Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

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.  

Targeting: The Only Way to Advertise (or Is It?)

Alright, listen up, kid. You know those creepy ads that follow you around like a bad date? Yeah, that's hyper-targeting, but it’s not the golden ticket.
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Are you finding that today,  social media’s practically stalking you—, well Mick is right there, from his divorce to his second wedding. Targeting’s great for niche stuff, like airplane radios, but if you’re selling tires? You gotta cast a wider net, or you’re just locking out future customers.

Newsflash: today’s no good if you don’t have tomorrow’s customers.
So, forget hyper-targeting. Build your brand, and let the future take care of itself.

With millions spent on testing what works (and what doesn’t), Ryan brings the receipts on why some of the best-performing ads aren’t targeted — they’re timeless. Tune in to learn how to balance targeting with broad appeal to grow your brand and reach more customers.

In this episode of Advertising in America, we dive into the debate between mass media and targeted ads. Discover the pros and cons of zeroing in on a specific audience versus casting a wide net. Hear real-life examples and expert insights on how to maximize your advertising budget for long-term success.

Episode Highlights:

• Why being too specific with your ads could be shrinking your market share
• How emotional moments like a divorce or marriage impact targeting (and what that means for your brand)
• When to cast a wide net vs. when to hone in on a niche
• Why short-term ROI thinking could be tanking your long-term growth
• How to think of branding as a compound investment — not a sunk cost

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🧠 Key Insight:

“The best ads aren’t about the business. They’re about the customer’s life.”

Whether you're a startup trying to stretch your budget or an established brand looking to grow your footprint, this episode will shift your perspective on how you spend your advertising dollars.

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Welcome to Advertising in America, the podcast, where we meet entrepreneurs, where they're at in their marketing and bust through their bottlenecks, breakpoints, and blind spots. Hosted by Wizards, Ryan Chute, and the Royal Torbay twins. Where we put the fun in marketing fundamentals. Are you ready to dominate your marketplace?

Are you ready for outrageous advertising? Do you want to become a household name?

Brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Services. Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today.

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Ryan: On today's episode of Advertising America, we're talking shotguns and sniper rifles. Is mass media a farce? Maybe. Should we be zeroing in on that perfect client avatar? Or is there another way to get the right people to do what we hope them to do? Buy all our stuff and suffer amnesia of our competition.

Here's spray and pray Torbay, what do you have to say about targeting? 

Mick: It's important to talk to the right people. Best practices say, first reach the right people. I remember when I changed my relationship status on Facebook after my divorce. The next day, I started getting targeted ads. 38 and single, the headline read. That's startling, who I, yes I am, why do you ask? Did I do a bunch of stuff that newly divorced dudes tend to do? You bet I did. Got a membership at the gym, bought a new car, and upgraded my barber.

I was in a demographic shift and there was stuff to sell me. Social is great at targeting. They know exactly how old I am. They know I'm married, again. They know I have children now. They know what I do for a living. If their algorithms are any good, they can probably figure out how much money I make and what kind of airplane I fly. It's a Cessna 177 Cargo. If they didn't know before, they do now. Probably because they're listening on my phone right now… the bastards. 

Knowing about your target audience is a good thing, but it's easy to get bogged down in targeting. Are you really trying to appeal to a very narrow group? If you're selling radios to pilots, yes you are. If you're selling tires to car owners, no you're not. Targeting a narrow audience is not an opportunity, it's a curse. The airplane radio company has no choice, but you may have other options. Celebrate that. Remember what my colleague Stephen Semple, Direct Response Expert, said. By definition, it's always more expensive to target. Who buys tires? Everyone, eventually. That means, he can advertise on radio and television for pennies on the dollar compared to a targeting campaign. If there's any way your consumer could be considered everyone eventually, you get to choose the lower cost option for less money. Everyone includes more people. More people equals more opportunities to sell. That's how companies grow. 

