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Throughout my career as an ad writer, I’ve noticed that the easiest companies to skyrocket are those with a healthy and happy corporate culture.

You know it’s a great company when everyone wants to get a job there and no one wants to leave.

Let’s talk about culture.

Definition One:

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

Definition Two:

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.

Definition Three:

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.

Definition Four:

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.)

Anyone can copy your strategy, but no one can copy your culture.

Branding is nothing more than corporate culture made known.

Good advertising promises your customer a specific experience.

It is then up to your people to deliver that experience.

Shout it from the housetops.

If you're struggling to craft killer direct response ads for your business, Ryan Chute from Wizard of Ads® can help. Book a call.

Ad writers hear it every day, whistling toward them like a bullet: “We need more traffic, that’s what we need; more sales opportunities!”

I spent the early part of my radio career stepping up to the plate and knocking that fastball out of the park. If your back was against the wall, I was the man to call.

I was like Coca-Cola, baby, I was everywhere.

It was the early 1980s.

My employer required me to wear a tie, so I hung one around my neck like a scarf. And to underscore my scruffy renegade look, I refused to tie my shoes. Everywhere I went, people would tell me, “Your shoes are untied,” and I would reply with a smile, “Yeah, I know.”

I looked like a young drug dealer, and in a way, I was.

I sold instant gratification advertising. “You want a crowd? Crowds cost money. How big a crowd do you want?”

It’s actually pretty easy to attract a worked-up crowd. Do you want to know how to do it?

These are the ingredients you must have at hand
To Make Big Things Happen Fast:

1. Urgency – There has to be a shortage of time or a shortage of quantity. The rule to remember is this: “No shortage, no urgency.” The best shortage is to have a limited number of a highly desirable item at a remarkable price. This is the time-tested formula that causes people to camp out on the sidewalk in front of Wal-Mart before the doors open the day after Thanksgiving.

If the number of 82-inch TVs available for $999 is too few, people will say, “I don’t have a chance,” and stay home. But if the number is too many, no one will get excited because “there’s enough to go around.” So you definitely need to name a number. “While supplies last,” is a line that only a beginner would write. The customer hears that and thinks, “They only had one of those and they sold it before this radio ad ever hit the airwaves.” Result: no response.

2. Credible Desperation – If you scream, “400 Toyotas MUST be sold this weekend! No reasonable offer refused!” you’ve got no credibility. The listener thinks, “WHY do you have to sell 400? What happens if you don’t? And what you consider to be ‘a reasonable offer’ is probably a lot more money than what I consider to be a reasonable offer, so I’m going to pass. I’ve got better things to do this weekend than haggle with a jackass car dealer.”

Desperation loses credibility as time passes. That’s why these ads work less and less well the longer you use them.

“Lost our lease, everything must go,” is another line that only a beginner would write. Specifics are more believable than generalities.

Do you want to make your desperation credible? Do you want stuff to fly out the door? Say, “We’ve been thrown out! Our landlord rented our space to someone else and a dump truck will be here at 8AM on Monday, January 7th to haul away everything we leave behind….”

3. Specifics – “…so we’re liquidating the entire inventory, every item in every department. We’re selling the showcases, the light fixtures and the cash registers. And if you can figure out how to get the wallpaper off the wall, we’ll sell you that, too. Call your friend with a pickup truck because you’re going to leave here with an ecstatic truckload of once-in-a-lifetime bargains. An $800 kayak is $179. Perfume that sells for $200 a bottle is yours for just $20. Diamond pendants worth a thousand dollars are just $129. A dozen doughnuts, made fresh while you wait, are just ONE DOLLAR and you can eat them while you’re shopping. So cancel what you had planned and get here as quick as you can.”

4. Repetition – Nothing says “urgent news” like an ad that runs twice an hour for 72 hours. If a radio station will let you air only one ad an hour, then make sure it’s a 60-second ad. If a station has a policy that allows you to air only 3 ads every 4 hours, then buy a different station. Whatever you do, don’t air your supposedly “BIG” announcement with too little repetition. Did you read the part where I tried to make it clear that one spot per hour, 24 hours a day, was a MINIMUM schedule? I meant that.

Month after month I sold urgent, high-impact schedules to business owners who licked their lips as they shook my hand.

It wasn’t long before I was visiting twitching, crowd-addicted business owners who looked at me with hard, glittering eyes and a facial tic as they said, “Just like last time, but even better, okay? Even better. That’s what I want. Do whatever you have to do, just bring the people in.”

