capture leads who are ready to buy

Since bottom-of-funnel, targeted media like PPC is expensive, it’s wise to become decreasingly dependent on unbranded keywords as you reach your first few million in revenue. Instead, focus on building relationships with mass media, then capture leads with branded keywords, which tend to cost only a few cents per click.

Below are industry benchmarks for PPC. Note only a fraction of these will ever convert.

Purpose 2: Engage a very narrow subset of the population

Can you create a quality, cost-effective list of every person who could conceivably buy what you sell? If “yes,” leveraging targeted media could be a great approach.

If you serve multiple industries that have multiple decision-makers and/or influencers, targeting efforts become impractical.

Sidenote: if you have a great list broker, please let me know. From my experience, buying lists is not worth the money, which makes building a list remarkably labor intensive/expensive.

Is social media a form of targeted media?

In 2022, Meta (Facebook & Instagram) settled with the DOJ over accusations of their targeting leading to discrimination. To prevent fines and further legal trouble, social media companies no longer effectively target, thus making them function more like expensive mass media than targeted.

Mass Media

If you can feasibly sell your product/service to a base that’s too diverse or large to build a list, mass media can be a great option. Even though it will reach people beyond your customer base, it’s cost effective enough that it makes sense to reach those who influence your buyers too.

For example, a funeral home would typically do well to skip the Pre-need/funeral planning mailers targeting senior citizens, instead opting for mass media for a few reasons.

1. While each mailer would cost between $1.50 to $5+ per person, radio (for example) can reach the same person 3x/week all year for less than $1.
2. Funeral decisions are typically made with the influence of a spouse and/or family. While a flyer only reaches the decision maker (maybe), radio can influence all parties.
3. Radio can keep the funeral home top of mind all year, a mailer isn’t likely to keep them top of mind longer than it takes to get to the wastebasket.

Here’s how the cost to reach 1,000 people and get their attention compares across multiple media, according to Audacy.

Yes, you read that right, while you could target one lead, one time via PPC for $6.96 in the home service industry, you could alternatively reach 1,000 people for 40 cents with radio!

With such a vast price difference, you can see why mass media even makes sense as a primary media for marketing businesses with a semi-narrow niche.

Should you do direct response or branding style messaging?

Direct response marketing focuses on generating immediate action, whether to purchase or reach out. It requires a compelling offer with scarcity and/or urgency to be effective. Direct response marketing can be effective for Internally Triggered purchases as the offer can give the customer an added reason to buy now. It is less effective for external triggers.

If you cannot come up with a strong offer that aligns with the customers trigger, is scarce and/or urgent and doesn’t compromise your product or service, then direct response marketing is probably not for your business.

Branding, on the other hand, builds long-term trust and loyalty. By creating an emotional connection, you ensure that customers choose you before even considering competitors.

Branding is a great way to avoid competing on price and to maintain high margins.

By answering these questions you’ll have the components to create a phenomenal strategy, telling you where and how to market.

The next step is creating a message strategy that will capitalize on what you learned in your overarching marketing strategy to ensure maximum impact.

Part 2: Message Strategy

Even the best marketing strategy can falter without a strong message. Think of a strong message strategy as a sharp chainsaw that makes cutting through the noise easier, faster, and more effective.

So what is message strategy, and how do you create it?

If you read “The Art of War” – the renowned book on wartime strategy by Sun Tzu – thinking you’ll learn THE strategy to win any war… you’ll be disappointed. Instead, Sun Tzu gives us principles based on:

• What do you have to work with?
• What has worked in the past (across time and contexts)?
• What unrealized opportunities you may have?

Knowing the principles and these three questions, you can create an optimal wartime strategy no matter your circumstances.

Message strategy is much the same.

A good message strategist – like a wartime strategist, will start by asking, “What do we have to work with?” To share a few examples:

On the flip side…

The results of assessing “what do we have to work with?” will yield 2 primary categories of insights: Challenges and Opportunities.

You fix challenges and capitalize on opportunities in a similar fashion.