Ryan: Thank you Captain Torbau, why did you go back to your barber? 

Is your brother Chris the copilot when you're flying together because he refuses to buy a plane or is it something else? Assistant Captain Torbay, what do you have to say about targeting?

Chris: Most people don't need to concern themselves with targeting. Because most people misunderstand what targeting is.

Make no mistake. If you sell 16-channel mixing boards to recording studios, yes, you should target audio engineers. Don't advertise on the Super Bowl, it's a waste of your money. But that kind of narrow target is actually rare. Most brands and most companies have a pretty broad appeal. 

You sell furnaces, you target people who need heat, which is everyone with a house. If you're selling beer or soft drinks, you're targeting everyone who is thirsty. If you sell cars, you're targeting drivers. Where people are misled in targeting is when the digital companies tell you, Hey, you can target only people whose furnace broke down today. Zero wastage. It doesn't work. Sure, that's what pay-per-click does. You pay 200 bucks to be top of the list under “furnace repair near me”, and there you'll be. And the homeowner who had no idea how to choose from a list of the top ten will choose you because you haven't built a brand with the masses. 

Apple doesn't target people who decided to replace their phone today. They make people desire their products so that when they decide to upgrade their phone, they go for an iPhone. And the free-thinking, creative, cool trendsetter target that Apple creates to distinguish themselves from the squares who use PCs and carry Android phones, that's all of us. It turns out their artsy and design-ie niche product, cell phone, is preferred by half the people on the planet. They don't even shy away from being esoteric and everyone still goes for it. 

The masses behave like the masses. And the more you think your customer is unique, the fewer people you have left to talk to. Throw a big net and haul in a boatload full of fish. 

Ryan: Thank you, Captain Chris.

We've spent our entire $20 word budget on the word esoteric. A word meaning, a word that is understood by a small number of people. The irony. After the break, we'll be throwing axes and paying taxes. Stay tuned for the riveting conclusion of Advertising in America.

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Hey, listeners. Wizard Ryan Chute here. Want a personalized strategy that instantly 4X the effectiveness of your marketing dollars? Schedule a free call with me at wizardofads.services. We'll chat about your goals and how you can quickly dominate your marketplace. I have limited availability though, so don't delay.

Well, I guess you could delay a bit, but not too much. That'd be like an over-delay. So maybe you just skip the delay part entirely and book a call just as soon as you're ready to start making money. You certainly don't to delay that, right? And now, pitter-patter.

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Ryan: Fun fact, you know guys, fun fact nobody has caught more fish with a line than a net. See, we are out here teaching people how to fish

Ryan Deiss, founder of DigitalMarketer.com, has spent countless of millions of dollars testing impression-based campaigns against conversion-based campaigns on Meta recently. He's only targeting, the trade area of the company. This has resulted in significant brand impressions and a measurable lift in top-line revenue at a fraction of the cost of pay-per-click. It's pretty impressive. So now what we're talking about is getting social media acting more like a mass media. That's pretty impressive. 

As we start to shift here and we start to figure out what it is that we're going to target or not target, strategies are changing, including on the socials. 

Mick: I think one of the reasons why people have gotten so focused on targeting, especially in the last 5-10 years, is because it's impossible. The truth is, when your only choices were television, radio, billboards, and newspapers, you couldn't target. Everybody did all of those things, and so there was no way to target.

And as soon as somebody said, yeah, “we can find people who are five foot seven and make this much money”, then suddenly it became well, then therefore, you have to do that because you can. And I think we're finding now that there's a tremendous downside to that. Any time you target, any time you make your broadcast narrower, you are by definition talking to fewer people. Why is that good for your brand? 

Chris: It depends. It is also, in days of VR on television, you could target a little bit. If you ran your ad on the Golden Girls, you would get more seniors and you get whatever. If you ran it on MTV, you could get young kids and whatever. So there was a degree of targeting, but it was still large groups, I guess to your point. And then this whole idea of, you can target people whose furnace broke today, or this very specific person, that's where it's getting out of hand, which is why are you getting narrower and narrower assuming that is the only person who's going to buy your product. 

