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If the pendulum of the West continues as it has for 3,000 years, our current “We” generation will zenith in 2023.

Frankly, I’m looking forward to getting past that zenith and heading back the other way. The early part of a “Me” generation is a beautiful thing. But then again, so is the early part of a “We.”

It’s as we approach a zenith that everything goes out of control.

If you want to understand today’s crazy American politics, you need only to look at the pendulum.

A generation – for the purposes of today’s discussion – is not a group of birth cohorts, but life cohorts, everyone who is alive at a particular moment. We’re not talking about Millennials, Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. We’re talking about the personality-shaping values that enchanted each of these groups during their adolescence. Those same ideas and values then altered the worldview of their mothers and fathers, the birth cohorts that preceded them.

I was 5 years old in 1963, the year the most recent “Me” generation began its upswing toward the zenith of 1983, when Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and shouted, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The president at the zenith of the previous “Me” (1903) was Teddy “San Juan Hill” Roosevelt and during the “Me” prior to him (1823) it was James Monroe, the president who notified European powers that America would no longer tolerate colonial expansion in our hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine effectively said to all the powers of Europe, “Step back or we’ll kick your ass.”

A “Me” Generation is about individuality and self-expression, marching to the beat of a different drummer. It’s when one-of-a-kind is king, so do your own thing. A “Me” is the time of heroes.

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

Both “We” and “Me” are built on beautiful ideas, but we always take a good thing too far and then crave what we left behind. So we turn and face the opposite direction and do it all over again.

And we’ve been doing it for 3,000 years.

I was 45 at the beginning of the upswing of our current “We” generation (2003.)

The driving force behind a “We” is “working together for the common good.”

“We,” the group, the team, the tribe:
1. …demands conformity for the common good.
2. …applauds personal responsibility.
3. …believes a million men are wiser than one man,
“Two heads are better than one.”
4. …wants to create a better world.
5. …is about small actions.
6. …desires to be a team member. “I came, I saw, I concurred.”
7. …admires humility and is attracted to thoughtful persons.
8. …leadership is, “Here’s the problem. Let’s work together to solve it.”
9. …strengthens a society’s sense of purpose as it considers all its problems.
10. produces efficiency, compliance, mass-production and consolidation, “best practices” and peer groups.

As I said, the first half of a “We” upswing is a beautiful thing (2003 – 2013.) But we always take a good thing too far. What begins as an inclusive “we,” ends as an exclusive “we.”

Inclusive: “We are all in this together.”
Exclusive: “We, unlike you, are good and wise and right and true.”

During the 10 years approaching the zenith (2013-2023,) a “We” is shaped by the group that controls the definition of “the common good.” This is why every “We” ends in a witch-hunt. The president at the zenith of our previous “We” (1943) was FDR, who pulled the nation together following the Great Depression. At the zenith before him (1863,) it was Abraham Lincoln, who held the nation together during the Civil War.

But you should remember that FDR was also the president that put 127,000 Japanese-Americans into prison camps during World War II. And 62 percent of those were American citizens. Not our proudest moment. During this same “We” zenith Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined other American lives by pointing his finger and falsely shouting, “Communist! He’s a Communist!” and the infamous blacklists began. Adolph Hitler was defining “the common good” in Germany. Likewise, Joseph Stalin’s idea of “the common good” in Russia included pogroms and purges that murdered millions of his own people. Everyone was on a witch-hunt.

Throughout the 3,000-year history of western civilization, any time we have burned people at the stake or guillotined them, we’ve been at, or near, the zenith of a “We.”

Our next zenith occurs in less than 7 years (2023.) The political climate is starting to make a little more sense, isn’t it?

But the pendulum isn’t really about politics. It’s about values and core beliefs, the kinds of things that make ads produce results or not.

Advertising copy that works during a “Me” will falter and fail during a “We.”

I began teaching advertising professionals about the “We” generation in 2004. That first session was in Stockholm, Sweden and it was attended by most of the advertising agencies of Europe. Then it was off to Melbourne and Sydney and Townsville, Australia. Then Canada. Then the United States.

When I was asked to put all that information into a book, I said, “Now’s not the right time. What’s ahead of us isn’t pretty.” But finally I relented and Pendulum was released.

