Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

People trust numbers. They trust them even when those numbers might not tell them the whole story. If something looks better numerically — higher ratings, bigger discounts, or more followers — people assume it’s the better choice, even if that’s not always true.

You can influence choices by showing numbers to make your products and services seem better. Here are three ways:

1. People Pick What Looks Better in Numbers

• Restaurants – A burger joint with a 4.8-star rating attracts more customers than one with 4.5 stars, even if the lower-rated place has better food.
• Colleges – A university ranked #15 in the country seems better than one ranked #20, even if the lower-ranked school has better programs for specific majors.
• Fitness Apps – A workout app with “10,000 downloads” looks more trustworthy than one that says “loved by thousands,” even if both are equally good.

2. People Pick What “Feels” Cheap or Expensive

• Subscription Service – “Only $1.99 per day” sounds cheaper than “$59 per month,” even though they cost the same.
• Car Lease – “$99 per week” feels more affordable than “$5,148 per year,” even though it’s the same price.
• Furniture Sales: “Save $400 today!” sounds like a better deal than “Get 10% off,” even though both discounts are identical.

3. People Use Numbers To Compare Themselves to Others

• Job Hunting – A LinkedIn post that says “500 people applied for this job” might discourage people from applying.
• Social Media – A TikTok with 2 million likes feels more important than one with 100,000 likes, even if the smaller one has better content.
• Gaming – A leaderboard showing “Top 1% of players” makes people more competitive than if it just said “Elite Player.”

You should show numbers highlighting its strengths whenever you want to sell something. If something is causing harm (like social media comparison), removing numbers might help.

Numbers change how we make decisions, and we help people make decisions.

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Let’s get this out of the way upfront:

Short-term advertising absolutely produces better short-term results.

If you’re only measuring results based on how many leads you create today, next week, or even next month, short-term sales activation is the way to go.

But you will reach a point where you can no longer grow based on short-term advertising alone.

The factors that short-term ads require for success work against healthy profit margins and sustainable campaigns.

What factors?

1. An attention-grabbing deal, and
2. Urgency

Now, if you’re selling a must-have service — like, say, heating & cooling or plumbing, etc.

Then the urgency is baked in.

But you still have to offer people a deal.

Because it’s almost impossible to win a last-minute sale based on preference.

If the customer had a preference, they’d have already picked you, rather than googling a generic keyword or receiving a direct mail offering from you.

So the key to long-term growth and healthy profit margins lies in creating that preference BEFORE the sale.

And that requires long-term branding, which is exactly what decades of the best data on the planet show, as you can see in the chart below:

This chart was created based off of over 30 years of data and thousands of case studies.

Now here’s the kicker — if you want to talk to an audience about a product or service that they don’t need yet, you have to gain their attention first.

And if your product or service is not inherently interesting — i.e., if it’s an unsexy or ugly-duckling business — then you’ll probably need to “push” your advertising in front of them.

That basically means using mass media combined with entertaining or interesting ads.

It also requires staying on the air long enough, and with enough frequency, for your branding to gain traction and bring in increased high-quality leads.

Can you bootstrap a business using guerrilla advertising and short-term offers?

Absolutely.

Can you grow that business big and profitable without, at some point, switching to proper branding?

Maybe, but maybe not.

If no one in your market is branding themselves over the air, and if you are branding your company but not yet running a branding campaign, then you can get pretty big.

‘Cause in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man becomes king.

But it’ll be a lot harder and growth will be a lot slower and a lot less ensured than if you were running a proper branding campaign.

So if your company is currently suffering from “feed-the-beast-itus” — if you’re struggling to get enough leads to sustain growth or even stay busy — then the answer is certain:

You need to invest in a proper, long-term branding campaign featuring high-impact messaging.

And here’s the kicker to that — the better your long-term branding works, the more that will lift your short-term sales activation efforts as well.

So the previous chart should actually look a bit more like this:

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The Story That Sells

In 2025, the advertising world is enamored with all the shiny digital bits—AI content, chatbots, and the blockchain of everything. But while the future glows with tech, the truth whispers something ageless: people still buy from stories, not education. 

This isn’t a tale of the "next big thing" but a return to first principles. Enter BetterNest Solutions, a humble residential handyman business whose resurrection wasn’t from the nuts and bolts but from the feelings of storytelling.

