Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

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

Facts are solid.
Stories are seductive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric Barker’s additional research included the following nuggets,

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

“Our brains are wired to respond to stories…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it takes more than color to tell a story.

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

Nothing happens to them, so they remain unchanged.

A story…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you ready to learn it?

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

Grab your fedora and pour yourself a stiff one—this episode of Advertising in America is going to rattle your Rolodex. We’re peeling back the velvet curtain on what really separates memorable brands from the forgettable wannabes. The million-dollar question? Are you different… or are you distinctive?

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Episode Highlights: 

• ‍We’re Unique!” — Yawn.
  Mick calls out the copycats. Being “fun” or “caring” isn’t special—it’s expected. Real distinction means finding what only you can say.
• ‍Chris Torbay’s Reality Check
  Most brands mistake table stakes for selling points. Chris shows you how to spot the difference and say something worth remembering.
• ‍Anti-Branding: Minimal Logo, Maximum Impact
  From Muji to BMW, some brands let the product do the talking. It works—but only if your product has real presence.
• ‍Skip the Gimmicks
  Clever’s cute, but strategic sticks. Want to be remembered? Be entertaining and on-brand.

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If your ads blend in, your brand checks out. This episode delivers the goods on how to stop being wallpaper and start being the main event. Ditch the clichés, drop the copycat act, and dial in your distinctive voice.

Tune in now to Advertising in America—where bold brands are born, and bland ones go to die.

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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 in America, we're splitting hairs between difference and distinction. Is your company, culture, community, and customers different? Or are they just confusing? Do you do things differently? Or are you cooking the same Costco steaks that everyone's putting on the table? Are you different-different? Or are you unique, like everyone else? Here's Mick Torbay to split the difference, Mick.

Mick: Every company is different, what works for one won't work for another. If your advertising experience comes from simply watching ads and drawing your own conclusions, it's easy to oversimplify. Got a great idea for a beer commercial? Call Budweiser. If they don't buy it, try Heineken. Beer is beer, right? Those of us in the marketing business know what motivates a Bud is very different from what appeals to a Heineken drinker.

There's real value in big agency thinking and not just for international brands. In any small business, there are aspects that make one different from another, those differences can be the key to a message that resonates. Real matters. Only a fool looks at another company's ad and says, we should do that. That's an amateur move. Small and medium-sized businesses do this all the time, by the way. They see what the leader is doing and they conclude, that must be the best way to do it. How could it be wrong if they're the leader? But you might be confusing cause and effect. They might the leader because of their marketing, but they could be leader because they have the best business idea, and marketing simply points a spotlight on it. There are three good reasons to never do what the leader is doing. Number one, you'll never stand out by doing what somebody else is doing. Number two, they're probably spending more money than you, so they already own that idea. Consumers will never associate that with you. Number three, what they're doing is real, you'll be building your message on a fiction, that's a dangerous plan. If you didn't have a plan to be different in your category, why did you start a business in the first place?

And if you're counting on your ad guy to invent those differences, then you better have a really good ad guy. Because he's the one setting you apart to the consumer, not you. That makes him your boss, instead of the other way around.

Ryan: Mick Torbay, everyone. Many people don't know this, but Mick was the lead singer of a Canadian boy band around about the same time as Robin Sparkles. In Classic Boy Band Fashion, he was 28 at the time and not at all creepy in his stretchy dance pants. Chris Torbay, do you have something different to say?

Chris: I hope your company is different. I hope you have something unique, and interesting, and differentiating that I can build a campaign around. Unfortunately, most companies gleefully justify this with something they think is differentiating but really isn't. Almost every company I've worked for in-home services, for example, has said, what sets us apart is our people really care.

Those other guys are just doing the work, whereas our people, they really want to help. Everyone says it. Every single one. Every car company says their cars are the ones that are fun to drive. How do minivan makers claim they're the ones that are fun to drive? That's not what's different. All beers claim to be refreshing. All law firms, expertise, and great client service. Every single one of them.

