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Marketing
Does OTT have the necessary frequency and reach to be effective?
Does it make more sense to target homeowners who need your service or to talk to the masses, letting the chip fall where they may?
Every few months, I remind my partners of something that took me way too long to learn.
I say, “When a person believes in what they’re doing – even if it’s an imperfect plan – let them keep doing it. Give them advice and try to open their eyes, but don’t fight them too hard, because, ‘A person convinced against their will, remains unconvinced, still.’ So be careful. If you finally convince a person to quit doing what they believe in, and to start doing what you would do if you owned their company, they’re probably going to fail.”
People who have spent time with me may find this difficult to believe, but I’m a lot less combative than I used to be.
Here is the non-combative technique I use.
- Listen attentively to the person with whom you disagree.
- Let them speak until they’re finished.
- Find a point of agreement, something you can honestly endorse.
- Tell them why you agree with them. And if they have altered your opinion in any way, confess that to them, as well.
- Use the point you agree upon to introduce another point which you feel might expand and enrich their perspective.
- Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about introducing “alternative facts.”
- I’m talking about introducing your idea as a logical extension of the idea about which you have already agreed.
- This will cause the other person to feel like they already knew the thing that seemingly just occurred to you.
- In essence, you’ll be giving them an entirely new perspective while reinforcing what they already believe.
- Bottom line: Try to avoid telling people they are wrong. You’ll make more progress and achieve more change if you can figure out a way to tell them they are right.
Here’s a recent example:
An air conditioning client was convinced that we should target the perfect customer profile by using “addressable TV” ads. This would allow us to target specific households individually – rather than as a demographic, geographic, or psychographic group – by using data provided by broadcaster set-top boxes (STBs) and over-the-top (OTT) streaming devices like Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Roku, or Amazon Firestick.
The CEO of the air conditioning company said, “Why should we pay to reach people who live in apartments, or who rent their houses from landlords, or who have a home warranty contract with a company other than ours? Wouldn’t it make more sense to target ONLY those homeowners living in houses old enough to need a new air conditioner, and who don’t have a home warranty?”
“I love that idea!” I said, “And we’ve already got some great TV ads we could air!” I gave him a high five, then asked, “How much did they say it will cost us?”
“They said it will be extremely efficient since we’ll be aiming a rifle with a scope instead of using a shotgun like we’re doing now.”
“I don’t doubt that a bit,” I said, “but we do need to find out how much they’re going to charge us per 1,000 households they deliver (CPM.) We’re currently paying a cost-per-thousand (CPM) of $3 on broadcast radio. Now I’m DEFINITELY willing to pay more than $3 per thousand to reach the PERFECT customer rather than the unfiltered, mixed-bag, untargeted customers we’re currently reaching, but how many untargeted customers is one PERFECTLY TARGETED customer worth? Is it 4-to-one? 7-to-one? Are we willing to trade 10 untargeted customers for 1 targeted customer? How many are we willing to trade? I think at some point there’s going to be at least one perfect customer in our current, unfiltered assortment of broadcast TV viewers and broadcast radio listeners, don’t you think? And then we get all those other people for free. But I still think this “addressable TV” thing is a great idea. So call and tell them exactly who you want to target and ask for the cost-per-thousand.”
After he checked into it, he learned that the cheapest we might possibly pay was 12x to 16x our current cost-per-thousand, but with the layers of targeting he wanted to add, we would be trading at least 26 broadcast radio listeners for every 1 “perfectly targeted” homeowner.
After thinking it over, he decided we were already reaching more than 1 “perfectly targeted” homeowner in every group of 26 unfiltered, mixed bag, untargeted radio listeners.
My point is this: I didn’t have to argue. I didn’t have to debate. And my client, the CEO of that business, was treated like a CEO.
I’m just the consultant who agreed with him.
Corporate Culture
How To Overcome Your Recruitment Challenge in 2022
The limiting factors that will challenge business owners in 2022 are inflation, COVID-19, and the recruitment of good employees.
The limiting factors that will challenge business owners in 2022 are inflation, Covid, and the recruitment of good employees.
The bad news is that I can give you the solution to only 1 of these 3 problems.
The good news is that it’s the big one: the recruitment of good employees.
Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel prize for proving it’s not hard to sell a dog on the taste of meat.
Successful jewelers know it’s not hard to sell a man on the woman he loves.
Recruitment problems disappear when you know how easy it is to sell a parent on their child.
A couple of years ago, Dewey Jenkins and I had a series of conversations about opening a free, private day-care center as a benefit for the employees of Morris-Jenkins Air Conditioning and Plumbing. The thing that kept us from doing it was that the majority of his employees – the technicians – drove their trucks home every night and went straight to their first repair each morning. Consequently, they would have no opportunity to drop off their child.
But still, it was a great idea.
Do your employees report to a specific location each day? Have you noticed that space for lease just down the street from you?
- Lease that space.
- Get a daycare license.
- Hire 2 or more people to run it.
- Open your recruitment ads with the words “Free, Private Daycare.”(And now you know why I was explaining the importance of “framing.” – Indy Beagle)
- Prepare to be amazed at the quality and volume of job applicants.
- Your employee problem has now been permanently solved.
- You’re welcome.
What? What did you just say?
“I can’t afford it.”
Raise your prices. Inflation is happening whether you participate or not.
“It’s easier to pay a big signing bonus.”
Signing bonuses attract job-hoppers.
“It sounds like a lot of trouble.”
Paying big money for bad employees is another kind of trouble. Is that the kind you prefer?
“I’ll just wait it out. Things will go back to normal pretty soon.”
Here’s a fun fact I’ll bet you didn’t know: to maintain our population and our workforce, American women need to birth an average of 2.1 children each. The parents of today’s workforce produced only 1.8 births per woman and the birth rate today is at 1.64 and declining.
We are at least 10 percent short of having an adequate workforce because that 10 percent was never born. So if you’re waiting for the workforce to get larger, you’re going to need to convince women across America to have more kids and then wait 20 years for those kids to grow up.
Child-care is a huge, for-profit business that is crippling the buying power of single-parent (and two-parent) households across America. It is within your power to solve that problem for a small group of people, and in so doing, solve your own problem as well.
Give it some thought.
And may you have a Prosperous and Happy New Year.
Advertising
Putting Funny Ads To Work For Your Boring-Ass Business – Pattern Interrupt
Commonly used phrases, that are normally boring conversation fillers, present an opportunity to get attention.
Hello boys and girls.
Today’s article is brought to you by the letter C.
Can you guess what the C-word is?
That’s right! The C-word of the day is COLLOCATIONS!
Can you tell Elmo what collocations are?
That's right! Collocations are the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance!
Wow! You're so smart! Elmo is impressed!
Okay enough of THAT.
Simply put, collocations are groups of words that are commonly used together. Kind of like clichés or idioms. (The internet likes to say collocations are different from clichés and idioms, but diving down that rabbit hole gets confusing FAST, so we're going to keep it simple and consider them the same thing.)
Collocation examples are phrases like:
- Happily married
- Have a drink
- Make a difference
- Take a seat
- The grass is always greener on the other side
- Piece of cake
- Happy birthday
- Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed
- A case of the Mondays
- Break a leg
- Time flies when you're having fun
... You get the idea.
Commonly used phrases, that are normally boring conversation fillers, present an opportunity to get attention. You just had to add a twist to the end.
Why don't I just show you what I mean.
Elmo loves nursery rhymes. So Elmo's first example comes from standup Andrew Dice Clay. He takes nursery rhymes and adds a twist to make them new and surprising.
This technique was fire for Dice. Notice how the audience goes wild for them, and even MEMORIZED them. (And if you’ve never seen Dice before, aren’t you in for a treat.)
An attention-grabbing technique is to take a common phrase, colloquialism, idiom, collocation, etc and change the ending to something unanticipated. This raises awareness, because it sets up an expectation, then shatters the pattern.
Your brain is an expert at pattern recognition. When your meat-computer senses a pattern it's familiar with, it can safely ignore that pattern.
If you were to shatter that pattern, your brain snaps into focus. It better pay attention, because thousands of years ago when we were living in caves and dragging our knuckles on the ground, new things were potentially dangerous.
Caveat: Clichés are only attention-worthy if they are NOT used traditionally.
The only appropriate time to use a cliché is if you are either making fun of it, or putting your own twist on it.
