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In about 650 B.C. the Greek poet Archilochus wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The renaissance scholar Erasmus quoted Archilochus in 1500 in his famous Adagia, saying, “Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.”

In 1953, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin expanded on Archilochus and Erasmus in his often-quoted essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox.

In 2017, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Philip Tetlock completed a 20-year study that contrasted the abilities of the one-big-thing “hedgehog” experts against the many-little-things “fox” non-experts to make accurate predictions about geopolitical events.

Does it surprise you to learn that the “fox” non-experts outperformed the “hedgehog” experts by an overwhelming margin?

What Tetlock discovered will help you tell the story of your company in a way that will cause customers to feel like they truly know you.

American businesspeople tend to believe that every successful business is built on a single big idea, “one big thing.” But sadly, that bit of traditional wisdom is more tradition than wisdom.

“One big thing” is hedgehog thinking. But foxes roam freely, listen carefully and consume omnivorously. Foxes know “many little things.”

Customers will love the “many little things” story of your company told from the perspective of a fox. The story you need to be telling is the real one, a fascinating tale of hopes and dreams and failures and successes and realizations and refinements.

Don’t worry, we’re going to help you write it.

In 2011, the fox-like director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, used 100 objects in his museum as prisms through which he told the entire story of our world. That book, A History of the World in 100 Objects, became a wildly popular radio series and a blockbuster New York Times bestseller. The Wall Street Journal called it, “An enthralling and profoundly humane book that every civilized person should read.”

The fascinating, riveting, highly-engaging story of your company is hidden in 10 objects that lie within your grasp.

Bring those objects with you to Wizard Academy. It is time for “Show and Tell.”

If you need new branding guidance, book a call with no other than Wizard of Ads®. We'll help you figure out what new perspective on branding can work for your business.  

“You train them, remind them, and incentivize them, but they still don’t do what you trained them to do.” This is what business owners say to each other about employees.

Can you relate to it?

Frances Frei is a famous professor at Harvard Business School who advises senior executives who are embarking on large-scale change initiatives in the hopes of achieving organizational transformation. Professor Frei tells these executives, “You cannot change a person’s behavior until you first change their beliefs.”

Frances called me a few years ago when she was about to publish her book, “Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business.”

Beliefs drive behavior.

I was first exposed to this idea 18 years ago when Paul Schumann attended Wizard Academy. Paul spent 30 years at IBM as a futurist. Like Professor Frei, his specialty was “forecasting potential future scenarios, and creating innovative strategies for competitive advantage.”

When I asked Paul to share a few insights from his rich experience, he warned us of the dangers of “corporate cultural inertia.” Unfamiliar with that term, I asked Paul to give us an example. His answer startled me. He said, “You can win the full support of everyone at the C-level – CEO, COO, CFO, CMO, all of them – and then be brought to your knees by middle managers who simply choose not to implement what they have been told to do. In a big company, culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

“Can you introduce me to Dewey Jenkins? I’d love to meet him.”

This is a question I’m asked at least once a week, usually by the owner of another big company.

“I’m sorry, but no. I have, however, convinced Jonathan Bancroft to write a book that will contain the answers to every question you’d like to ask Dewey. I’ll give you a heads-up when that book is about to be published.”

The first printing of that book, “Mr. Jenkins Told Me…” was 30,000 copies. Almost 28,000 of those have already been sold and the book has only just been released.

The average business book sells just 5,000 copies in the life of the book. “Mr. Jenkins Told Me…” is not the average business book.

Jonathan Bancroft went to work for Mr. Jenkins 21 years ago as a technician’s helper/trainee.  A few years ago, he became president of the company.

I can’t arrange for you to speak with Dewey Jenkins, but you’re only a few clicks away from the answers to every question you’d like to ask him.

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

The content of your heart is what your heart contains.

Are you content? Same spelling, different meaning.

We distinguish these words only by the syllable we stress.

Words are amazing, don’t you think?

If you are content, (satisfied, happy, at peace,) it is because of the content of your heart. If the content of your heart is anxiety, fear, envy and anger, it is difficult to be content.

Who determines the content of your heart? Is it you?