That thing that you think is differentiating is actually the most common thing in companies like yours. But the troublesome part of this is when they think, they're cautioning me that I'm going to have to rethink the way I do my job. This product is aimed at chartered accountants, so your typical ads won't work. These are numbers guys with facts, and figures, and spreadsheets, they're nerds about boring tables of data. Yeah. And at the end of the day, they go home and watch the football game with a Bud and a bag of Doritos. Their job is boring and nerdy, but their brains aren't wired to respond better to boring and nerdy messaging. They respond to interesting, compelling, memorable advertising, just like everyone else.

Or people will say, you can't use certain media, especially traditional media because, “My target is a different kind of an audience. These kids today, they don't watch TV, they're Gen Z.” Where does Google advertise the Google Pixel Phone? TV, radio, print, and outdoor, just like all the others. Really? Aren't you Google? Aren't you different? The challenge is always the same. Find something differentiating about the brand, then create a relevant message, aimed at a relevant target, and run it on relevant media.

Ryan: Who wrote this genius? It sounds so out of character for you. When we get back, we'll do something different. I promise, hopefully, better. Stay tuned.

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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: We're back. Hey, fun fact. Anti-branding, or debadging, has become continually more popular where brands just minimize or eliminate their brands from the products in an effort to become more popular. Company Muji from Japan, has chosen to eliminate their logos and brand marks on all of their clothing, allowing the designs to speak for themselves. Even BMW has a badge delete option on all of their custom order options. Branding is taking a different face today and we have to pay attention to that as we start looking at what's going to make you stand out. Cause it's not always going to be that logo or that trademark.

Mick: I'd say, deleting your logo is a dangerous activity.

Chris: Yeah. I mean it's funny, I've worked for a number of different car brands, and there's a lot of brands now that do the “black edition”, right? Where instead of the shiny name badge on the back, that they'll make them black, whatever. What is critical to is that the other branded aspects of that vehicle design are perfectly obvious. So, BMW, I'm sure they will have the double square grill, right? So, they may take the little blue and white airplane propeller off. But you're darn sure, there are going to be other things that people who know, who will still know, will know.

Ryan: There's a certain level of exclusivity to that, there's a certain level of cachet of status that goes along with those things. 

Chris: Exactly, it's like the secret menu at Starbucks. Yes, they want it to be a secret. Yes, they want it to be a very open secret.

Ryan: The world’s worst-best kept secret. Look, we also have to recognize that BMW has been around for a very, very long time and has earned a whole bunch of that brand value and brand presence that we can't do as a general rule of thumb. But it does speak to a little bit of the status of people and how they don't want to be the, not necessarily the shills of a particular brand, or they really want to have that brand be an extension of them, less an addition or an augmentation to them.

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Remember that saying, only half of your marketing is working, you just don't know which half? Let's help you with that. Book a 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: Another fun fact in this research, how brands grow. Byron Sharp, guys, crazy smart. Makes a crucial distinction between difference and distinctive. And I love this aspect of what Byron Sharp talks about. Sharp argues that the old ways of marketing focus on differentiation. Trying to create a product that is fundamentally different or better than competitors. And that can ultimately become misguided in some situations, we have to pay attention to that. Most people don't see a brand as radically different, one to the other. They see 10 home service companies in the town, they feel like they're all plumbers, they're all HVAC guys, they're all kind of basically, the same thing, right? Same thing with insurance companies and all of these different things. To the average person, they're all the same, right? And Sharp argues that the key to brand growth is not to be different, but to rather be distinctive. And distinctiveness stands 600 feet above the competition.

Distinctiveness is the red dress in that sea of gray in the Matrix movie. Distinctive can be a variety of visual and auditory cues, with auditory information holding a 5 times greater impact than a visual. And the two combined together, a 6 times higher impact than nothing at all. So, the key to real distinction is that not only recall your name when the buying trigger is pulled, but they rank you above the others in that moment of need.

