Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

You don’t have to be big to be famous.

Marketing researchers found big companies have an unfair advantage in continuing to dominate the market.

The next biggest unfair advantage is interesting. Creative. Not data, not budget, creative.

This means, that by having great creative/copywriting, you too will have outsized results to the budget you have available.

Your creative is leverage. There are 3 main levers that if utilized can help you become famous and wealthy, even on a relatively small budget.

Strategy

Strategy is what ties all of these circles together.

Most businesses don’t have a marketing strategy.

• They follow the crowd… when they should be standing out from it.
• They market inconsistently… when customers need frequency of exposure to build relationship with you.
• They offer an inconsistent experience… when customers expect continuity (brand alignment).

A poor or average strategy will lead to wasted marketing budget and stunted business growth. In this blog, you can learn how to create an optimal strategy.

Creative

If your marketing efforts look/sound like an ad, your efforts will be ignored or frustrate potential customers. Thus wasting your hard-earned marketing budget.If your creative/ad copy is phenomenal, you can literally create marketing campaigns whose effectiveness compounds over time.

“What emerged from the analysis was that creative execution was by far the single most important element of advertising under a marketer’s direct control when it comes to delivering a return on investment. Behind it were a host of different media planning and strategy factors that were all vital to success too. But creativity shone out as something that could yield special results.

This chimed with other research. Nielsen, Binet & Field – even McKinsey’s, a famously rationally-orientated consultancy – all concluded that businesses that excel in creativity perform the best in terms of hard financial metrics. Creative was the single biggest lever that we can pull when it comes to supercharging marketing ROI.”

— Link Below

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Expert creative allows you to win customers with fewer exposures to your ads and therefore lower spent budget.

Media Buying

Did you notice that each circle of marketing profitability (in the top chart) that followed Creative Quality is a function of Media Buying?

Media companies from Social Media to Billboards and Direct Mail to Radio want to sell the spots they have left, that no one else wants.

If you ask a media seller “How many times will the average customer need to hear/see this ad each week for me to become their business of choice” they won’t tell you… because they don’t know.

Media sellers are skilled at selling and have little to no incentive to prioritize the effectiveness of your marketing’s placement, frequency, schedule, etc.

Thankfully, this research exists and my team knows all of it.

Takeaway

By running your creatively exceptional ads with an ideal schedule that aligns with a cohesive strategy, you’ll be on your way to becoming famous in your community with all the financial rewards that come with it.

You don’t need the budget of a massive company to become a massive success.

Source Quote on Creative Effectiveness: https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/the-drivers-of-profitability

The ground moved beneath our feet.

There. It did it again.

That first tremor was the growing reality of gender equality.

The second was the shrinking of mass media.

These trends aren’t connected, but they’re both significant.

Gender equality is changing the nature of romance. Don’t believe me? Watch any romantic movie from 20 years ago and count the anachronisms, those interactions that belong to the past and do not seem to fit the present.

Gender equality also affects advertising and marketing in ways you might not expect.

Not many years ago, it was assumed that lovers would marry and buy a home and establish a life together. But then an entire generation of women was taught not to depend on a man, but to establish a career and a life on their own.

I’m not being critical. If Pennie and I had daughters instead of sons, this is probably what we would have urged them to do.

That advice to young women changed the landscape in marketing. A study published by Pew Research Center indicates that in 1970, 84% of U.S.-born 30-to 44-year-olds were married. By 2007 that number had declined to just 60% and if we extrapolate the trend into 2015, the percentage of married 30-to-44-year-olds is currently at 54.8% and falling. We went from 16% single to 46% single in just one generation.

A once-proud nation of families is evolving into a proud nation of individuals.

The motivations that drive husbands and fathers and wives and mothers are different from the motivations that drive individuals who have no one depending on them but themselves. Consequently, the language and logic of ad copy must be altered to connect with this altered audience.

The trend toward singleness is sociological.
The erosion of mass media is technological.
Each trend accelerates the other.