And the number of people who are in your potential scope is actually much broader than you think in a lot of cases. Considering we talk about building a long-term brand, it becomes the household name, which takes a number of years. And within that number of years, maybe your target floats into that thing. So if you've spent that entire time talking to a very narrow group, then when other people float into that narrow group, you haven't been talking to them all the way along.

Ryan: And when I think about targeting in the sense of, I don't want to spend as much money, is what the business owner is thinking, and that's a completely reasonable thing to think about.

As a business owner, I only have X amount of dollars, I need to make them as potent and concentrated as possible on the people that count. But that's when you're talking about table stakes, right? When you're talking about table stakes and you don't stand out in the market, and you don't do anything distinctive, and you don't really matter to anyone, or God forbid, you don't even advertise at all and you're just meeting them for the first time at Casino “Goo-gal”. You're absolutely going to need to target as best you can through keywords, through demographics, through whatever. Just so that you have the ability to spend as little amount of money as possible. But who are you leaving out when you do that? It's monstrous. It truly is. 

Mick: I think, most of the trend towards targeting comes from fear. I think it's fear of the wrong people. Spending my hard-earned money and reaching a person, who is not in a position to purchase my product and service. And that fear of what the advertising industry calls “wastage” is you've reached a person who's not going to buy it. That fear has now caused us to reject huge amounts of demographics because we want to be so specific because this person buys, and this person buys, so I want to make sure that every single dollar I spend is a person who might potentially buy. But what they've forgotten is that the fear of wastage is going to turn this into a ridiculously expensive thing to do if you're only talking to a very narrow group of people.

Chris: And also I think, you've got to remember how fluid targets are, and I've got a couple of examples. If you sell boats, yeah, wouldn't it be great if you could just target that guy in March, when he's finally decided, you know what, this summer I need to have a boat, so let me start looking around for boat stores, I'm going to go out this March. And that seems boy, if you could just target people who have decided this spring is the spring, man, they've been thinking about it, but this spring is the spring. 

The fact is, if you've been marketing to people who are thinking about buying a boat, they've been fishing for years, they've been water skiing for years, they've had a cottage for years, whatever it is, they've been thinking about it for years.

This may be the spring that they actually go and do it, but if you've been advertising to them for years when supposedly they're not the target yet, they now have a brand of preference that's already in their heads. If you try to get them at the last moment while someone else has been advertising to them for years, then you're going to be playing catch up with that. The other interesting thing is, I would like to quote David Foot who wrote Boom Bust & Echo, talking about how demographics change and how targets change. 

What's interesting, I think, about what he said, is the aspects of target audiences that actually stay the same. He pointed out that, hey, when the Boomers, boy, when they all graduated from college, they all went out and bought small little cars. Honda Civics are selling like crazy. It's like, guess what? Everybody just graduated college, just looking for a cheap little runabout that they could do.

And then when they have kids, and they have a house, and whatever, they buy a bigger car, they buy a nicer car, because they get more senior. Those things about those demographics have always been there. And if everyone knows about them, then the 12-year-old who knows about Honda Civics, when he gets to be that age, is going to go and buy that car.

So establishing your brand, again, if you're playing the long game, if you're being the household name, if you're being the brand that people have in mind before the triggering event that makes you want to go and do it, that wastage is not wastage.

Ryan: I think it's really important to put a finer point on this, in so much as we're not saying go and run radio ad campaigns when you don't service the whole city, for example, as a home service company. We're not saying, talk to everyone and disappoint the majority of people that you don't service, that's a bad marketing strategy and well wasted. But we are saying, talk to as many people as you can get to and consistently talk to at a regular pace. That might mean that you're targeting your area, but we're not targeting 35-year-old women in your area who are homeowners and like the color red and have a dog. 