Chris: Yeah. No matter what category and what business you're in, ultimately, what you need to do is give people a reason, why you? Why should I choose your brand? Now, whether it is a brand that is truly differentiated, if I'm looking for a Lager, I want a Lager to taste like a Lager, right? I'm looking for something that is very much the same.

But I still need a reason to choose your Lager over another Lager. And so, maybe, that's another distinction. Maybe that's what your brand stands for. Maybe it's the things that it sponsors. Maybe it's the way the bottle is styled. I don't know what it is, you were always looking for a reason why you? And those reasons why this table stakes things that everybody talks about, it can't be refreshing, right? That is by definition not a distinction or a differentiation. But you cannot exist without some reason to pick you versus the ones that I don't pick. You don't want it to be a dice roll or your odds are 1 in 6.

Mick: I'd say, distinction is number two of the three things that every ad must accomplish. Number one, get noticed. Number two, get noticed for something specific. Number three, get noticed for something that matters. And when you consider that, we've discussed this before in previous episodes, most advertising is rubbish. So, simply getting noticed already beats almost everyone.

Getting noticed for something specific is better than that. But when we're putting together an advertising campaign, we're actually trying to take it to that third level of getting noticed for something that matters to the consumer. Something where the consumer would say, you know what, maybe I can go with you.

Chris: I like the aspect of that. You put a little hesitation in there, and that's actually crucial too. We have this conversation all the time about being transactional versus relational, and people probably default to transactional, and you got the lowest price? Cool. Until you raise the issue of, well, who's going to stand behind that guarantee?

Who's got better-trained people to install something or whatever your differentiation is? And sometimes, that's actually a new thought to the consumer. Because they go, actually, I never thought of the guarantee. And being the one who raises the idea that this is actually relevant to you and important to you is even better than that.

Mick: The differentiation has to be real. Real matters. Here's where a perceived differentiation will completely fall apart. If you're a business owner and you think, this is the thing where my company stands apart, the real test to find out if you're right, is would your competitor agree with you?

If your competitor would disagree with you, then probably, that makes you distinctive in your mind, ain't distinctive at all in your category. And you're about to spend a whole lot of money saying things that people would either not believe or would believe of anyone. In your example with home services, my people really care. You really truly believe that in your heart. Okay, if I call up your competitor and say, at Dave's Plumbing, do their people really care? As opposed to your guys who are kind of just phoning it in and punching the clock every day? 

And if he'd say, no, actually, my people really care. Then it wouldn't differentiate. And if you think that there's no real place where that happens, there's a hundred examples of that. Morris-Jenkins, a very famous HVAC company in Charlotte, North Carolina, they're open until midnight. If I said to his competitor that closes at 6, is Morris-Jenkins really different cause they stay open till midnight? And they say, yes, they stay open longer than we do. We close and he doesn't, that's actually true. Okay, you can build a brand on that. So, when you're trying to consider, is this a true differentiator? If your competitor would disagree with me, you probably ain't true.

Ryan: This really makes me think about the difference between beliefs and values. Manley Miller, one of our partners, is an absolutely brilliant mind, a minister in New Orleans, absolutely fascinating story, and a brilliant mind.

One day, he's having dinner with Roy and I, and we're having a conversation about beliefs and values. He says, Ryan, your values are what really matter here. Your beliefs are actually completely worthless. And I said that's an interesting perspective from a minister.

I said, tell me more. He says, I think, we can all agree that justice and mercy are equally profoundly true. Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Niels Bohr, once said, the opposite of a profound truth is very often another profound truth. And what Manley was getting at was, like, Hey, Ryan, you believe that justice and mercy are both equally true? And I said you're absolutely right. I said, it really depends on which side of the table you're sitting on. He goes, fair enough. If I'm the alleged murderer, I want to have mercy. And as the victim's family, I want to have justice. True value is doing what's hard, what's inconvenient for me in the face of an option. Beliefs are conveniently interchangeable, right? So, depending on which side of the table I'm sitting on, it's going to have an impact. Why does that matter? Because, if I'm going to do the hard thing, that hard thing is going to be the thing that my customers, my audience, my people are going to see value. My true values comes, my distinctive value comes from that really, really, really hard thing to do.