High-frequency radio schedules and high-impact ad copy are the opioids of advertising. They’ll take away your pain, but when you come down from your high, you’re just a dark-eyed addict in an empty room. So you call the guy with the untied shoes again. But each schedule works a little less well than the one before until, finally, you have destroyed the health of your business.

Do I still write high-impact ads and air them round-the-clock? Of course I do. Opioids exist for a reason. When the pain of an unforeseen business catastrophe is overwhelming and you have no option but to blow the trumpet and bang the drum, you do what you have to do and then deal with the ravages of addiction when it’s over.

But it’s a long and painful recovery. And the thing you want more than life itself is to blow that trumpet and bang that drum one more time.

So now you know How to Make Big Things Happen Fast.

You just have to decide whether or not you want to.

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

Tinkerbell’s light gradually dims as she begins to die.

Her only hope of survival is an audience that believes in fairies and demonstrates that belief through enthusiastic applause. Tinkerbell’s light has been growing brighter since 1904, when she first appeared in J.M. Barrie’s play, Peter Pan.

Everyone believes in fairies enough to clap enthusiastically.

The Tinkerbell Effect describes things that exist only because enough of us believe they exist, and behave as though they do.

Paper money has value only because enough of us believe it has value and behave as though it does. If we quit believing it has value, it becomes scrap paper.

Laws have power because we believe they have power and behave as though they do. If enough of us behaved as though laws had no power, we would live in a lawless society.

Our economy is robust when we believe it is robust. But when we become anxious and hunker down in financial hesitation, our economy unwinds in a downward spiral, like a kite falling from the sky.

A confident person spends money.
Uncertain people delay their purchases.
Uncertainty is an enemy of the economy.
A lot of people are feeling uncertain.

It seems as though every voice in the media believes we need to be instructed about what to believe and what to do. But I am convinced we need encouragement far more than we need instruction.

Encouragement brings hope; hope that tomorrow will be better than today, hope that “next time” will be better than “last time,” hope that Tinkerbell will continue to live and twinkle and fly.

In last week’s rabbit hole, Indiana Beagle shared a Barbara Hall quote that struck a triumphant chord:

“Belief is about collecting ideas and investing in them. Faith is about having your ideas obliterated and having nothing to hang onto and trusting that it’s going to be all right anyway.”

In the face of relentlessly negative newscasts, I have moved from belief in America to faith in America.

I am not alone.

Known for her focus on “Feel Good” news, Ellen K hosts a morning drive show that recently became the largest radio audience in Los Angeles. Evidently, people are looking for someone to make them feel good. I suggest you keep that in mind when writing ads to attract people to your business.

If you should ever visit Wizard Academy in Austin, you will notice a bronze plaque on the subterranean path to our tower that overlooks the city of Austin from 900 feet above it. Stand on that plaque in the darkness and look just above the hilt of the sword at the top of the tower. That point of light you see is Tinkerbell. It is the guiding light of the Wise Men in the Christmas story. It is the bright star in The Impossible Dream, of which Don Quixote sings, “This is my quest: to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far…”

Now look down and read the plaque. It says, “To Calvin Laughlin.”

Calvin was an infant when his parents became major donors to Wizard Academy many years ago. His father is Roy Laughlin. His mother is Ellen K.

Congratulations, Ellen.

And thanks for the good news.

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

“The deer have killed the oak tree! The deer have killed the oak tree!”

Forty-year-old Todd – we’ll call him Todd – came running into my office with his second crisis of the day. I expected there would be at least one more.

Todd felt it was his job to bring every problem to my attention so that I could tell him how to solve it. Todd was an idiot. His only value was that he gave me a sparkling example of what it means to be an identifier of problems rather than a creator of solutions.

When you see a problem, should you bring it to the attention of your boss?

Yes, but only if:

1. You feel confident that your boss is not already aware of it.

2. You have a solution in mind and are ready to suggest it.

3. You are prepared to implement your solution if asked.

You lower your value when you point out problems without offering to implement a solution.

You elevate your value when you are willing to solve every problem you face.

If you feel you have sufficient authority to implement your solution without having to get approval, then by all means do so.

If you do not have sufficient authority, then articulate the problem along with your proposed solution in the fewest possible words. The less time and attention you require from your boss, the more highly your boss is going to think of you.  Within a year or two, your boss will begin bringing you problems you didn’t even know about, along with a request that you solve them.

When that day arrives, the only person that can get in your way is a family member of the boss, or some other person to whom the boss owes allegiance.

Yes, nepotism is a real thing. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.

This brings up another important point:

The key to failure is to hang on to the belief that things have to be “the way they ought to be.” The key to success is to be able to deal with things as they really are.