Clichés are overused by definition. Our brains have seen them all before, so we are conditioned to ignore them. They are benign. We know that pattern.
But if you shatter that pattern, then you are more worthy of attention.
A killer way to shatter patterns is with one-liner jokes. This technique is highly effective at catching and holding people’s attention. And they are DIFFICULT to get right. One-liners follow a simple formula:**#1. Setup#2. Punchline (The twist)**Looks easy on paper. But it’s not. It’s HARD. There’s a whole lot happening between #1 and #2.
The Setup:
One-liners are so effective at misleading us because the setup and the twist happen incredibly fast like a one-two punch. The setup is designed to lure us into a false sense of security; we think we know where they’re going. One liners can start with an observation, statistic, fact, universal truth, piece of advice, opinion, or a short story. Let’s look at a few examples. The setups are in bold, the twists are in italics. Universal truth one liner:
Life is like a box of chocolates. It doesn’t last long if you’re fat. - Joe Lycett
Exercise:
Some good examples of universal truths are proverbs. Try Googling the most famous proverbs and come up with your own twist or angle. How could you give the proverb a second, unintentional meaning? “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” How else can you interpret this? What other ways would an apple keep a doctor away? Do you throw it at them? Shove it in their car tailpipe? Is an apple a day the only healthcare plan you can afford? Here’s a list of 50 proverbs to get you started. Pick a couple and try giving them alternate interpretations. Statistic one liner:
Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe. - Jackie Mason
**Exercise:**This blueprint is easy to practice. Replace the stat with another stat, and add a twist to it.[# or %] of [statistic.] The rest [insert twist.] - You
Other exercise:
Skim some headlines in the news. Ask yourself, what is this headline leading me to assume? Then list alternative interpretations of that headline. Watch late night monologues; their jokes use this structure. Opinion one liner: I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, ‘denigrate’ means ‘put down.’ - Bob Newhart I wish people would stop making fun of fat people. They have enough on their plates. - Eddie Murphy
Exercise:
Notice how Bob and Eddie put a twist on the end of their opinions, which turns out to be the opposite of what we thought they meant. We thought Bob wasn’t going to “denigrate” country music lovers. We thought Eddie wasn’t going to make fun of fat people. Their twists prove just the opposite. What opinions can you think of that everyone generally agrees on, and how can you add a twist that either negates that opinion or highlights it from a weird angle that people wouldn’t expect? Piece of advice one liner: Ladies: Don’t come off desperate and reply quickly to your crushes texts. Wait a while. Meet someone else. Get married. Start a family. Keep him guessing. - Violet K. Benson
Exercise:
What pieces of advice have you heard, and how can you turn them around? A lot of common life advice can also be found in proverbs. But there’s also tons of common advice out there about life, personal development, dating, fitness, finance, work, parenting, etc. How could you “misinterpret” that advice to give it a different context? Short story one liner: I was on a date with this really hot model. Well, it wasn’t really a date-date. We just ate dinner and saw a movie. Then the plane landed. - Dave Attell
Exercise:
First we thought Dave was telling us a story about going to dinner and a movie with a model. The twist, in four simple words, completely changes the entire context for us. He’s just another chud on a plane. What experiences can you think of that most people would love to encounter? Like winning the lottery, staying at an all-inclusive resort, flying first class, going on a date with a model, getting VIP access, etc. Feed ‘em a dream, then bring them back down to earth. Jack Handey had a good example: “One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke.
The Punchline:
The twist completes the story for us, but not in the way we were expecting. It crushes the assumption created by the setup.Dave Barry has a ton of great one liners. It helps to read one liners to get familiar with the rhythm of how they’re supposed to feel. Another way of getting the hang of one-liners is watching them. These standup comics are considered one-liner royalty:(Remember as you’re watching these, you’re not wasting time, you’re STUDYING. You’re not goofing off, you’re working. So get to work watching these.)
- Stewart Francis
- Stephen Wright
- Gary Delaney
- Wendy Liebman
- Emo Phillips
- Mitch Hedberg
- And of course, Rodney Dangerfield, Anthony Jeselnik, Jimmy Carr, and others.