We can assume, I think, that the content of your heart will be whatever you have chosen to put in it.

What have you put in it? Is there anything in there you might want to take out?

Sadly, our success-driven culture considers a person who is content to be somehow deficient. We are supposed to be driven, never satisfied, always fighting for more, for better, for higher, am I right?

But the golden carrot that is dangled before our donkey eyes is that we might someday be content.

Oh, what a cruel master is that bastard with his carrot and his stick!

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

Admiral Boulevard is the margin of the page in Tulsa.

It is that place where a person can do well while doing no good. It is where discipline encounters temptation and good fortune meets bad luck. Admiral Boulevard is the margin Johnny Cash sings about in “I Walk the Line.”

The Outsiders – both the book and the movie – take place along Admiral Boulevard. The book has sold more than 14 million copies making it the bestselling young adult novel of all time. Susie Hinton was a junior at Will Rogers High School just 5 blocks south of Admiral Boulevard when she wrote it. She was given a D in creative writing that year.

Admiral Boulevard is bordered on the east by the Mingo traffic circle and on the west by the tragic Greenwood District. The six miles between those bookends is what I once described as “the neighborhood of Ponyboy Curtis, an unfiltered assortment of bent automobiles, broken houses and discarded people.”

Susie encountered hostility when her book was released in 1967. She says, “I think the first hostile reaction was to the idea that not all teens were living in a ’50s sitcom. People know better nowadays.”

Susie is just 9 years older than me, so we know some of the same people. We all grew up with one thing in common; those little teeth nipping at our heels wasn’t a puppy, it was poverty.

The once-rich and influential Greenwood District of Tulsa was known as “Black Wall Street” in the years following the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, but on May 31, 1921, a white mob set fire to hundreds of black-owned businesses and homes, killing 300 Americans and leaving more than 10,000 homeless.

Forty square blocks were smoldering when the sun came up the next morning.

No one was prosecuted.

Susie’s book is about life on the margin of that page in history forty-five years later. The Outsiders is about the tensions between country-club whites and those paycheck-to-paycheck whites like Susie and me.

Francis Ford Coppola won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1970 for Patton, and two years later he won three more Oscars for The Godfather. Then he discovered Susie’s book, turned it into a screenplay, gathered up some no-name kids and gave them a chance to become superstars.

Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, and C. Thomas Howell were barely more than children when they made The Outsiders in 1983.

Two years later we saw The Breakfast Club, and the following year, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The Outsiders served as a launchpad for a number of careers and a whole new genre of movies. The ripple effect of a well-told story is staggering.

You have a story.
Your business has a story.
And your future is a story yet to be written.

Very soon Daniel Whittington will announce The Ad Writers Masters Class on behalf of the American Small Business Institute. This will be be your chance to write an altogether different future for yourself and the people you love.

My thoughts about Susie Hinton and The Outsiders were triggered by something written by Mike Dooley:

“The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things.”

Have a golden week.

If you aren’t a showman or a storyteller, you’re still in good company. Wizard of Ads® can help you create the brand or marketing story you need to drive your user experience. Book a call.

Notice that title. It does not say, “How to Write Scripts for TV Ads,” but, “How I Write…”

I have my own weird way of doing it.

TV writers use a split-page approach:
Camera instructions in the left column. Audio in the right column.

I chose not to do it that way.

Back when the world was young, Radio people told me that Radio scripts SHOULD ALWAYS BE TYPED IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

I chose not to do it that way.

and then came the online people who told me to write everything in lower case letters because who has the time to press the shift key in this fast paced digital world are living in

Me. The answer is me. I have enough time to press the shift key.

Aaron Sorkin would have been a great Radio writer. Watch his TV series – The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Newsroom, or Sports Night –  and you’ll hear dazzling dialogue, brilliant banter, and riveting repartee. Your imaginary people will begin talking like real people after you’ve studied his film scripts, A Few Good Men, The Social Network, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs.

Aaron Sorkin says, “Until the words are right, ain’t nothin’ right.”

Or at least that’s what he would say if he was from Texas.

Radio writers have five tools in their toolbox:

(A) choice of words
(B) tone of voice
(C) vocal inflection
(D) music
(E) special effects; such as the sound of a car starting, a door slamming, or a dog barking.