I was talking with Michael Drew, my co-author the other day. He said, “It’s time for a Pendulum update focused on Advertising and Marketing.” The idea struck me like a thunderbolt.

I said, “And we need to recruit Ryan Deiss to be the lead author.”

Ryan is a Cognoscenti of Wizard Academy and a close friend. He and I meet regularly with Eric Rhoads to talk about art and trade insights about the future.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and let's create those mind-blowing ads.  

Loren L. Lewis always said,

Never play another man’s game.
Always have a game of your own.”

In the advertising business, RFP means “Request For Proposal.” In other words, some big company wants you to dance for them. They want you to sit up and beg like a dog at the dinner table.

I’ve never responded to an RFP.

I believe in the FPS.

In my little homemade world, FPS stands for Free Public Seminar. I did my first one in 1988. By 1992 I was doing at least one a month. In 1994 I launched the little missive you’re reading now. For the first several years of its life, this Monday Morning Memo was delivered by FAX. Can you believe it?

Don’t bother to Google FPS. No one uses that term but me. Today people call it “content marketing.”

It didn’t have a name in 1895 when John Deere launched a magazine for farmers about how to become more profitable. That magazine, The Furrow, is still in circulation. Today it reaches 1.5 million farmers in 40 countries who speak 12 different languages.

In 1904 a weird new food company sent its workforce door-to-door across America giving away free cookbooks. That company became a huge national brand within 24 months. Ever heard of Jell-O?

Ninety -five years later (1999,) author Jeff Cannon wrote,

In content marketing, content is created to provide consumers with the information they seek.”

Bingo. One hundred and four years after John Deere proved it would work, someone gave it a name.

But content marketing probably isn’t for you. I believe that ship has sailed.

Does content marketing still work? Of course it does. The problem is that everyone is working it.

If every manufacturer in 1895 had been publishing their own magazine… if mailboxes everywhere were overflowing with them… would John Deere have seen success with The Furrow? Possibly. But they would have been playing another man’s game.

You need to have a game of your own.

Content marketing is a competition for the customer’s time. But it’s not the only way to win the customer’s time.

There is a way, I promise, for you to give away a sample of your product.

There is a way for you to demonstrate what you do in a dramatic and convincing way.

Both of these have been done before.

But not lately.

When everyone else is competing to win the customer’s time through the publication of online content, perhaps it’s time for you to start a game of your own.

For me, FPS meant Free Public Seminar.
For you, it can mean Free Product Sample.

Or maybe you just need to put on a show.

Demonstrate what you do.

Open some eyes.

Get some attention.

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

The cognoscenti will remember two big statements glittering on the screen behind me during the opening moments of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop:

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
– Niels Bohr, physicist

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, writer

What I’m about to say may prove to be just such a test.
I’m counting on you to possess a first-rate intelligence:

“People love Donald Trump.”
“People hate Donald Trump.”

Those two statements about Donald Trump seem to be mutually exclusive until we realize that neither statement purports to describe ALL people. Different people feel different ways. We understand this when it comes to politics.

But let the discussion turn to advertising and you will soon hear voices begin speaking of Millennials and Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers as though every member of a birth cohort is somehow compelled to make their decisions based on a single, shared set of values determined by the year in which they were born.

It’s like listening to people who believe in astrology. “Your fate is determined by your birthday.”

The only thing weirder is listening to wholesalers and distributors speak of the men and women involved in “B to B” (Business to Business) as if they were an entirely different species. “Roy, I hear what you’re saying about using words as tools of persuasion, but my business is B to B and B to B is different. What can you tell me about selling B to B?”

Blanket statements result from a belief in stereotypes.

Stereotypes are attractive because they allow us to simplify complex realities.

Stereotypes are false categories that allow us to feel good about stupid decisions.

People are extremely different.
People are all alike.

Both of those statements are true.
Both of those statements are false.

How’s that first-rate intelligence holding up?

I’m now going to make 5 true statements. Some will confirm your suspicions and beliefs. Others will stick in your throat like a fish bone, forcing you to cough and sputter.

I apologize in advance.

1. Your perfect “target customer” is probably a false category.

This is one of the two reasons why your advertising is performing poorly.