At the end of the day, we have to understand that everyone in our target area, right or wrong person, i.e. a renter, a homeowner, a person who is going to buy her thing now or later, or not, those are all people, as influencers. And we see everyone as an influencer. If you're 18 years or older, we can start working that line for you, that messaging for you so that you start getting embedded in the long game, as you said, Chris, to have them thinking about you well before they ever need your thing. And having that know, like, and trust, impression already imprinted on them for when they actually need your thing. So that's a hugely important thing. 

Defining things and agreeing to a set of terms is probably one of the most challenging things that we have in communication. It's the thing that gets in our way of just agreeing what targeting is, and then how do we target appropriately for strategy, but how do we target appropriately or stop targeting appropriately to reach the masses? 

Now, that being said, the best ads are about a customer and their life. The worst ads are about your business and the table stakes that you bring to the table, that are minimum standards today. One of the things that Roy has always said to us is that you're never going to go bankrupt talking to the wrong people with the right message. So what is it that we have to do, or what do we do that stands us 600 feet above the competition without actually obsessing about the ultra targeting that we're talking about? 

Mick: I think you brought up a really interesting point. I've never thought of it this way until you just said it now. I think it has to do with your mindset as a business owner and your mindset as a marketer of the short-term versus long-term philosophy that you have.

If you're targeting, if you're narrowcasting, you started talking to a smaller group of people by definition, that is a short-term thought. As soon as you go from short-term thinking to long-term thinking, you start adding more people to your demographic target. 

I remember I had a client, this was years ago, a chain of tire retailers. I had written them a jingle, and they had a tagline, get in the car for tire, I decided to walk around the community where this campaign existed. And I got people to say their tagline. I got all sorts of people in town, including a group of high school students, who sang the whole song. And I played this back to the client and said, “Isn't this cool? And here's this group of five teenage girls who just sang your song, isn't that brilliant?”

And the business owner was like, “16-year-old girls don't buy tires. Why are you so proud of yourself that this group of the wrong people is so excited about this?”

And I said, “I'm no expert on teenage girls, but one thing I do know is that they grow up. And eventually, they start driving. And eventually, they buy their own car. And when they buy their own car, they are now responsible for purchasing new tires. These people have a preferred brand at 16, holy crap. Where do you think they're going to be buying their tires in 10 years?”

And he said, “10 years, fuck off.”

Are you in this for the long game, that's my point. That's the long game. If you're thinking of long-game, by definition, more people fall into your trap. And if you're getting bogged down in targeting, I'm saying to you, “Why are you only worried about today?”

Ryan: When we think about the bell curve of standard deviations, there's 7% of the market that's at any given time in any given trade area, looking for a thing today. Of that 7%, there's a substantial percentage, somewhere between 40% and 60% depending on the market, depending on industry, that is already got a decided provider.

They've got a guy, right? Then there's 16% of that population that couldn't finance a hot dog, so there's no way they're getting anything that you have to sell. It doesn't matter how much they like it. Then there's the ultra-invested-in-you and they're going to buy from you regardless.

And then there's the fundamentally, the undecided, which leaves us with what, 1-3% at best of that 7%, that could possibly buy from you. And then, if the very first place you meet them is Google at the roulette table, all you're doing is hoping that they pick you from this one of many things, that ball drops onto your 39, you get the payout. And you had to pay for that payout, by the way. 

At the end of the day, what do we actually have here? This is a literal hope strategy, in its purest sense. But at the end of the day, what are we trying to actually achieve here? 

What are we actually trying to get done with the strategy that we put in place, regardless of if it's targeting; we’re going to have less people, we’re going to have less chances. You're putting your number on less numbers on the roulette table. And you have less of a chance of winning. 