The Struggle

BetterNest Solutions started as a small family business in 2010. They cleaned homes, repaired fences, and painted walls, but the story of why they did what do had never been told. 

Competitors with slick apps and clever promotions drowned them out. By 2023, the business was on life support, and Maya Torres, the founder, had to make a choice: fade away quietly or flip the script.

Maya’s moment of clarity came not from technology but from a book on storytelling and a speech about "unique selling propositions." It wasn’t her services that needed reimagining; it was the story she told.

A Eureka Moment

At a 2023 marketing seminar, Maya learned the magic of building her Unique Selling Proposition (USP). She crafted a statement that resonated: "BetterNest: Because Your Home Tells Your Story." Her new brand wasn’t just cleaning homes; it was helping people create sanctuaries that reflected their personal identity. And it worked for Maya because she had always seen it this way. 

The breakthrough wasn’t in an app or sales offer; it was the realization that Maya’s best customers didn’t care about what she did—they cared about why she did it. BetterNest wasn’t just a service; it was a partner in reflecting a person’s internal beauty in the pride of their home.

Traditional Wisdom

While competitors fought for digital ad clicks, Maya couldn’t compete with the cost of clicks. She decided to leverage the less fashionable traditional marketing channels to spread her message:

1. Radio: Maya worked with Ryan Chute and his team at Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services to craft an evocative message for radio. Instead of listing services, the ads told stories of transformation—families hosting holiday dinners in fresh home designs, children playing safely in backyards of form and function. These tales turned listeners into loyal fans.
2. Direct Mail: Maya sent handwritten notes to past customers, inviting them to "rediscover the joy of coming home." She included before-and-after photos of homes they’d serviced, anchoring her message in social proof and transformation inspiration.
3. Community Events: BetterNest sponsored local Home and Garden Shows, where families went looking for inspiration on ways to make their house a home. These events showcased Maya’s expertise while embedding her unique brand into her community’s pride.

What Made It Work: The Brand Story as the Unique Selling Proposition

BetterNest's transformation was fueled by three principles:

1. Emotional Connection

Instead of selling "services," they sold the idea of a beautiful home that showcased the homeowner's identity. Customers didn’t just book a handyman; they bought a feeling—a sense of pride, status, and belonging.

2. Relentless Consistency

Every radio ad, direct mail piece, and event expressed their USP. "Your Home Tells Your Story" wasn’t just a tagline; it was their guiding principle.

3. Unexpected Value

BetterNest offered intentional "extras" like art pieces that helped “finish” the space perfectly. These touches surprised customers and reinforced the brand’s commitment to service.

The Results

Within 19 months, BetterNest grew its revenue by 170%. Their client base expanded not because they spent more but because they connected deeper with a much larger audience from radio. One family hired them for a single repair, and ended up booking a full-scale renovation. Why? Because they believed BetterNest understood their vision to reflect their unique identity.

Brand Lessons

In an age of AI and automation, the timeless truths of advertising’s first principles shine brighter than ever:

• People crave authentic stories: Data may inform decisions, but stories inspire them.
• A great USP is your compass: Your brand guides every decision, ensuring your message remains clear and resonant, making it your most powerful USP.
• Traditional media is alive and well: Radio, print, and events deliver unmatched emotional power when paired with the right narrative and repetition.

Moving Forward

As BetterNest looks ahead, their plans aren’t just about growth—they’re about legacy. The team is creating a podcast to share homeowner stories of transformation, expanding their direct mail campaigns, and exploring partnerships with local artisans.

For Maya, the mission is clear: keep storytelling at the heart of everything they do. After all, homes may be built with bricks and beams, but they live in the memories and emotions of those who dwell within them.

And that’s a story worth telling.

“A river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but its persistence.” – Jim Watkins

Consider the Grand Canyon.

Without the help of Doc Brown, his trusty flux capacitor and a spare DeLorean to do some major time traveling over the course of 70 million years we can’t be exactly certain how one of the Earth’s most astounding natural features came to be. But we have some ideas, and the main culprits are water, wind, ice and more than a little bit of continental drift.

Really think about that: a hole in the Earth that’s 277 miles long, 76 feet wide and 85 feet deep in some spots got there because of what became the Colorado River… plus a whole lot of time.

Standing back and taking in the scale and scope of the Grand Canyon reminds us that consistency of effort over time can accomplish anything, whether you’re talking about a raging river or a calm creek.