Remember Sun Tzu’s approach to strategy?

1. What has worked in the past (across time and contexts)
2. What unrealized opportunities may we have

In business, we use the same concepts but with different names:

1. Business Problem Topology
2. Unleveraged Assets

Business Problem Topology is the process of overcoming challenges or implementing opportunities by looking at examples from other businesses and industries.

For example, Henry Ford reduced the time to produce a car by 90% by reverse engineering the pig disassembly line as the assembly line for his cars… that was Business Problem Topology.

Identifying Unleveraged Assets allows you to turn hidden strengths into competitive advantages.

An example of this is a B2B client of mine who moves heaven and earth to satisfy their customers. By turning what they’re already doing into a guarantee, they can stand out from the competition while easing the fears of potential customers. That’s Identifying an Unleveraged Asset

To begin implementing Business Problem Topology and Identifying Unleveraged Assets effectively, study what’s worked in the past and why.

Once you know “why,” you can implement with confidence as you’ll have the “why” as a guiding principle.

When my business partner, Roy Williams, was looking to endear the public to an HVAC company, he identified that Dewey Jenkins had similar personality traits as Andy Griffith. Since he knew Andy Griffith and Barney Fife’s relationship was loved by the public, he created similar characters in their marketing campaigns. It worked. Charlotte, North Carolina, fell in love with “Mr. Jenkins & Bobby” and the company exploded from $20m to over $100m. That’s Business Problem Topology AND Identifying an Unleveraged Asset!

“Strategy is using the past to predict what will work in the present”

If you don’t know what has (or hasn’t) worked in the past, how will you avoid wasting time and money on things destined to fail?

If you don’t know how to leverage what you have to stand above your competitors, how will you grow?

The Wizard of Ads Partners have learned these and many other principles while growing many hundreds of businesses from a few million in revenue to $50m+.

Everything here is learnable, and the Wizard of Ads trilogy by Roy Williams is a great place to start.

‍

Below is a collection of interviews done this year with marketers from two continents. Each have shown how entertainment and emotion aren’t just nice to have… it’s something you must have in order for your ads to work harder.

Watch the video above or read the transcript below.

With commentary from:

Roy H. Williams/Wizard of Ads
Orlando Wood/System 1 Group
Harry Beckwith/Author
Matt Owens/System 1 Group
R.C. Oates/System 1 Group
Zach Atherton/Harmon Brothers

Johnny: Are creative ads there to just be entertaining or do they serve some purpose? They serve some purpose.

In the late 1900s, which sounds absolutely stupid to say, I was a good ad writer, creative even, but being creative isn’t the same as being effective. This is about the time that the Wizard of Ads trilogy came out and Roy H. Williams closed the gap between creative and effective.

Roy Williams: The most powerful of all words, is “you”. “You” engages the imagination of the listener. It puts the action of your spot in present tense, active. Skillful use of the word you makes the listener a participant in your ad.

Johnny: Of course, the customer is the star. The story draws them in. Emotion leads before logic. This is something all the great postmodern advertisers know.

Roy Williams: That’s our job. Our job is not to give people the facts. Our job is to romance the shit out of what we’re selling.

Johnny: But isn’t that what you’d expect the creative person to say?

“Don’t lessen respect for yourself by any attempt at frivolity. People do not patronize a clown. An eccentric picture may do you serious damage. One may gain attention by wearing a fool’s cap, but he would ruin his selling prospects.”

That 1923 quote from Claude C. Hopkins not only made him the life of the party, but his book, Scientific Advertising spawned generations of ad people to be dull. And dull is deadly. But I didn’t answer the question, what does emotion have to do with making money? Quite a bit it seems. Let’s dive in first with Orlando Wood, author of Lemon and Look Out and Chief Innovation Officer at System One. This is a company that tests ads for their emotional appeal and they have hard data showing how using emotion theater, entertainment that turns into real business growth.