Television writers have all the radio tools available to them, as well as:

(F) facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language
(G) Screen text
(H) visual special effects; such as slow motion, disappearances, and backlighting.

The predictable mistakes made by Radio people writing TV ads are:

1. They try to cram 30 seconds worth of words into a 30-second TV ad.
2. They describe things they could easily have shown onscreen.
3. They forget screen text is available.
4. They use an omniscient voice-over when they could have shown us the person talking. The omniscient narrator – common in radio ads – doesn’t work so well on TV.

Make no mistake: bad writing is bad writing. A boring Radio ad will be a boring ad on TV.

Here’s how to turn a great Radio ad into a brilliant TV ad:

1. Eliminate descriptions of actions.
   Show us those actions instead. Add action-instructions to your script, but in a different color than the black ink used for dialogue. If you need to make a cellphone video of yourself performing the actions so the director can see what you see in your mind, do it.
2. Show us who is talking.
   Add instructions to your script regarding hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language, but use a different color than the black ink used for dialogue.
3. Use screen text.
   Domain names, phone numbers, and store hours are more easily shown than spoken. But before you add screen text, ask, “Do we really need this?” And when you write the instructions for screen text, use a different color than the black ink used for dialogue.
4. Use special effects to amplify what you want to make memorable.
   But be careful. The gratuitous use of special effects is the mark of an amateur. Before you use them, ask, “Do we really need these?” And print these instructions in a different color than the black we use for dialogue.

Color is a language that can be used to link, or separate.

In case I forgot to mention it, the only thing you should ever print in black is the dialogue. Special effects, screen text, and instructions to the actors and cameramen will be in a subordinate color of ink.

Because the dialogue – the words – are what matter most.

I believe Radio writers can learn to write TV ads a lot easier than
TV writers can learn to write Radio ads.

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

The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in 1979 happened because of a burned-out lightbulb.

When a particular safety system was malfunctioning, that bulb would light up and the technician would alertly take care of the problem.

No one anticipated a burned-out bulb.

Their mistake, according to my partner Cedric, is that they were monitoring for failure instead of monitoring for the absence of goodness. “That bulb should have been bright when things were good and go out when something was wrong.”

A system can malfunction in countless ways but there is only one way it can function perfectly.

You need to expect goodness and monitor for the absence of it.

Did I tell you that Cedric is a programmer, a data scientist, and a genius?

One of Cedric’s most important inventions is a system that monitors the vast array of data-crunching computers used by an important hedge fund. “The old system monitored for failure,” says Cedric, “but certain functions happen only intermittently, so a problem could exist for hours before it was discovered.”

Cedric’s new programming checks every element of the system once per minute, round the clock, to confirm that everything is working correctly. But his system isn’t looking for a problem. It is looking for perfection and notifies Cedric when it fails to find it.

Cedric says, “One mother tells her son to call when he gets to his friend’s house (and then takes action if she doesn’t get a call by the expected time). Compare this to the mother who says, ‘Call if you get into trouble,’ never realizing that it could be hours after a car accident before she would know that something was wrong.”

The first parent is monitoring for the absence of goodness.
The second parent is monitoring for failure.

The lucky hedge fund with the perfectly monitored system owes a debt of gratitude to Captain Jack Sparrow.

Jack Sparrow peed on the comforter in Cedric’s bedroom every time his automated kitty litter box was full, so Cedric wrote software that checked for failure once per minute.

Cedric lost 3 comforters before he realized the automated kitty litter box could malfunction in more ways than he could predict, so he wrote new software to “monitor for the absence of goodness” rather than monitor for failure.

Problem solved.

An automated kitty litter box is a complex system.
The data-crunching computers of a hedge fund are a complex system.
Employees are a complex system.

Are you monitoring for mistakes to criticize, or for performance to praise?

If you want smooth transactions, happy customers, and big profits to be ordinary, you must cheerfully expect these things and then come to the rescue only when they fail to happen.

Employers who have strong corporate cultures and happy, long-term employees are the ones who have learned to celebrate the ordinary and praise their people when things are going well.

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