If the majority of a nation is watching the same TV shows at the same time, listening to the same hit songs at the same time, and receiving similar news from similar sources simultaneously, we can expect that nation to think and feel in similar ways.

Mass media ruled America in 1970. Radio was a rock station, a country station, a talk station, an easy listening station and an instrumental format called “beautiful music.” Then you had ABC, CBS and NBC TV. Ted Turner wouldn’t create the first cable network until 1976 and FOX didn’t appear until 1986. When a movie left the theaters, it would go to the drive-in theaters where it would be shown for a reduced price, then appear on network television for free about a year later. DVRs, DVDs and videotapes did not exist. You either had to be where a movie was showing at exactly the right time or you missed it. This forced us to gather together at specific times for entertainment where we all heard the same commercials.

Mass media brought us together physically and it united us psychologically. It also gave advertisers a platform for telling their stories.

Advertising was easy in those days.

Today’s technology allows us to opt-out of mass media. This is good for the individual but it presents a significant challenge to the advertiser. The advertising opportunities created by new technology are highly targetable but they’re also shockingly expensive. The most efficient thing we’ve found so far costs 4 times as much per person as broadcast radio. And although the digital product gives us the ability to pinpoint target a specific audience, that advantage doesn’t deliver anywhere near enough benefit to justify the inflated cost. This is not theoretical. We’ve learned these things through testing.

I’ll bring this to a conclusion:

We’re approaching the end of a golden time when courageous advertisers can invest money in mass media and see their businesses grow as a result. My suspicion is that we’ve got perhaps 5 to 7 more years before retail businesses and service businesses will be forced to begin playing by a whole new set of rules. No one yet knows what those new rules might be, but this we do know: the sharply rising costs of digital advertising are not being offset by a rise in efficiency.

Buy mass media while the masses can still be reached.

Reaching people one at a time doesn’t offer nearly the return on investment.

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

Sometimes I think we go through our lives trying to impress an invisible audience called “everyone.”

“What will everyone think?”

Invisible would be bad enough, but I think “everyone” might also be imaginary. Emil Cioran was probably right when he said, “If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”

“We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.”

We buy cars, clothes, furniture and art to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are.

Is it possible that everyone isn’t watching? Is there a chance that everyone is under the mistaken impression that is it we who are watching them?

It’s funny when you think about it.

And it’s also how I make my living. I’m an ad writer.

When you have a strong attraction to a brand, it’s because that brand stands for something you believe in. You see in that brand a reflection of yourself as you like to believe you are. What authors do you read? Do you subscribe to any magazines? What type of architecture attracts you? Do you listen to music? What kind?

Tell me what a person admires and I’ll tell you everything about them that matters.

Does it bother you for me to say these things? Please don’t let it. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about an “else” named Everyone.

There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

The hidden mechanisms of explosive ad writing are rarely seen because most people don’t want to believe they need identity reinforcement and affirmation. They are offended by the very suggestion of it. But the truth is that most of us need these things deeply.

I met a man a year ago who paid me to give him advice for a day. We spent that day talking about several companies he owned. At the end of the day he asked if I might be willing to write ads for these companies and I – for a variety of reasons – declined. A few months later I received a long email from him telling me about a troubled company he had acquired that had lost two-thirds of all its customers, a loss of about 20 million dollars in annual revenues. I wrote back and told him that I would write ads for this troubled company, but not for the others.

The first ad I wrote shares a bittersweet, true story from the childhood of the man who hired me. It’s about something that happened to him when he was 10 years old and it’s why he bought the troubled company. Upon receiving the ad, he called six different people and read it to them. Each of them got tears in their eyes.

Not because the story was about him, but because it was about them, too. The story in the ad is about a certain kind of magic that each of us guards deep in our heart like buried treasure. Even you.

I have every confidence that the ad campaign will recover those lost customers and lift this once-troubled company into a sunlit sky.