Exercise #1: Watch each video all the way through, then go back and watch it again. But the second time, pause after each joke and analyze where the expectation was set up, and how it was shattered. Using the same premise, try adding your own twist. Isolate the verbs, nouns, and adjectives, then substitute them with alternatives. This helps preserve the joke structure, while practicing at making it your own. Shatter the pattern in a new and different way.
Exercise #2: Which jokes made you laugh the hardest? (If any? Maybe you didn’t laugh. If you didn’t find any of that funny, I left an apology for you at the bottom.) What was it about them that hit you so hard? Was it the grammar, tone, pronunciation, word choice? Was it something physical, in their facial expressions or movement? Make note.
How Brands Use One Liners:
“But Asia, we is not comedians! We is businesses!” Oh stop it. You don’t have to be a comedian, but you definitely should be paying attention to comedians. They’re a masterclass in how to distill information into highly memorable stories. If you’re still wondering how to incorporate one liners into your marketing, here’s a few examples of brands that have nailed it: Durex:
I know, using Durex as an example is like cheating. It’s almost impossible NOT to make jokes about a condom brand. So here’s some other, more traditionally “boring” brands that made themselves exciting using witty wordplay and one liners: The country of freaking Finland:
Scrabble:
Electrolux:
Even Porsche got jokes:
This Highlighter Company:
If a little autoparts shop can do it, so can you:
Daihatsu:
Your local gym:
Air Asia knows what’s up:
The Economist’s White Out of Red campaign:
The Economist’s white out of red campaign increased subscriptions by 95%, skyrocketed revenues, and won them numerous awards over the 14 years they ran it. Their circulation rose from 86,000 in 1988 to 141,000 in 2001, at a time when newspapers and magazines had declined by 20% over the past 15 years. All with witty wordplay and one liners. If companies that sell freaking HIGHLIGHTERS can make their ads entertaining, you can too. You just have to put some muscle into it....or you could let us do the heavy lifting. It’s what we were born to do.
Marketing
Your First Year In Mass Media Branding: 12 Milestones and a Timeline
A roadmap of what to expect in your first 12 months of running a fully aligned marketing strategy from the Wizard of Ads™.
I only have two types of clients that hire me:
- Clients that haven’t done any mass media advertising prior to working with me, and
- Clients that have paid to run low-impact ads on TV or Radio
And believe it or not, both types of clients are anxious about what to expect when they begin a branding campaign based on sound strategy and outstanding execution. So I thought it might be worthwhile to give readers a roadmap on what to expect, seeing as many of you might fall into those same two categories of prospective clients. Just keep in mind that while the milestones are reliable markers, their exact order and time-frames are variable.
The First 5-6 Months & The First 4 Milestones
If your ad campaign is conceived to get real traction, you’ll see these first four milestones within the first three to five months:
Milestone #1: Friends and Acquaintances Mention Hearing or Seeing Your Ads
If your ads are actually capable of cutting through the clutter and being noticed, your family, friends, and acquaintances will not only hear them, they’ll feel compelled to mention them to you. If that doesn’t happen in the first few weeks of launch, your ads aren’t what they need to be to drive serious results.
Milestone #2: Brandable Chunks or Earworms Get Repeated Back to You
A good campaign will have Distinctive Brand Assets baked into it, typically in the form of Brandable Chunks, ear-wormy jingles or audio signatures, slogans, etc. And if those are effective, you’ll have them repeated back to you by the audience. Could be little kids singing your jingle or customers repeating a catch-phrase or a friend teasing you about an ear-wormy brandable chunk. I know one colleague whose client had a brand “stinger” get repeated back to them by a bank teller, of all people. And this goes double if you voice or appear in the ads. As audience members begin to bond with you, they’ll feel compelled to repeat the stickiest elements of your ads back to you when and if they see you in person. If you don’t have this happen sometime in the first 6 months, your ads are missing out on developing proper “Distinctive Brand Assets” and are likely not cutting through the clutter and grabbing attention the way they should.
Milestone #3: Website Traffic Increases Along w/ Traffic from Branded Terms
As your mass media brand campaign progresses, more traffic should be searching on your brand name or branded term rather than generic keywords. In other words, not only will web traffic be up, but more people will come to your site by typing your url in directly, or by searching on your brand name. For example, people will search “Joe Schmo Plumbing” and not “Plumbing Repair”Not only does this leave your PPC-dependent competition totally out of the game, but it improves your SEO ranking with Google. But ultimately, this milestone means the branding is starting to “set” in the minds of your audience, as more customers think of you first and feel the best about you when they need what you sell, causing them to search for you by name.