Orlando Wood: That notion of emotion and action, they go together. It’s at the root of the word emotion is motion and movement. And what we’re trying to do, I think in advertising is create that psychological transformation through a shift in emotive state, one that will leave us feeling better disposed towards the advertiser. That makes us want really, I suppose that creates a preference and that makes us want to spend more time with them or buy them because we don’t buy from people we don’t like.

Johnny: Paul Feldwick was the head of planning at DDB Worldwide and has authored The Anatomy of Humbug and the most recent, Why Does the Peddler Sing: What Creativity Really Means in Advertising. Feldwick’s book offers the choice between showmanship and salesmanship, and if future growth is your goal, showmanship is the choice.

Paul Feldwick: Again, we’ve inherited all this baggage that there’s something called brand advertising or emotional advertising is somehow sort of less immediate in its effects. These are business issues. These are not advertising issues, like if you’re running a business, are you seeking to maximize your profits this quarter or are you looking to be in business for the next five years, 10 years and grow this business? And I think depending on how you genuinely answer that question, you will do things accordingly.

Matt Owens: We only have one three-star ad, and this isn’t even a three-star ad, but it was from a local, I think he’s a pest control company in Missouri, and it was like…

Johnny: Matt Owens is a VP of agency and media partnerships at System One.

Matt Owens: We test a bunch of P & G ads. They don’t do as well as little Steve, so the little guys can still punch above their weight. So don’t be scared off by the big fellas out there.

R.C. Oates: I think the philosophical underpinning of this also is interesting for local advertisers. Sometimes the big guys can’t accept the idea of the timeless importance of the show that even though you are trying to speak to this small subset the way in is universal truths. So I think that kind of exposes the opportunity.

Johnny: Legendary marketer Harry Beckwith, whose book Selling the Invisible was named one of the top 10 business and management books of all time. It challenges — even debunks — this idea of logical persuasion. We don’t buy products, we buy services. It’s the promise of the product and that Harry says is invisible.

Harry Beckwith: Well, I think if we begin with the assumption that we’re logical people that have emotions, I think that’s the wrong assumption. I think we’re emotional people that are capable of thinking logically. One of the ways that I put it in one of my later books was that our hearts make our decisions and then they draft the brain to draft the rationale. And you look around again and again and there’s so little logic for so many of our decisions. I mean, why did so many people own American Express cards rather than Visa cards? Visa cards are less expensive. They’re honored at more locations, they’re status, and then you say, what’s the logic of status? Well, that’s a tricky one to deal with.

Zach Atherton: They really want to feel a connection. Lume, for example,

Johnny: Zach Atherton is the head writer at Harmon Brothers, an ad firm known for creating ads that go viral like Poo-Pourri, Purple Mattress, and Lume deodorant.

Zach Atherton: And so she’s posting like a hundred pieces of content. Some of it’s higher production and cool, but a lot of it’s just like, I’m a doctor. I’m an OB GYN, I’m really passionate about my patients and this is why I did it.

Johnny: It’s like she single-handedly invented the full body deodorant industry because the copycats that are coming are mind boggling.

Zach Atherton: Yeah, yeah. I saw Dove do it, and I’m like, that’s interesting.

Johnny: I read a quote from you that I thought was so interesting where you say you just need to put on a show that keeps people in their seats and puts them in a good mood. They’ll like you better and then they’ll buy more of your stuff, which I fundamentally agree with, but it also, it almost sounds too simple.

Paul Feldwick: All successful advertising has been developed and practiced actually by simple people who basically wanted to sell stuff. It was not invented by scientists and philosophers. It was invented by traveling peddlers and salesmen and showmen who knew that if they didn’t attract that crowd and end up selling them some stuff they weren’t going to eat. So that for me is we need to remember that those are the origins, and actually throughout the history of advertising, all the real power of it has come I think from that.

Johnny: Roy Williams, author and founder of Wizard of Ads.