The inconvenience of Morris-Jenkins staying open late with 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Just point and we'll take it away. It's highlighting the convenience factor, it's highlighting the thing where we can elevate your status, right?

Chris: And often doing what is necessary within your business to be able to say something absolutely boldly like that. We give the best customer service, we can't quantify that. But if you can do something concrete, stay open until midnight, there's a business sacrifice to that. But what it allows you to do is to say something distinctive. We are the latest operating company.

Ryan: And we really do have to get away from baseless claims, like, 100% satisfaction guarantee, and no lemon guarantees to putting some sort of consequence on it for it to really hold weight with anyone. But then we actually have to do the thing we say that we're going to do, right?

Chris: Don't ask your advertising company to try and make you distinctive unless you're willing to make some sort of sacrifice to actually change your operations or construct your operations to create a distinction.

Ryan: Well, and that's a true distinction, I think, because everyone's willing to be different when convenient, but very few people are willing to be distinctive when it counts.

Mick: Here's a really important point, which is, a business owner wants to make a particular thing be known to them. But then, if you hold your feet to the fire, they actually can't do it. And yet, they still want to talk about it. What they'll up doing is having these qualifiers, right?

There's an insurance company that I see the ads for all the time on Jeopardy, where it's insurance for older people who might have health problems, and they don't give you a medical. So, you can get life insurance with no medical. And what they say is, our rates are among the lowest. Okay, well, if you're not prepared to say, our rates are the lowest, I'm thinking that person who wrote that commercial originally said, and our rates are the lowest. Thus, you should call us instead of anyone else. And somebody on fricking committee said, sometimes, quite often we're not the lowest, and so we can't actually make that claim. Then shut the fuck up about it, because that's not a good thing to talk about. When you say, our rates are among the lowest, you have just told me there's someone with rates lower than you. Why would I go with you when you just told me, you're not the lowest guy? Talk about something else, for goodness sake, except for rates.

Ryan: I think this leads us to the hopefuls out there, where they're trying to say, look, fair play is something that people are looking for. They see us as trustworthy. 

We have a client right now that is deeply invested in doing very custom work around the air conditioning of the home. Hot and cold, by adding extra installation, doing energy audits, doing all of those things. And that's a highly custom-tailored solution, it's very high touch, it's much more complex than swapping out boxes of air conditioning equipment. But they also want to be the market-leader with no budget. There is no way for them to win this game, there is absolutely a way for them to be a profitable, successful company that serves the needs of few, but not many because the average ticket is going to be two to three times higher, and it doesn't make sense for most people in that marketplace.

So, while it's very hopeful that they want to be this astoundingly big company, it's unlikely that they're ever going to be the big company in town. It's much more likely that they're going to be an incredibly profitable, very well run, highly efficient company that's going to make good money, doing a great job on those clients who actually do care. And our job would then be to lift up that one big thing to make them care, but they can't win it on two.

Mick: I think, probably, one of the more important points that you raised though, is that, when you're trying to come up with something that is going to make your business distinctive, make you stand out. If you can come up with something, and it seems easy to do, that ain't it.

By definition, if you say, I could totally do that, no problem, then you've missed the boat. Because either it's not something unique to your business or you could be copied just like that.

Ryan: I don't know that's ever happened to anybody.

Mick: I'm just saying, it needs to be something that's hard. If you don't have to have a meeting about how the hell are we gonna pull this off? Then it's probably not really that distinctive. It might actually be one of the table stakes that Chris was talking about, well you know, at our insurance brokerage what we do is shop the business to find and get the best rates for you. Oh, like every other insurance broker.

Chris: Like what an insurance brokerage does.

Mick: Like, good job. 

Ryan: We're not only dancing with the danger of table stakes. We're also dancing with the danger of answering the question that's never been asked, right? The idea that somebody wants the more expensive option is very, very difficult to be convincing of without a big budget.