Milestone #4: PPC gets a boost with increased CTR and decreased CPC
Although you ideally want people searching on your brand name or a branded term, there is also a half-step before that. The half-step is when they search on a generic keyword but positively recognize and respond to your brand in the search results. And this half-step leads to increased Click-Through-Rates for your ads. In turn, your better-performing ads get a boost in bidding, and that leads to decrease Cost-Per-Click over time. Of course, if you don’t know to expect this, it’s a fair bet your PPC manager will take credit for this boost in performance. But don’t let ‘em fool you: that boost came from your mass media advertising!
Months 7-9 and Milestones 5-8
Milestone #5: Phone Calls and Booked Leads Increase
This is the exciting part because it’s what many clients most want from their advertising: more phone calls and more leads. Of course, more calls is one thing, but more leads is another, and if your phone staff aren’t up to snuff or adequately staffed, one won’t lead to the other. But assuming you’ve got competent phone staff and excess capacity, you’ll start seeing an increase in calls and leads when comparing this month to the same month last year.
Milestone #6: Some Brandable Chunks Take on a Life of Their Own
You can’t predict exactly what will end up going “viral” within your local community. But you can have a pretty good idea of what words or catchphrases might catch on. What at least has the potential to take off. So a good ad strategist and creative will bake a handful or more of those things into your ads, with the expectation that one of them will take off. In every truly successful campaign, I’ve launched this has always happened. Something in the campaign took on a life of its own.
Milestone #7: Sales Cycle Shortens / Average Ticket Price Increases
At this point, your share of mind and your reputation are really starting to take hold. Meaning that your people have added credibility from the get-go, simply by wearing your uniform and being associated with your brand. And that manifests itself in two ways:
- Your people have an easier time selling, as prospects arrive pre-convinced, and
- More customers select the “better” and “best” options, because of their increased trust and confidence in your brand, and therefore your people’s advice.
Milestone #8: Price Increases Become an Option
When you become known as a premium product or service, you attract customers willing to pay a premium price for your increased level of expertise, service, quality, etc. In other words, you’re attracting Relational rather than Transactional customers. That means you’ll enjoy increased price elasticity and can (and probably should) increase your prices to reflect your newly acquired “premium” status in the minds of customers. Now, if you began advertising as the highest-priced option in the market, this won’t apply to you. But if you’ve always been the best-kept secret of your industry, and therefore underpriced compared to your quality, then this definitely applies to you (and probably more than you’re comfortable admitting)
Months 8-12 and Milestones 9-12
Milestone #9: Employee Morale Improves & Bad-fits Self-select Out
Branding is as much a leadership tool as a marketing effort. At least when done well. So one “side effect” of good branding is an increase in morale from your people.
- When the story you live internally matches the story you project outside your company, morale improves.
- When people are given increased respect by customers based on their affiliation with the brand, morale improves
- When your people find it easier to recommend options and sell needed services, morale improves.
Even better, the stronger your company culture, the more you will both attract the right people and repel the wrong people. And the strongest expression of that is when new hires who are a bad fit culturally self-select out before you even have to take action to fire them. Low performers always prefer to hang out in a company that tolerates mediocrity and will readily flee the company that insists on high performance and high standards. If that happens in your company, you know you’re on the right track.
Milestone #10: You Need to Hire More People & Run Recruiting Ads
In all honesty, this one might come in the first 6 months, rather than at the tail end of the year. It all depends on where you started from in terms of staffing and how good your recruiting options were outside of mass media. But sooner or later, you’ll want to turn to mass media to help you recruit great people [link https://wizardofads.org/recruiting-good-people-overcoming-limits-to-growth/] to meet increased demand. In fact, you’ll likely find yourself running recruiting ads often enough that getting them to do double duty as branding ads [Link https://wizardofads.org/the-extreme-branding-of-recruiting-ads/] will be crucial. And if that doesn’t happen to you somewhere within the first year, something might well be wrong with your ad campaign.