Since none of us are here for a crash course in geology, let’s port that example over to the world of business marketing and how the hands of time are the best judge of where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

When it comes to building business and finding customers, there has to be some reliance on return on investment, analytics, and measuring results to ensure you’re not throwing hard-earned revenue down the drain. But a “measure everything!” mentality gradually turns every marketing message into a Pavlov’s dog scenario where nothing matters beyond making the phone and cash register ring within 30 seconds of transmission.

It’s transactional instead of relational.

Messages that are nothing more than calls to action dressed up with bells and whistles act to push customers your way, rather than helping them to choose your business by seeing you as the clear choice when their need arises for what you have to offer. Take away the treat, and Pavlov’s dog stops salivating pretty quickly.

For the foundational basics of building a brand, there is still nothing better than the use of consistent echo-and-intrusion advertising through broadcast to get your message on the minds of potential customers. Those messages keep your business at the forefront (or at least in the mix) of those who are bound to need what you’re selling at some point in their lives. And when they do, it won’t matter if you’ve got a sale or a new grand opening happening because they’ll simply know without thinking twice that you’re the place they can turn to.

That kind of marketing works because of consistency and repetition over time, but is easy to take for granted in favor of something flashy that gives you fast results you can point to. But to trust in the long-term results is to build a customer base that will be with you through just about anything.

When mankind was a long way off from walking the planet there was no one to realize that a gigantic canyon was forming in what would become Arizona merely as the result of a river doing its work. But with the benefit of time we can see how much is possible.

Building brand awareness isn’t magic, but done well, it’ll feel like it. Brand awareness is a blend of strategy, creativity, and consistency. To make your brand unforgettable, you need a campaign that connects with your audience’s emotions, holds their interest, and anchors retention and recall. 

So, what are the key elements that form a truly successful brand awareness campaign? Let’s dive in.

1. A Campaignable Story

At the heart of successful brand awareness lies a campaignable story. Your brand isn’t just about selling a product or service; it’s about offering a durable narrative that resonates with your audience’s conscious and subconscious needs. A great brand story not only demonstrates what your company does and how it makes a difference in the buyers' lives but also why you do what you do.

A powerful story will create a deep connection with your audience, making your brand more desirable. It should reflect how the owner intended to serve their buyers, helping your customers see the values you will die defending for the benefit of the consumer and self-inflicted consequences of the brand. The narrative should be authentic and aligned with your mission to resonate with your audience at the human level.

For example, Call Dad is an HVAC brand that instills the values of a dad caring for their children. Whenever something bad happens, we lean into the trigger of calling dad to come fix it. From goofy dad jokes, to how dad handles the situations of life, we impart the notion of when you’re dealing with something bad, call dad. 

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The takeaway: Craft a story that connects emotionally with your audience. It should be authentic, relatable, and aligned with what your brand stands for.

2. Consistency Across Brand Impressions

Brand awareness relies on recognition, retention, and recall, and this comes from consistent repetition. If your audience encounters your brand in different places—whether on mass media, your website, or in ads—it should feel like they are meeting the same brand everywhere. Your visual style, messaging, tone, and voice should be congruent to avoid confusion and build a memorable connection.

When your brand feels consistent, whether through your design elements or the language you use, people begin to remember and trust your brand more easily. Consistency builds familiarity, and familiarity reinforces trust—an essential element in successful brand awareness.

For example, we have a client that speaks about the “YouTube expert” in every ad. Each one leading to hyping, and general chaos, if it weren’t for the level-headed advice of the business owner. With the campaign well under way, we have now created the YouTube channel of the proverbial “YouTube expert” offering said advice. 

These videos will serve as an additional entertaining layer to the established campaign that we will refer to in social media and email content. This not only deepens the brand narrative, it also adds context to an otherwise vague reference with highly shareable content. 

The takeaway: Consistency is king when building brand awareness. Ensure your messaging and visuals are coherent across all platforms to reinforce your identity and get in front of your audience as frequently as possible each week.

3. Clear Value Proposition

Brand awareness is never about just getting people to recognize your logo—it’s about convincing them your brand matters more than your competitors. A strong brand clearly communicates the distinct advantage of aligning my personal brand alongside your brand. When your brand is a badge of honor, I will proudly patronize your shop. 

A clear value proposition compels your audience to care. It is way more than a catchy slogan; it answers the question why. If you want to be remarkable, you have to do something markable first.  