The first time I visited Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, I was greeted warmly and shown the auditorium where I would be speaking. After all the equipment had been tested, my guide asked,

“Do you know the unofficial slogan of our company?”

I shook my head from side to side.

“In God we trust. All others bring data.”

In an August 9, 2016 story in the Wall Street Journal, Procter & Gamble Chief Marketing Officer Marc Pritchard announced, “We targeted too much and we went too narrow.”

Example: Sales stagnated when P&G aimed Febreze ads on Facebook at pet owners and households with large families. But sales rose when the same budget was spent reaching “anyone over 18.”

P&G has been spending hundreds of million of dollars on tests like that for the past two years. The jury has now returned with a verdict: reaching influencers is just as important as reaching the decision maker.

You feeling that fish bone yet?

2. Millennials are easy to attract.

According to an Aug. 5th Daily Beast article by Samantha Allen, one in three young adults is still living at home.

Touchy-feely theorists say this is because “Millennials desire safe spaces.”

When carmakers realized Millennials weren’t buying cars, they appointed “youth emmissaries” who came up with new colors like “techno pink” and “denim.”

It isn’t “fear of commitment” that keeps Millennials from buying houses.

The Economist wondered aloud in June, “Why aren’t millennials buying diamonds?” and speculated it was “the taint of conflict and exploitation” that was keeping them away.

But according to Samantha Allen,

“Millennials are not some vast unsolvable mystery… basic economic math can explain much of the younger generation’s behavior… Cars cost money and millennials have less of it and diamonds are freakin’ expensive… So the next time you have a hunch about why millennials are the way they are, ask yourself if economic insecurity might be a better hypothesis.”

In truth, Millennials are easy to attract. Most of them just don’t have the buying power that most businesses assume they have.

3. Growing companies are desperate to find employees.

Wait. Didn’t we just say that one in three millennials is still living at home because they’re poor? Yes. They’re drowning in college debt because we lied to them. We said a degree was the key to getting a good job. So they got an education but they have no marketable skills.

You would be startled by the number of recruitment ads my partners and I are writing each week for client companies that can’t find capable employees.

If you are a Registered Nurse, a Licensed Practical Nurse or an air conditioning technician, you can walk into any city in America today and instantly get a job making an above-average income. I know this to be true because I’ve spent the past several months scouring the nation for them.

4. Store traffic is down but sales are up.

Last week I spoke with an independent rep that’s been selling upscale brands to major retailers for more than 20 years. “Everyone is terrified at the decline in traffic,” he said, “but sales haven’t really declined at all.”

His experience is similar to my own.

E-commerce is real and it has devastated a few categories, to be sure. But for most retailers it’s just an imaginary boogeyman hiding under the bed.

Retail traffic is declining and service business call-counts are falling because people are doing their information gathering and comparison-shopping online.

They’re not buying online nearly so often as they’re researching online. The result is that a single brick-and-mortar store gets visited instead of three or four. The traffic you’re not seeing is the traffic that went to your competitor.

You’ve got to become the company people think of immediately and feel the best about. This is how you increase traffic.

5. Radio and television advertising are working better today than ever before.

Yes, I’m aware that radio listenership has declined from what it was 10 years ago and that people are using DVRs to fast-forward past the ads on TV.

I also know that entertainment is a currency that will buy you the attention of the public.

Entertainment must – by definition – employ elements that are new, surprising and different.

Private music libraries play the same songs over and over and over. This is why we’re spending less and less time listening to our own libraries of downloaded music.

Do you remember when I said that targeting your perfect customer was “one of the two reasons why your advertising is performing poorly?”

The other reason is that your ads are predictable.

The reason they’re predictable is because you’re telling your prospective customers exactly what you think they want to hear.

Big mistake.

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

I’m betting you’re extremely good at something, perhaps at more than just one thing.

Let’s face it: you’re talented – gifted, in fact – a classic overachiever. But the odds are 7 in 10 that you find it difficult to accept and believe these compliments.