Learn to deal with things as they are. Quit expecting things to be the way they ought to be. Unless, of course, you’re willing to dedicate your life to being a reformer. It’s a high calling, but a difficult one to monetize.

I was lucky enough to have a mother who taught me these things when I was in my early teens.

Without a high school diploma, she took an entry-level job at 32 years old when she became the breadwinner for our family. I was 11 at the time. Mom retired when she was 54, having been the director of every department of the largest corporation on earth.

She was a problem solver.

When a department was in crisis, the director of that department would be fired and they would put my mother in charge. Within a year, it would become the top-performing department in the company. She would remain at the head of that department until another one was in crisis and another manager was fired.

It didn’t take that company long to see her as a resourceful problem-solver. And it won’t take your company long to see the same in you.

Recognition and wealth pursue the person who solves every problem they find.

Are you willing to become that person?

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

Have you ever seen a photographer look through a rectangle of forefingers and thumbs to “frame” a potential shot?

Framing is even more important when using words to capture images.

Advertising, like every other kind of storytelling, should always begin with a framing sequence.

1. From what angle will you approach your subject?
2. What will be revealed?
3. What will be excluded?
4. Most importantly, what will be only partially revealed, requiring your reader to supply the parts that are missing?

In the prologue of John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, a character explains the attraction of the partial reveal: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.”

“Mr. Jenkins?”
“Yes, Bobby.”
“How much should a hamster weigh?”

We know from this framing sequence that Bobby respects the wisdom of Mr. Jenkins and feels comfortable enough around him to ask whatever is on his mind. And because Bobby feels comfortable, we feel comfortable, too. We find out later that Mr. Jenkins owns an air conditioning company.

Another ad opens like this:

“Mr. Jenkins told me…”
“Mr. Jenkins told me…”
“Mr. Jenkins told me to work on every system like it was for my mom.”

These 3 employee voices frame Mr. Jenkins as a person who loves his mother and who hires people who love their mothers. We also know that Mr. Jenkins believes his customers deserve care, concern, and commitment. But the ad doesn’t make these claims; we come to these conclusions on our own because of the partial reveal.

“I think I know why Ken Goodrich hired me to run his plumbing company.”

The famous owner of an air conditioning company is now in the plumbing business, too. And the person who runs that company for him is straightforward, plainspoken, and willing to tell us what he thinks. We arrive at these conclusions after just 14 words of framing. This is how the public was introduced to Zach Hunt.

The next ad begins:

“Zach, have you ever heard of the 7-year itch?”

This 10-word frame skyrockets our curiosity. We want to hear Zach’s answer and learn where Ken Goodrich is headed with this question.

“Five years before Teddy Roosevelt led the Rough Riders, Simon Schiffman stepped off the train to stretch his legs.”

Two heroic icons of American history 125 years ago… An unknown man steps off a train… Framing has set the stage. Now captivate your customer’s attention by surprising them with what happens next.

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

Amateur ad writers assume everyone makes decisions based upon the same criteria they use. This causes them to unconsciously frame their messages to reach people exactly like themselves.

Professional ad writers frame their messages to speak to the felt needs of a specific consumer.

People are multi-dimensional. We make decisions to purchase based on a variety of criteria, but two of the big ones are Time and Money.

“Time and Money are interchangeable.
You can always save one by spending more of the other.”
– Pennie Williams

1. A person who feels they have no money and no time is buried in financial and relational obligations.
2. A person who believes they have more time than money is a bargain hunter.
3. A person who has more money than time is overworked and highly paid.
4. A person with lots of money and time is looking for something to do.

Consciously or unconsciously, every ad is framed to speak to one of those four perspectives.

It isn’t really about whether we can afford to spend the money. It’s about whether we FEEL we can afford to spend it. A person may feel they have the time, but not the money, to purchase a product in one category, but later that day feel they have the money, but not the time, to purchase a different product in a different category.

We evaluate messages – news, information, and advertising – based on Relevance and Credibility:

1. Relevance: “Does it matter to me? Do I care about this?”
2. Credibility: “Do I believe it?”

A message high in relevance but low in credibility is hype.
“I would be interested if I believed you.”

A message low in relevance but high in credibility is a tedious waste of time.
“I believe you, I’m just not interested.”

Are you speaking to the felt needs of your customer, or are you speaking only to yourself?
Are the things you’re saying believable, or do they sound like unsubstantiated hype?

Identity Reinforcement and Self-Expression:

We buy much of what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are. A surprisingly high percentage of purchases are about self-expression.

We bond with organizations that show us a reflection of our best self-image. When we perceive that an organization shares our outlook and our beliefs, we prefer them and their products.

Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.

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