Milestone #11: Revenue increases
I wrote earlier that “more calls and more leads” was what most every client most wanted from an ad campaign. And that’s true, but more in a “means to an end” way. What they really want is increased revenue, truth be told. And somewhere either before or during the last quarter of their first year of mass media advertising, they should see that increase. Seasonal businesses might need to wait until the next season starts, but even then, they should see increased revenue when compared month-over-year. And while this can be one of the last numbers to move, it also should move decisively by the time an ad campaign has been on the air for close to a year.
Milestone #12: Growth Feels Predictable and Inevitable
The final test of a great ad campaign is that it makes growth and lead flow predictable. You’re no longer suffering from Feed-the-Beast-itus and no longer feel captive to expensive digital lead sources. In fact, you’ve probably turned several of them off. Suddenly your aspirations for your business start to feel not only attainable, but inevitable — if you just keep up your ad campaign and continue to service your customers. And this is in stark contrast to how most businesses operate prior to launching an effective branding campaign, where growth is sporadic and market domination can feel like a pipe-dream rather than a goal.
12 Months Will Pass Anyway…
The block that keeps many businesses from experiencing all these great milestones is the daunting idea that they’ll have to wait a year before really experiencing the benefits. And while the main benefit of increased revenue can take that long, you should now see that many milestones bring with them valuable benefits much earlier than that. But the truth is this: the 12 months will pass anyway, regardless of whether you get started now. The only difference will be whether you’ve gained benefit and growth from those 12 months, or whether you’ll still be pondering whether you should get started or not. So… Would you like to get started now, rather than later?
Advertising
Putting Funny Ads To Work For Your Boring-Ass Business – Ordinary to Extraordinary
None of those products were inherently interesting, yet their ads have been enjoyed hundreds of millions of times.
Once upon a time, people thought there was nothing funny or exciting about insurance.
Then Geico came along.
They changed the insurance game with simple commercials using humor and wit.
My favorite Geico spot is their Make Good Choices horror ad: https://youtu.be/uQ-hlcux66s
Notice how they don’t need to insert their name or what they do at the beginning of the commercial.
They don't feed you lines about why they're the best insurance choice.
Facts? NOPE. Zero. Zero facts.
They don’t even give you any benefits.
And they don’t need to, because the commercial is THAT entertaining.
They took an unexciting subject (insurance) and juxtaposed it with a stereotypical horror movie parody.
This ad has been viewed hundreds of millions of times, and we still love it.
It’s become a classic. An October tradition.
That commercial first aired in 2014.
I'm sitting on the couch, day 2 of October 2021, and guess what comes on TV?
Yup.
Did I watch it? You're damn right I did.
Geico uses a simple but powerful concept: Take something traditionally normal or "boring," and show us why it is anything but.
Make it bizarre. Twist our brains and show us that nothing is as it really seems.
When you shine an unusual light on a common product, when you look at the every day from a new perspective, you can turn the ordinary into extraordinary.
Ordinary = forgettable.
Extraordinary = memorable.
Finding the surreal in the everyday is a classic comedy technique.
Kyle Kinane is a standup comic who uses this technique well. He once sat next to a man on a plane who ate pancakes out of a bag. Most people might see that, think “huh” and go on with their day. But not Kyle. Kyle sees a man on a plane eating pancakes out of a bag and it de-rails his life.
If you were on a plane sitting next to a man eating pancakes out of a bag, how would you tell that story to your friends?
"I saw a dude eating pancakes out of a bag."
Great story, Hemingway.
Kyle saw a dude eating pancakes out of a bag, and he had questions.
What were the decisions that led up to this moment?
What would cause a person to behave that way?
What crazy circumstances converged to create this bizarre outcome? This is not just a man munching sack flapjacks. This is a crazy person.
Nothing is really as it seems.
The SNL skit “Papyrus” became a huge hit using the ordinary-to-extraordinary technique.
They took a small, innocuous detail - the logo font from the Avatar movie - and created a dramatic story around it.
An absurd, hyper-exaggerated mini-movie:
It is a skit about a FONT, and it sits at over 16 million views on YouTube.
Nothing is really as it seems.