Rather than being the brand that they're willing to pay a premium for because you're delivering a level of convenience, you're demonstrating a higher level of empathy, of competence, that have people go, those are my people, I trust what they say, if it costs a little bit more for me to do that, I know that it's going to be done right the first time. Which then still leads right back to convenience, more service-based businesses that become a much bigger deal. When we're talking about Lululemon pants, what's the difference? It makes my ass look fabulous, the distinction of Lululemon, particularly, when they first came out was the type of fabrics that they were using to be able to create that distinction walking down the street.

Chris: It's interesting, though, and I mentioned, two things in my opening, too. There's that aspect of it, the number of times we've been told by a client that we're going to have to rethink the way we approach their project because, somehow, their business is different than other businesses.

And people always think, it's interesting in the advertising business from the agency side, the number of times people say, we've got to find a copywriter who's got experience in the “such-and-such” sector. When I was in the big agencies, they referred to certain creatives. “Oh, he's a beer guy, or he's a car guy.” There's this sort of like, he's got a note, or kid guy. For the children's advertising interesting, cause there's a lot more regulation around it. Beer advertising has regulations around it. So, there's certain ideas you can't do because it's an alcoholic beverage. And so, there's ways you can communicate and ways you can't. But they're pretty simple. But there's this whole sense that we got to have somebody who has experience in that market. The challenge is always the same. What are we talking about? What are the competitors? What is the thing that we do differently that's going to appeal to a consumer? And what are the restrictions that we have to work around? But the game is the same, right? The game is the same, the specifics are different. The challenge is the same. The muscles that it exercises are the same. But generally speaking, the challenge to a creative person find a distinction, find an interesting way of talking about it. It's the same challenge.

Ryan: Where my head goes with what Chris just said  was, how many points of distinction does a company need to really stand out? Is it better to have a hundred different things that we can tell customers that overwhelm them with reassurance that we're the right solution? Or is it better to focus in on, the power of one?

Mick: I think, consumers are much better at remembering one thing. And so, if that thing is, we've got a secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices that nobody else can recreate. You can actually build an empire on that. You're asking too much of the consumer to remember the three things that you're good at.

And that's very difficult, especially, for small and medium-sized business owners, because you cannot have a successful business where you're only good at one thing. That simply doesn't happen. You probably have to be good at four or five before you're doing it so well that you've gone from just being a very, very small operation to one that can afford a major advertising campaign.

The hard part is when you say to the client, I know you're good at five things, we're going to talk about one. Why? Because consumers want to put you into a box, a very narrow box, and we want to help them get you into the right one. Because if we don't help them do it, they will do it themselves and they might not choose the right box.

We don't want them to choose the expensive box. We want them to choose the convenient box. We can fix your water heater today. Okay, that's something that works with, and you've got that, great.

Ryan: And the simple virtue of the fact that convenience costs money, is inconsequential because they're willing to trade their money to recover their time, not just today, but in the future.

Mick: And sometimes, business owners have a thing that really makes them different. They don't know it, and they don't know how big a deal it is. In a sense, that's part of why our Uncovery Process is so time-consuming, because you have to dig in, dig in, dig in.

I remember I was teaching at Wizard Academy, and I met a guy who owned a bunch of apartments. Many, many apartment buildings. He had a maintenance guy, he was a very good organizer.

If a tenant had a problem with their water heater, they could call Jerry, and Jerry would have that water heater fixed within 24 hours. And he’s really really proud of how well that worked. I said, do you ever talk about how he can get things fixed in 24 hours? He does, Oh god, we never talk about that, because every once in a while, Jerry can't get it done in 24 hours, so that’s a pretty terrifying thing to do.

I say, oh well, you were just telling me how smart Jerry was. You’ve got 200-300 units that you run and how often a year does Jerry not get it done in 24-hours?

He says, maybe once. Maybe twice. 

Like 400 units and he can’t do it once or twice a year…

I said, why don’t you tell people that when you're renting from us if we don’t get your problem fixed in 24-hours, we will give you a free month of rent? 