Chris: Broadening your target is the only way you can actually grow that market. There's a thing that you said, I only want to talk to the people who are currently in my "target". Then you're all trying to divide up that small piece of the pie. How do you make that piece of the pie bigger so that you can, A, you're going to have a bigger percentage of it, but then B, it's a bigger piece of pie? You do that by perhaps appealing to more people than you thought were in your target market originally.

I always talk about a story when I was a kid. I used to belong to the Columbia Record and Tape Club, right? Back in the day, you used to join them for a penny, you'd get seven CDs and they'd send them to you, and then you had to buy a few more. At the time being.

Ryan: Will you owe Columbia? 

Chris: Well, they were probably still looking for me. My name was Dave Smith. 

So the interesting thing that would happen is the way it worked is they would send you the monthly selection and if you didn't want it, you had to send it back. And so if you forgot to fill out the card and send it back, then you were stuck with something. That's how I got to know some of my favorite artists today, is that I didn't want the monthly suggestion but I forgot to say no and so I ended up with a stupid thing.

And so I was not in the target market of that band until somebody sent me their record and I played it because I got stuck with it and it turns out I love these guys. The advantage of targeting people who are not currently in your target audience is that's how you get more people in your target audience.

That's how people find out about it. You know what, “I've heard about this such and such product. Apparently, if you do this, meh, I should look into that.” You went from not being in the target to being in the target. And the only way to do that is to appeal to a broader range than just those people. 

Ryan: Are you the city's best-kept secret? Or do people actually know who you are in 99% of the cases that we interface with? You think that people know you, and basically, no one does. 

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Remember that saying only half your marketing is working. You just don't know which half. Let's help you with that. Book it free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today at wizardofads.services. Yes, that's a URL, wizardofads.services. Now let's get back to the show.

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Ryan: Interesting that you say that, though. Fun fact, science has proven, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that an 18-year-old person will be exactly 28 years old in 10 years.  Primed for the buying of grown-up shit.

Mick: But on the topic of targeting the person who's ready to buy today. And that's when business owners get excited. There's a person who's ready to buy today. Don't you want to talk to that person? You bet. 

In a sense, targeting the person who's ready to buy today was the entire strategy of the Yellow Pages. 

The only thing that they were good at was if someone was ready to pick up a phone book. There's a thing called the “phone book”. 

We're going to pick up a phone book and make a call to someone who's ready to buy it today. And they've built an empire on that entire idea. As we've discussed before, that only applied, they would sell that by saying, the idea is, that these are all the consumers who are ready to buy. We're going to put them in the Yellow Pages and they're going to see your ad and if you buy the biggest ad, you're going to have a better chance of doing it.

What they didn't mention is that there are huge, entirely massive amounts of categories where people will not do that and that shit still applies today. If we wanted to go and get a fast-food burger right now, what would we do? Would we go to Google and say “burgers near me?”

We would go to freakin Mickey D's,  like everybody else. And if you go to the Yellow Pages, there was never a big ad for them. And if you go to Google and say “burgers near me,” McDonald's won't show up. Those people are making a lot of burgers today and making a lot of dough doing it. 

The goal is to be like McDonald's, have people already have your business in their head so that they're not Googling “burgers near me,” they're saying, where's the nearest Ryan's Burgers? That's what I want. 

Chris: And that's it, that brings up an interesting topic as well, which is people are different targets at different times. 

I love a craft hamburger, made by a one-of-chef style guy, as much as the next guy. I also like the Big Mac. And I also like the Wendy's burger. And I also like the Whopper. And I'm in a different mood at different times. 

By all means, if you're the handmade chef burger, then, by all means, promote that in your advertising. And then the day I'm feeling like that kind of burger, I will totally think of you first.

But that doesn't mean I'm not also in the other demographic and will respond to their target. So, in terms of making sure that the message is heard by all people, be heard by all people, and you'll get me on the day that I slot into one of those categories.