For example, Home Service company, Maverick, celebrates a maverick in each of their ads. By identifying and then aligning with what a Maverick is, they both identify as a maverick and become a beacon for those who identify as mavericks, too. 

The takeaway: Make sure your value proposition speaks directly to the needs and desires of your target audience. It should clearly answer the question,

“Why should I choose you?”

4. Engagement, Not Just Exposure

Brand awareness doesn’t stop at getting your message in front of people. Engagement is where the magic happens. When people feel connected to your brand, they become your advocates. 

Social media, reviews, and user-generated content (UGC) are all opportunities to engage prospects and previous clients, but the real money is getting an appointment and running the call. Until a prospect sees you in action, all you’re doing is dancing. 

Certainly encourage interaction with your audience through likes, shares, comments, and 5-star reviews. Just don’t forget that the real magic happens when you do something they would give you money for. 

People don’t want to be sold, but they do want to buy when the value you offer is worth more than the cost of their money, effort, and time. The most engaged a customer can be is when you’re in their home making a lasting impression. When you knock their socks off, you’re most likely to earn a brand ambassador.

For example, a plumbing company on the outskirts of Dallas has risen to $5 million in revenue in 2.5 years by not sweating the small repairs. When they go out for a service call, minor repairs requiring very little time and no real parts are done for free. 

During meaningful repairs, they always look to find and do a minor repair for free as well. This has earned them a sound word-of-mouth reputation for under-promising and over-delivering, quickly making them the local brand of choice. 

The takeaway: Don’t just focus on impressions—focus on creating revenue-generating opportunities that turn into remarkable interactions. Engagement builds trust and loyalty, and that's what drives lasting brand awareness.

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Brand awareness is essential for disproportionate new client growth and long-term retention of previous buyers. Therefore, brand awareness is more than just a clever idea—it’s an ongoing process that requires strategy, consistency, and emotional connection. 

To be successful, your campaign should tell a campaignable story, be consistent across all impressions, communicate a clear value proposition, and foster genuine engagement. When you get these elements right, you don’t just raise awareness—you build a lasting relationship with your audience.

Yup, we’re going to delve into some military propaganda and persuasion techniques and how they might be applied to your branding efforts.

Specifically, we’ll look at modern Russian propaganda techniques, as described by the RAND corporation under the title “The Firehose of Falsehood”.

But don’t let the title fool you, there’s some good stuff there, even if you’re committed to “truth in advertising,” as I certainly am.

And keep in mind, these techniques are powerful enough to make federal agencies and media authorities shit their pants, clutch their pearls, and whine at their inability to effectively counter them.

In other words, it’s shockingly effective stuff, well worth examining in detail.

So according to RAND, the “Firehose of Falsehood” model has four distinguishing factors:

1. High-volume and Multichannel
2. Rapid, continuous, and repetitive
3. Lacks a commitment to objective reality
4. Lacks commitment to consistency

Obviously, since we are interested in truthful persuasion, we’ll have to put a spin on those last two factors, but I promise it’ll all make sense if you stick with me.

So let’s take these factors one at a time…

1. High Volume and Multichannel

Think of volume as frequency. If you want your brand persuasion to work, you need your campaigns to have high frequency.

The higher frequency the better.

At a minimum, you’ll want your average audience member to encounter your messaging multiple times per week. Standard Wizard practice is to aim for three or more exposures per week.

And in my experience, you’ll get dramatically accelerated results with four or more per week.

However, since mass media channels make you pay for that frequency, this means you’ll reach fewer people than you would with a lower-frequency media buy.

That’s the trade-off. But it’s totally worth it.

You’ll do much better reaching fewer people frequently enough to actually persuade them than you otherwise would by reaching a larger audience too infrequently to make an impact.

Multichannel means two things:

1. Using more than one mass media IF you can afford it, and
2. Employing your brand elements at every possible customer touchpoint

On mass media, there’s a classic S-Curve of Spend vs. Efficacy that looks like this:

When you’re starting out with your branding efforts, you generally don’t want to jump to using more than one form of mass media until you can afford to get to the point of diminishing returns on your first media.

And you certainly don’t want to invest in multiple media when you can’t afford to get past the threshold of effectiveness on any one of them.

But once you CAN afford to jump to a second mass media, by all means, do so. There is documented evidence that you get a synergistic boost by adding multiple media channels to your mix.