I say this because 70 percent of our population suffers from Impostor Syndrome and it is most common among high achievers, especially people with graduate degrees, college professors on track for tenure, and research scientists. ¹

Isaac Newton, the man who changed the way we understand the universe, who discovered the laws of gravity and motion and invented calculus, suffered from Impostor Syndrome, saying, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” ²

Impostor Syndrome is the blind spot that comes with talent.

Harold Kushner describes Impostor Syndrome as “the feeling of many apparently successful people that their success is undeserved… For all the outward trappings of success, they feel hollow inside. They can never rest and enjoy their accomplishments… They need constant reassurance from the people around them to still the voice inside them that keeps saying, ‘If other people knew you the way I know you, they would know what a phony you are.'” ³

Now here’s the good news: Impostor Syndrome is perfectly normal. What you want to avoid is the opposite, the Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusions of superiority, mistakenly assessing their abilities as much higher than they really are. ⁴

Everyone is messed-up and broken a little. (Impostor Syndrome)
But the most messed-up are those who believe they are not. (Dunning-Kruger)

Scientists Dunning and Kruger believe “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.” ⁴

In other words, those of us who have Impostor Syndrome see ourselves from the inside, where we stand naked in the shadow of old wounds, past failures and the knowledge of our limitations. But we see others from the outside, where they stand majestic, beautifully illuminated in the bright glory of their successes.

A close friend once asked me to tell him the secret of confidence. “The key isn’t to think more highly of yourself,” I said, “but to quit thinking so highly of others.”

If Dunning and Kruger’s research can be trusted, it would appear that I was right.

This is what I was hoping to give you today:

1. Encouragement.
   Talented people like yourself often feel they’ve just been lucky. But being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing in the right way isn’t luck, it’s talent. Most people have at least one talent. Be happy that you found yours.
2. Normality.
   Seventy percent of successful people wrestle with Impostor Syndrome. See it for what it is and it will disappear.
3. Self-acceptance.
   Yes, you have deficiencies, but so does everyone else. Relax.
4. Self-awareness.
   I said that Impostor Syndrome is a blind spot among people with talent. Hopefully, now that you’ve seen your blind spot, it won’t be a blind spot anymore.
5. Gratitude.
   Open your eyes to your talent and be glad of it. (And if you ever figure out who gave it to you, be sure to thank them for it!)

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

A question I often get from clients is,

"How long will it take before we start seeing results from a brand-forward strategy?"

While timelines may vary, depending on the size of the city, the volume of competitors, the quality of their messages, and your product’s purchase cycle, there is a general timeline to consider.

‍

Before diving into this timeline, it's important to consider the pre-launch sequence, which typically takes 70–120 days, depending on what needs to be done to launch the brand. Whether you're changing your business name or determining the level of production needed. This process involves:

• Brand Uncovery: 15-30 days, including 1-2 days onsite, depending on travel.
• Market Research: 30–60 days, depending on the scope of work.
• Creative & Media Buy Process: 45–60 days.
• Offline Production: 15 days for radio. 30–60 days for television.
• Online Production (if switching): 60 days.

This means you should plan for roughly 90 to 120 days to develop a completely unique Marketing Strategy before anything hits the airwaves. 

This is by far the most critical time for your brand strategy. It’s essential we take the time to get it right. 

Months 1-3: Initial Launch (Live-to-Air)

• Early Feedback: Your ads go live and start catching the attention of friends and family.
• Brand Association: People begin to recognize and repeat your jingles and slogans.

Months 3-6: Gaining Traction

• Digital Growth: Direct traffic to your website and organic brand search begins to increase. 
• Pay-Per-Click Performance: You'll notice higher click-through rates and lower costs for your ads as long as your digital provider is properly executing an aligned branding campaign.
• Lead Generation: Incoming phone calls and booked leads start to rise. 
• Complaints: By now, some of your audience will be tired of the frequency, or upset that you’ve made them feel. The optimal number of complaints by this stage is not zero. 

Months 6-9: Lift Off

• Virality: Elements of your brand begin to spread organically.
• Sales Impact: The average ticket size increases, and sales cycles become shorter. As demand grows, consider price optimization.