Roy Williams: And I told stories that really actually were true. That’s our job. Our job is not to give people the facts. Our job is to romance the shit out of what we’re selling. Emotional connection, and it doesn’t have shit to do with the delivery channel. And so this idea of how should I deliver my message, what’s the right way to deliver my message? Message isn’t a problem. I’m going, nope. We’re message-first and the message has to be something that connects to the human heart and something that moves people.

Orlando Wood: What you’re trying to do is create this change, this psychological change and great narratives, great advertising can do that and the viewer feels it. And so you end up hopefully with an audience that feels good about you. And what we’ve found is that generally speaking, if you can leave someone feeling good about you, you are creating this thing called the affect heuristic, which is a sort of mental shortcut that we use. Rather than asking ourselves a difficult question as Daniel Kahneman might have put it, great psychologist, what do I think about this? Or which of these two options is better? You ask yourself an easier question to answer, which is one of these, do I feel better about? Which one do I feel good about?

Matt Owens: But I think from our perspective is you have to go in there trying to entertain everybody and knowing that how many people are going to get off? Hopefully a couple are going to get off that ad and go buy your product. Probably not many, but how many hopefully in the next couple of months are going to remember that and say, I need to go buy that shirt, that cologne, whatever it is, that bread.

R.C. Oates: My advice would be don’t fall victim to short-termism of needing to just think about hitting a number today, driving sales today, but really think about how you can tap into the demand that does exist tomorrow, because that is what big brands do. And even if you are operating in a small town of 30,000, those same principles apply, right? Not everyone is going to be buying today, tomorrow, but they will be in a year, two years, three years, some like heating and air, right? How can you embed yourself into their memory so when it comes time they can.

Johnny: Now, don’t get fooled by this word emotion. It doesn’t mean drama or sappy poems. It means finding either the emotional motivation for a person to want your product or an emotional association you’d like people to have with your product.

Harry Beckwith: I think more and more, I think marketers are recognizing, again, we’re emotional beings that are sometimes capable of rational thought. I wouldn’t be critical of advertising or marketers for failing to recognize that there certainly may be some that do. In the area of business to business, you often wonder what is the role of marketing or in emotion and business to business at all? And it’s not always easy to find.

Johnny: But would you argue that it’s there nonetheless? I think it’s still an emotional transaction.

Harry Beckwith: Because yeah, you have to find what’s the emotional trigger in that business to business buyer. I was in pacemakers and defibrillators originally because I was, Carmichael Lynch drafted me to handle that job because I was a medical malpractice and personal injury attorney, so I had some background in it. But we didn’t sell the features of defibrillators. So we ran an ad and had to introduce it and said, this year over 25,000 Americans could die and live to tell about it. Well, there’s both fact and emotional resonance it that.

Johnny: That is such a great headline.

Harry Beckwith: I thought so too. I don’t know if I ever wrote a better one. I wrote a lot of worse ones.

Roy Williams: You connect with people not because of information. You use the information to justify what the heart has already decided. Win the heart and the mind will follow, the mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided. Everybody, please take that more seriously. That is the business we’re in.

Paul Feldwick: And you cannot really talk about rational decisions versus emotional decisions because all decisions are fundamental emotional. The guy who probably over the longest period of time built Coca-Cola from American dominance to worldwide dominance, Robert Woodruff, he repeatedly told his people the purpose of Coca-Cola advertising is to be liked. It’s not complicated, very simple, and he is saying it not for any whimsical or otherworldly reasons. He’s saying it because he understands that the more you are liked, the more you are talked about, the more attractive you are to people, the more distinctive you are. All those things follow.

Roy Williams: That’s our job. Our job is not to give people the facts. Our job is to romance the shit out of what we’re selling.

Johnny: For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing ads intending to entertain, not to entertain myself, but to help businesses grow in the future. It’s something you should be asking your ad person to be doing. If you feel stuck in stats, you probably need more silly. If you feel overprocessed, you probably need more poetry. If you’re drowning in numbers, you probably need more nonsense.

Gene Wilder: A little nonsense known is relished by the men.

Johnny: A little less rote, a lot more romance.