The writer of the Papyrus skit, Julio Torres, is a human meme. Surreal humor is his superpower. He presents us with something we think is normal and makes it fantastical, stripping away everything we thought we knew:
Because nothing is really as it seems.
Another commercial that masters the ordinary-to-extraordinary technique is Chaindrite Termite Spray.
Spraying for termites has always been advertised in a straightforward, traditional way. "You got termites? We got termite spray. Buy our shit, you’re welcome."
But the Thai pest control company took a different path.
They went balls-to-the-wall nuts with an action-drama-comedy short film about how effective their product is:
You guys. Nothing has to be dull. If your commercials make people flatline out of boredom, it's YOUR fault.
And I KNOW you’ve seen those Harmon Brothers commercials about a bathroom poop stool
, a mattress
, an outdoor grill,
and deuce perfume
None of those products were inherently interesting, yet their ads have been enjoyed hundreds of millions of times.
“But Asia! We is not Harmon Brothers! We is poor!”
NO EXCUSES!
Just because you have a flaccid ad budget doesn’t mean you can’t go hard.
These businesses went the opposite way to cultivate a Napoleon-Dynamite thrift-shop aesthetic:
Sometimes all you need is a simple home video and some creative audio dubbing: https://youtu.be/kI4yoXyb1_M
(Well hello, 42 million views.)
This guy made tongue scrapers go viral with just $500: https://youtu.be/fiP_ttgOxVw
Did you know trailer homes could be honest AND entertaining?! : https://youtu.be/q-RLqLx1iYI
Never have I been more excited about turtle food: https://youtu.be/O46ealsqlDs
Who knew shooting could be so fun!: https://youtu.be/awq90APEVgw
No budget? No problem! Just git yerself an out-there accent: https://youtu.be/nmpPIpCCZxM
Take your furniture store from bunk to funk: https://youtu.be/FJ3oHpup-pk
Think you don’t need a self-driving antelope? Think again: https://youtu.be/LJP1DphOWPs
These ads took unsexy products and made them exciting, hilarious, and different.
If they can do it, you can do it.
Remember, if your ads are lame, you have yourself to blame.
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Corporate Culture
Culture Decoded. How To Sell Way More Stuff And Attract Top Talent
Throughout my career, I’ve noticed that the easiest companies to skyrocket are those with a happy, healthy, and wealthy corporate culture.
Ryan: Culture is such a mystery to so many business owners. They know it’s important, but they don’t realize the true power that culture has on both the buying experience and the branding opportunity for telling, just the BEST stories. Throughout my career, I’ve noticed that the easiest companies to skyrocket are those with a happy, healthy, and wealthy culture. You know it’s a great company when everyone wants to get a job there and no one wants to leave. Now you’ve come up with 4 different definitions of culture to help break down what culture is and how to influence it, right Roy?
Roy: In biology, a culture is a cultivation (usually bacteria, germs, or tissue cells) in an environment of nutrients. Culture: a cultivation in an environment of nutrients. Do you want to create a culture? Step One: Environment Step Two: Nutrients
Ryan: Yes, this is brilliant. In a book I recently read, Lamarck’s Revenge, the author explores evolutionary theory and microbes are a wonderful place to experience evolution, and revolution, at warp speed. Business environments are consistent with natural environments too. Uncontrollable forces can change the landscape significantly, and internally, it’s the introduction or exclusion of the 11 elements of motivation that act as the “nutrients” of your culture. What’s next?
Roy: When we describe a person as “cultured,” we’re saying they are conversant in the arts. In the words of Phil Johnson, “You acquire an education by study, hard work and persistence. But you absorb culture by viewing great art, listening to great music and reading great books.”The arts are nutrients for the heart. To become “cultured” in the arts is to know how to make people feel differently.
Ryan: I just love this, Roy. Thank you. It just further supports the idea of motivation being the “nutrients” of culture. This is particularly true with the 3 internal motivators as identified by Harvard professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter; meaning, membership, and mastery. What about your third definition, Roy?
Roy: When our friend Susan Ryan came home after 7 years of doing business in a third-world country, she said, “It’s hard to develop a strategy that will overcome hundreds of years of enculturation. Culture eats strategy for lunch.” A strategy is made of goals, objectives, and activities. A culture is made of values, practices, and behaviors. Princess Pennie says strategy is today’s “do list” and culture is all the yesterdays that made you who you are.