Months 9-12: Solidifying Success

• Team Morale: Employee satisfaction improves, attracting top talent to your company. Keep working at bringing the brand message inside your company to align your message. 
• Growth: As customer load increases, you may need to hire more staff, buy more trucks, and look for larger spaces. 
• Revenue Increase: Healthy growth in revenue compared to the previous year.
• Predictability: Growth becomes predictable and sustainable.

While these benchmarks provide a helpful guide, the timeline for each stage isn't fixed. A smaller budget in a larger city will slow things down. The uncontrollable events affecting consumer confidence will affect results. Capacity or staff and vehicles will affect results. 

A brand fully matures around the 10-year mark, and definitive upward results are going to be most prevalent in the 3-5th year.  

The key is to be consistent and monitor your progress, adapting things to optimize profitable growth along the way. 

‍

Are you ready to embark on your branding journey? Call Wizard Ryan Chute today.

Norman Rockwell was an illustrator of fiction.

He never showed us America as it really was, but America as it could have been, should have been, might have been. His images caused an entire generation to vividly remember experiences we never had.

Rockwell showed my generation a fictional America and we believed in it.

I don’t want to mention client names and I’m sure you’ll understand why, but my most successful ad campaigns have been built on exactly that kind of fiction.

Not lies. Fiction. There’s a difference.

Fiction is romanticized reality, showing us possible futures and the best of the past, leaving out the dreary, the mundane and the forgettable. It is a powerful tool of bonding. Properly used, fictional characters attract new customers and deepen customer loyalties. But predictable characters hold no interest for us. It is conflicted characters – those with vulnerabilities, weaknesses and flaws – that fascinate us immensely.

A recently published study¹ in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships suggests that fictional friends may be as valuable as “real” friends, particularly when life-partners watch television shows together.

“…our studies show that sharing the social connections provided by TV shows and movies can deepen intimacy and closeness. Furthermore, watching TV shows and movies together may provide couples who lack access to a shared social network of real-world friends with an alternate means of establishing this shared social identity.

Previously, sharing a social world with a partner has been conceptualized in terms of sharing real-world social experiences.² However, creating these experiences may not always be possible. Fortunately, humans are remarkably flexible in finding ways to fulfill their social needs.³ When people’s need for social connections are undermined, they turn to a variety of social surrogates that provide alternate pathways to meet this need, including comfort food,⁴ photos of loved ones,⁵ pets,⁶ and media like TV shows and movies.⁷“

Recurrent characters in advertising fit into that last category of “media like TV shows and movies.”

In fact, fictional characters shine so brightly in our minds that we have created a word – metafiction⁸ – for those moments when fictional characters become aware that they are fictional.

If you doubt what I say, all you need do is suggest to Indiana Beagle that he isn’t real. You will quickly and painfully be made aware of how real a fictional character can become.

It is the architecture of our brains that makes fiction so powerful.

Humans are the storytelling animal.

You have about 100,000 times more synapses in your brain than sensory receptors in your body. If brain synapses were strictly equal to sensory receptors – which they are not – this would mean that you and I are 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist than a world that does. So let’s assume that a single sensory receptor is worth 1,000 brain synapses. Congratulations, you’re still 100 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist than a world that does.

This was the purpose of today’s Monday Morning Memo:

1. Find some TV shows to watch with your life-partner. The shared experience will be good for both of you.
2. Play with the idea of creating a fictional spokes-character for your company. (If you don’t know how, consider the online classes at AmericanSmallBusiness.org.)
3. Take quality fiction more seriously. Logical, sequential, deductive reasoning is a function of analytical thought, which has its headquarters in the left hemisphere of your brain. Loosely speaking, the left hemisphere of your brain is there to connect you to the world that is, while the right hemisphere connects you to worlds that could be, should be, might be, ought to be… someday. This is where fiction comes alive.

Want to hear something funny? The right hemisphere of your brain doesn’t know right from wrong or fact from fiction. That’s the left brain’s job.

Our belief in fiction is made possible only by the amazing right hemisphere of our brains.

Regardless of whether you believe in natural selection (evolution) as the origin of the species, or intelligent design (God), the wordless, intuitive right hemisphere of your brain is there for a reason.

Don’t diminish it. Don’t disparage it. Don’t try to overcome it.

It’s there for a reason.

Let it do its work.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and let's create those mind-blowing ads.