He was like, Oh my God! I’ve never do that.

You just told me,

Chris: You’re going to give out two months worth of rent a year, that’s nothing!

Mick: Two free months!

Chris: To say such a clear and outrageously differentiating thing!

Mick: What an incredibly powerful thing to say to people! Like when you’re a tenant, when you're a renting person, the nightmare is, Oh, the toilet's messed up, and I called my landlord, and he's like, Oh, I'll get to it, I'll get to it. And a week later, it's still not working. You've got the system, for crying out loud, point the spotlight on it. He's like, really? Do you think that would make it work? That's frickin magnificent.

Chris: We all know what landlords are like. You just became the best landlord I've ever heard of. I’m telling my friends about my landlord.

Mick: And no other landlord will mention it, because they don't have Jerry. They don't have the system, and they are not prepared to lose a month's rent over, I couldn't get the water heater fixed in 24 hours. You got a system. This is huge, and he didn't see it. He didn’t think that was something you could advertise. That's the only thing we're going to be advertising.

Ryan: Therein lies the blindspot. One last blindspot that I also noticed, fairly consistently when we were talking about the difference between distinction and difference, is cute and clever, up against strategic entertainment, right? There is a huge difference between cute and clever and strategic entertainment. And sometimes, we do get into the trap, something we saw not long ago, a few years ago, one of our clients' cities that came up first, Your Wife is Hot billboards.

Mick: Oh, that's hilarious.

Chris: Yeah. Your wife is hot, anybody's logo for an air conditioner at the bottom.

Ryan: Bingo.

Chris: The Holy Grail is actually to find a distinctive message, a distinctive something you can position, and then position in a way that has to be linked with you. So, if you remember the idea, you remember the person who said the idea.

Mick: That was the point I was making in my intro, if you have a good idea for beer, it would work for Budweiser, and it would also work for Heineken, it ain't that good?

Ryan: And as you guys always constantly talk about in the value proposition of retention and recall. If we're standing at the water cooler the next day, and we can't remember the name of the company, we thought it was cute and clever, we had a little jibber jabber about it.

Chris: You can’t wait to talk about how funny the joke was, but you can’t remember who it was for.

Ryan: What was the point? And did it do the thing that marketing is supposed to do? And I would argue that probably isn't.

Mick: No. Because number two, get noticed, get remembered, get remembered for something that matters. If the name of the business is not getting remembered, the whole thing failed.

Ryan: From table stakes to raising the stakes, every business is indeed different. But, are you being distinctive? Being cute and clever captures attention, but rarely  keeps the attention, right? Being strange and incongruent with your brand is different, sure enough. But, does it do the job of locking into the chemical memory of the mind?

That's what really matters and in our perspective. I've traveled around the world, 12 countries, 4 continents, I've been all over the place. And what I've come to realize is that cultures and economies without a question do change and affect the behaviors of buyers. But psychology and biology of people do not. We can really truly rely on those universal truths and those standards that we can continue to go back to. But we have to look at it in a way that has durability in the brain. When you can figure out how to speak those universal truths while standing tall, that's when you're actually going to be distinctive.

Until next time, this has been Advertising in America. Same bad times, same bad channel. We'll see you then.

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

Whole categories of advertising where swept away by that tsunami.

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

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

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

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

And now I will tell you a story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already has a house in the woods.”
– Dennis Miller

We think everyone else sees what we see. How could they not?

And we think everyone would believe what we believe if only we could explain it clearly.

But this is almost never true.

Two people stand shoulder-to-shoulder observing a scene.
One person sees pain and injustice and despair.
The other sees opportunity and purpose and adventure.

The first person sees the second as an impractical dreamer.
The second sees the first as a complaining pessimist.

Every person has a schema, a belief system about how the world works. Your schema is the lens through which you see and feel the world around you. It dictates your perceptual reality. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying your schema changes the facts. It just changes how you interpret them.