Ryan: See, I would argue that what you’re articulating then, is that Culture IS the Strategy. Hear me out. You see, until we make strategy the everyday norm, we can never affect all the yesterdays that Princess Penny speaks so beautifully about. This is what made Susan Ryan’s job so difficult. In my research, it became very clear that the strategy IS based on goals, KPIs, forecasts, and budgets, but absolutely none of it mattered UNTIL you engineer in the RGAs (that’s revenue-generating activities) and VBBs (value-based behaviors). So what’s your last definition, Roy?
Roy: The culture of a business is expressed as esprit de corp: the spirit of the group. Culture: a cultivation in an environment of nutrients. Business Culture: a cultivation of practices and behaviors in an environment of values. If you don’t have strong values, you won’t have a strong culture. If you don’t reward and celebrate employee practices and behaviors, you’re just mouthing platitudes and clichés. (Commonly known as mission statements and corporate policies.)
Ryan: or disingenuous praise. It’s SO easy for someone to copy your strategy or business model, but no one can truly copy your culture. That’s what’s made Toyota so successful for the past 3 decades. You only have a kick-ass buying experience when you have a kick-ass culture, and it’s the buying experience that delivers on the brand promises made in advertising.
Roy: Good advertising promises your customer a specific experience. Branding is nothing more than corporate culture made known. It is then up to your people to deliver that experience.
Ryan: So the secret to great advertising is the buying experience, and a world-class buying experience comes from a world-class culture that leaders protect and defend daily.
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Why Wizard of Ads®?
Are you ready to transform your business into a distinctive, emotionally resonant brand? Here's why hiring Ryan Chute and Wizard of Ads® Services is the game-changer your business needs:
Distinctiveness Beyond Difference: Your brand must be distinctive, not just different, to stand out. We specialize in creating emotional connections with your customers to make your brand unforgettable.
Building Real Estate in the Mind: Branding with us helps your customers remember your brand when they need your service again, creating a lasting impression.
Value Proposition Integration: We ensure that your brand communicates a compelling value proposition that resonates with your audience, creating a powerful brand strategy.
Who Should Work with The Wizard of Ads®?
Wizard of Ads® offers services that start with understanding your marketing challenges.
We specialize in crafting authentic and disruptive brand stories and help build trust and familiarity with your audience. By partnering with Wizard of Ads®, you can transform your brand into one people remember and prefer. We understand the power of authentic storytelling and the importance of trust.
Let us elevate your marketing strategy with our authentic storytelling and brand-building experts. We can take your brand to the next level.
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Maximize Your Marketing Impact with Strategic Alignment.
Our strategy drives everything we do, dictating the creative direction and channels we use to elevate your brand. Leveraging our national buying power, we ensure you get the best media rates for maximum market leverage. Once your plan is in motion, we refine our strategy to align all channels—from customer service representatives to digital marketing, lead generation, and sales.
Our goal is consistency: we ensure everyone in your organization is on the same page, delivering a unified message that resonates with your audience. Experience the power of strategic alignment and watch your brand thrive.
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Transform Your Brand with Our Proven Process.
Once we sign the agreement, we visit on-site to uncover your authentic story, strengths, and limitations. Our goal is to highlight what sets you 600 feet above the competition. We'll help you determine your budgets and plan your mass media strategy, negotiating the best rates on your behalf.
Meanwhile, our creative team crafts a durable, long-lasting campaign designed to move your brand beyond mere name recognition and into the realm of household names. With an approved plan, we dive into implementation, producing high-quality content and aligning your channels to ensure your media is delivered effectively. Watch your brand soar with our comprehensive, strategic approach.
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The Power of Strategic Marketing Investments
Are you hungry for growth? We explain why a robust marketing budget is essential for exponential success. Many clients start with an 8-12% marketing budget, eventually reducing it to 3-5% as we optimize their marketing investments.
While it takes time to build momentum, you'll be celebrating significant milestones within two years. By the three to five-year mark, you'll see dramatic returns on investment, with substantial gains in net profit and revenue. Discover how strategic branding leads to compound growth and lasting value. Join us on this journey to transform your business.
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