Just understand that multichannel extends beyond broadcast media.

You can take your branding multichannel by ensuring that your website, social media, packaging, truck wraps, and staff are as fully branded as your ads.

The “voice” you use to speak to customers on your website should match the one used in your ads, which should match the voice used by your staff when interacting with customers, etc.

This is why Brandable Chunks and Brand Codes are so vitally important to your campaign — they help with this multichannel aspect of effective modern branding.

2. Rapid, Continuous, and Repetitive

Let’s start with Continuous and Repetitive.

Your branding campaign should run 52 weeks per year, for multiple years, so you can be on the air and in the minds of customers continuously.

And your central message should be repetitively delivered by every ad, often multiple times within each ad.

In other words, your Brand Codes should be applied with what feels like ridiculous repetition and density.

How often should Volvo remind buyers that they build safe cars?

As often as they can. In every ad. Probably multiple times within an ad.

How many Brand Codes should Coca-Cola pack into their ads? As many as will fit

And they do! Check it out:

This billboard has:

1. Coca-Cola red
2. The distinctive, flowing Coca-Cola script
3. The distinctive Coke “dynamic ribbon device”
4. The distinctive Coca-Cola bottle
5. The “real thing” brandable chunk

So that covers continuous and repetitive. What about rapid?

Rapid means that your ads change — while keeping the core messaging consistent — more rapidly than your audience can tire of them.

The higher your ad frequency, the more often you’ll want to rotate ads.

3. Lacks a Commitment to Objective Reality

Obviously, you’d want your advertising to be based on the truth, and aimed at communicating the truth.

But in order to be persuasive, you’ll need to be as committed to subjective truth as objective truth.

So techniques like hyper-realism, absurdist drama, humor, caricatures, and schtick should be embraced.

Don’t be so committed to objective reality that you forget to make your ads emotional and memorable.

For instance, Eggo Waffles are actually delicious. But I rather doubt any family has ended up in a tug o’ war over an Eggo Waffle popping up out of the toaster.

Or that beer drinkers ever actually argued whether Miller Lite tasted great or was less filling.

Both techniques represented absurdist drama aimed at communicating subjective reality, even if that meant moving past objective reality to do it.

4. Lacks a Commitment to Consistency

This could seem confusing.

How in the wide world of sports can a campaign be repetitive and consistent while lacking a “commitment to consistency”.

In propaganda terms, this means being able to float multiple disinformation rumors that might well flatly contradict each other. The idea is that as long as all the stories work to discredit the truth, the contradictions won’t hurt.

But in advertising, you’re not looking to discredit the truth. You’re looking to create associations that improve the desirability of your brand.

So contradiction will only hurt. In this sense, you absolutely must have a commitment to consistency in your core messaging and your use of brand codes.

What can be thought of as “inconsistent,” however, is where you put your focus in any given ad.

For instance, when detailing the quality of your product, you could list out all the factors that go into your premium widget.

Or you could make a series of ads, where each ad focuses on only one factor, allowing you to dramatize and bring to life that single factor.

Coors Beer did this when they launched their first national campaign and it worked wonders.

The thing about Brandable Chunks is that you don’t have to have every chunk in every ad, nor do they have to show up at the same spot within the ad.

The fact that you can mix and match allows for variation with repetition. It’s consistently inconsistent. Or inconsistently consistent.

The other “inconsistency” that you should consider is Code Play.

Once you’ve established your Brand Codes in the minds of the audience, you can then play with them, as Absolut Vodka did with their legendary print campaign.

Or like Snickers did recently with their packaging.

So certainly have consistency, but also be willing to leverage the right kind of inconsistency to your advantage.

The Firehose As a Cheat Code to Fame

So that’s how you can pack (Russian) Military-Grade Persuasion Power into your branding campaign.

And the best way to think about these techniques is as cheat codes to achieve fame for your brand.

Making your campaign:

1. High-volume and Multichannel
2. Rapid, continuous, and repetitive
3. Subjectively resonant
4. Delightfully and Playfully Inconsistently Consistent

Will allow you to grab more fame for your brand than your budget would otherwise allow.

That’s why I think of this more as a Firehose of Effectiveness than falsehood.

But what do YOU think?‍

P.S. It’s interesting that many of these Propaganda techniques match strategies for manipulating crowd psychology first proposed 135 years ago.

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