Twice a week for the past several weeks, Ray Bard has been sending out clusters of about 20 quotes to more than 1,000 quote judges so that we might help him score their impact. Last week, Ray told us something every ad writer knows.

There’s always some surprises about which quotes score the highest. But there’s one thing that doesn’t surprise me anymore. It’s the range of opinions. For example, in the last Collection someone said: ‘Seems like you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for quotes,’ and the very next person commenting said: ‘So many great quotes. All winners for me.’”

If your message has the power to move people, you can be certain that it won’t move everyone in the hoped-for direction. If you’re not prepared to smile your way through negative backlash from well-meaning friends, employees and associates, you’re never going to craft a message that will pierce the clutter of this over-communicated world.

Ninety percent of all the books published each year are non-fiction. But the fiction books – the 10 percent –  comprise 90 percent of all book sales. In the words of Tom Robbins, “People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.”

Fictional characters in movies, novels and TV shows seem real even when we know they are not. We know fiction to be untrue, yet we treat it for a time as if it were true. We are simultaneously naïve, believing what we are told, and savvy, aware of the deception.

Seven weeks ago I told you about a persuasion researcher, Maria Konnikova, whose work is being funded by two universities, Harvard and Columbia. Maria says the more a story transports us into its world, the more likely we are to believe it. The sweep of a story overcomes the facts of logic. When we are entertained by a story, we are likely to agree with the beliefs the story implies.

In short: a story can reshape your schema.

It is no accident that Jesus taught in parables.

Most of us enjoy being pulled into a story. But some people have no taste for fiction or whimsy or wit.

What you’re about to read is real and it happens all the time. My friend Jerry received this voicemail just last week:

I am embarrassed for you because of your turning your business over to such a young person that has such a voice that I have to turn off the commercial. I have to go to my radio and turn it off. It hurts my ears. And the commercials are just childish. They are not professional. No, they are not professional. I would not use your company for anything. I am regretful I have used you forever. I told the world to use you. I’ve gotten you a million customers. I’m embarrassed and ashamed. And I’m sorry I have to make this phone call.”

Would you like to know what triggered such heartfelt concern?

[SFX – crickets, trucks driving past]
ANNCR: Two people wait for the telephone to ring in an Allbritten Heating and Air Conditioning truck.

JERRY: Uhhhh, Andrea?

ANDREA: Yes Dad?

JERRY: I know I’ve been encouraging you to start making bigger, owner-type decisions for Allbritten….

ANDREA: Yep, and I’m rockin’ it, Dad.

JERRY: [doubtful] Yes… well this new company slogan…

ANDREA: Isn’t it great! “Our customers come first!”

JERRY: Well, yes, but it’s a little bit misleading.

ANDREA: What!

JERRY: You’ve got to have happy employees before you can have happy customers.

ANDREA: I know. But it doesn’t make a very good slogan to say, “Allbritten, where customers come second,” or “Allbritten, where customers are number Two.”

JERRY: Keep thinking. You’re a smart girl.

ANDREA: Care to give me some hints?

JERRY: Nope.

ANDREA: Pleeease?

JERRY: Nope.

ANDREA: [SFX – telephone ring and answer]
Thanks for calling Allbritten, where happy employees make happy customers.

JERRY: By golly, I think she’s got it.

DEVIN: Allbritten Heating and Air Conditioning.

ANDREA: Two nine two

JERRY: Forty-nine nineteen

This successful and light-hearted campaign lets you get to know the owners of the company through a series of comic, coming-of-age conversations.  At a recent Home and Garden Show, Jerry and Andrea were the accidental main attraction as word spread throughout the convention center that they were personally in attendance. Countless people came by, quoted their ads and asked if they could have a photo made with them. “Is Andrea really your daughter?” “Yes.” “And she’s really taking over the company?” “Yes.”

The conversations in the ads are fictional but the people are real.

And they had an extremely, very good year.

At Wizard of Ads®, we house the psychological marketing strategies you need to stop the scroll. If you're looking for nostalgic ads that will break through the noise, book a call with Ryan Chute today.  

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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