Ryan: Now, as the cost of whatever it is that you sell raises up, and the longer the purchase cycle gets, the greater the distance of those neurotransmitters are going to  die off like Texas Grass if we're not reminding them that you're still the most relevant choice at that time. As the price tag goes up, the propensity towards transactional becomes much, much higher. Nobody wants to take their buddies out to the backyard to show them the new air conditioning condenser that's there. 

Mick: Lovely, though. 

Ryan: See how quiet that is, boys? That thing is just humming baby, you can't even hear that from inside, my God, that's good.

Chris: Is that a J-2000? The J-2000 is a good model.

Ryan: Now, that might be slightly different from the marriage-saver 6000, the G400 toilet. We can get into that conversation another time. Spectacular toilet, it does save lives and marriages… a whole other conversation, we’ll introduce that with some of our clients. 

That being said, we have this opportunity to recognize that we need to be top of mind during the trigger moment. And the only way that we're going to be able to do that effectively is to repeatedly be in front of them with something that is going to resemble entertainment. Because until such time, they're not going to remember facts and figures about your business. They're not going to care that you've been open for 75 years. The people who opened that business are all dead. No one cares. It doesn't show an establishment of trustworthiness and durability that we think it does. 

What sticks with a person's mind is the bright pink elephant that we're using, the kangaroo that we put in the commercial, the thing that makes them giggle and laugh a little bit so that there's a positive resonance in that chemical memory that mortar to the bricks, so that there is that chemistry that's anchoring them in to build our brain bigger than their brain. 

Chris: Then I think you have to think of wastage in terms of that longevity, which is, if you're Porsche, you are going to, "Waste your marketing for 35 years on a guy.”

When he's 16 and he sees your ad and loves the car. When he's 18 and he puts it up in his dorm room with a poster of the car he's going to own one day, in his 20s, in his 30s. You can call that wastage. It's not. It's an investment. Because when that guy makes Senior Partner and he gets a little bonus and it's like, you know what, “I'm finally going to buy that car and treat myself.”

And then it's going to come in. And that was not wastage for 30 years. That was an investment for 30 years. That was that longevity, which paid off in the end. 

Ryan: And I think that there's an astoundingly important statement buried in there that we need to tease out. 

Chris: I normally bury my best ideas. Somebody else has got to pick them out. 

Ryan: You're absolutely right. We're talking about the word, and the word that you said that rang true from me, was investment. 

Look, branding and Benane Fields talks about this constantly. Branding is a compounding effect. It builds in the brain over time, particularly the chemical brain, when we give it the proper repetition and salience, relevance, right? 

Ultimately, when we build that thing up, that's investment in your brand; that's what's making you the household name. Table stake stuff, goes invisible. Sales offers, goes invisible. Lead gen costs, like the cost-per-clicks, the cost per impressions, the costs that you're into media that disappears from the client's radar in seven-seconds, seven days, or the short-term because they don't need your thing, those are sunk costs. That's where money is lost in marketing.

If we can reduce the total volume of that and get that price down as a whole, the return on advertising spend as a whole is down, in the sunk cost category, and bring it up in the compounding cost, the compounding investment that you're making in your business. 

Think of it like a stock. You put $50,000 into stocks in year-one, you didn't make more than $50,000, you just invested in them. But that 50,000 then earns you 55,000. And that 55,000 earns you 70,000. And that 70,000 earns you 100,000, and it goes on and on, and that's the power of compounding that we're applying to communication. We can't let the communication die off.

If we do, we're going to lose the salience, the long-term, that building that we built up, that McMansion is gonna slowly just start to disappear, crumble down because there's been nothing to prop it up. Now that being said, some of those things linger when the advertising is highly impactful.

Mick: But the impact, and the importance of salience, I think, cannot be overstated. You can target with media. And generally, when we talk about targeting, we're almost always talking about targeting via media. But you can also target with a message. And the best example of that is when your message is a price or an offer.

What you were doing there, certain people will say, what you're doing is, you're appealing to the people who are ready to buy today. The only ones who matter, right? The people who buy today. Okay, that's great. But realize that when you put a price into a message, what you're telling everybody who is not in the market today, which is the vast majority, do not listen to this message because there's nothing of value for you.

And that's why Porsche doesn't put the price of their ads, of their cars, in the magazine ads, because we're trying to get you to like the car, we're not trying to sell you the car today.The dealer will do that. But it's important to remember that if your message is constantly offers, constantly numbers, constantly prices, yes technically, you're talking to the 1/10th of 1% of people who today are ready to buy a car or today ready to buy a furnace.

But what you're doing is if 100,000 people were watching this TV program, as soon as you put that thing in, now you've stopped talking to a hundred thousand people and you're only talking to 30. Holy crap. It costs the same amount of money to talk to 100,000 people today and give them something worth remembering than it does to talk to 30.

Holy shit, what are you doing talking to 30 people when you have an opportunity to talk to 100,000,000 people for the same amount of money? 

Which is why we try to focus on how can we make a message that's relevant to all 100,000, including the 30. So that when everybody else comes to the point where they want to buy the product or service that we offer, we're already there. They're not Googling it. Or they're Googling our brand, not the category. That's how you take the same amount of money and have it work hard for you. This is the essence of what Ryan talks about when he says, ‍

“I can take the amount of money you're spending now, and give you four times the results without increasing it.”

It's this. This is what we're talking about. 

Ryan: This is exactly what we're talking about. And it's reshuffling what we already have. We don't need to spend more budget, we need to spend the budget better and get more results from it. We need to pull more from it. Now, we're blessed to do that in a number of different ways because of the size and scale of our organization.

But beyond that, targeting is this double-edged sword. It's completely understandable that these business owners want to have control of their budget, and I totally feel for business owners who are trying to do their best damn job to be fiduciarily. 

What we're looking at is, we have so much budget to spend, where do we spend it the wisest? Is targeting always going to be the solution? Maybe geographically, but not hyper-specific to the clients.

The better targeting is going to happen in the words that we use to speak to the relational customer that we're looking to attract the good customer as it were, right? And to condition those transactional customers that there's more to think about than just the price. There's also the energy, there's also the time that's invested to make sure that they get the best possible solution, not just the cheapest possible solution.

Mick: And know that if the basis of your marketing right now is offers and prices, know that you are talking to a minuscule amount of people in your market, and you can be beaten by somebody who talks to everybody for the same amount of money. 

Ryan: There's always somebody who's got more money and they're willing to outspend in a lot of these categories that we worked in.

Speak a distinctive value, say something that's going to stand 600 feet above the competition. How do you do that? 

It's not by doing a hundred things better than everyone else. It's about doing one or two, maybe three things significantly better than the average. And things that most competition would look at and go, “Oh, they're bonkers. I’d never do that. That's nuts. I can't believe they're doing that.”

Or they'll try to do it for three months and go, “That didn't work,” because they didn't try it the right way. They didn't have the mix right. 

Targeting based off of the impact of the message with obnoxious repetition is really one of those key things. And it has to bake into all of those digital present spots, all of those phone present spots, all of those spots where the customer goes looking when they actually need your thing. The two have to strike a balance. But the balances are usually disproportionately the opposite way with most of the clients that we come in and adjust for. And that makes a huge difference to the ultimate result and the ultimate profitable growth that goes along with it. 

Look, big brands are in it for the long play, right? That's what I see and hear out of this conversation. Even if they're selling their business in three years, it's better to be playing the long play than the short play. If you want to be a market leader, you really need to do this to become the household name, not just another name that they recognize. 

Until next time, thanks for tuning in.

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Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nuget of marketing magic. Want to hear more? Subscribe. Leave a review. And share this podcast with your friends. 

Do you have questions or topics you want us to cover? Join us on our social at @advertisinginamerica.

Want to spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and audience captivated.

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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.

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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. 

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