To write an explosive explanatory ad, you must choose:

1. How to end.
2. Where to begin.
3. What to leave out.

You must include specific details in your ad or it won’t have credibility: “a year ago… two thirds… 20 million dollars… 10 years old.”

But you must also leave something out of your ad or it won’t trigger curiosity: “…a certain kind of magic that each of us guards deep in our heart like buried treasure.”

You really want to read that ad now, don’t you?

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

I’ve met people who say absolute truth does not exist, that all truth is subjective and exists like beauty in the eye of the beholder.

I believe those people are sadly misguided.

Absolute truth absolutely exists. If you don’t believe me, just ask me again because I am absolutely certain.

But we’re not talking about absolute truth today.
We’re talking about his very beautiful sister, personal truth.

Can you share your perceptions with someone else?
Can you cause them to feel a little of what you feel?
Can you make them see in their mind what you see in yours?
Do you have a contagious sort of confidence?
Congratulations. You are an artist, a persuader.

Every artist is a salesman and every salesman is an artist.*

The left hemispheres of our brains are wired for empirical, scientific, objective reality: absolute truth.

The right hemispheres of our brains are sponges thirsty for impressions, symbols, metaphors, connections and patterns. These patterns can be auditory, visual or behavioral.

Auditory patterns are called music.
Visual patterns are called art.
Behavioral patterns are called personality.
The more complex the pattern, the deeper the beauty.

The goal of every artist – no matter their field of art – is to give us a glimpse of personal truth, the beautiful sister of absolute truth.

Personal Truth is also known as Perceptual Reality and like Don Quixote’s Dulcinea, she lives in your heart and mind. Jory MacKay calls her “referential meaning.”

Embodied meaning is intrinsic—it’s inherently inside something and doesn’t rely on our emotions or experiences to have meaning. Referential meaning is dependent on the network of associations activated when we are exposed to the stimulus. In other words, we create meaning through what we think of when we see it.”

A persuasive message – an advertisement – can be crafted from the absolute truth of facts or the personal truth of values and the self-image we see reflected in them.

I once knew an attorney who put it this way:

When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the truth is on your side, argue the truth. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”

In other words, when the facts are not on your side, appeal to self image, personal truth, subjective reality: values.

Last week, Indiana Beagle asked for your opinion of six different images of himself. You could give each logo from one to five stars and add comments, if you wished. What strong opinions you have about him! Reading those comments, Indy was delighted. I’ve known Indiana Beagle for many years but I had never before seen him prance.

Each of the six logos had its advocates who proclaimed it to be the obvious only choice, and each of the six had its detractors who said it was a criminal mischaracterization.

Each of you sees Indy differently because each of you brings a different set of values to the party. Indy is merely a trigger. “Referential meaning is dependent on the network of associations activated when we are exposed to the stimulus. In other words, we create meaning through what we think of when we see it.”

John Steinbeck said the same thing was true in storytelling.

A story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure.”

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.  

I have a client who has a lot of marketing savvy. A few weeks ago he sent me a list of seven copy points and asked if this was our radio strategy.

I spent a lot of time crafting a carefully considered response, so I thought I might share it with you. Perhaps it will trigger a realization or an insight you can use.

There’s an equally good chance, however, that you’ll decide I’m wrong.

Here’s the response I sent him:

You’ve asked for clarity on the issue of our radio strategy and you sent along a very well-crafted chart to illustrate your perception of it. This is obviously important to you.

I’m happy to help in any way I can, of course.

My discomfort with the list you sent me is rooted in the following question:

What is the purpose of this document? Is it meant to be a guiding document?
Are we creating a standard by which ads are to be evaluated in the future?

If so, my experience has been that if I agree with this list, it will lead to the inclusion of too many claims being jammed into a single piece of copy. Within a year, I would likely be hearing,

This is a good ad, but you didn’t say this or this or this. We need to include those, remember? Didn’t we agree on this list of seven things that our ads should accomplish? Is there any way we can include those other three things, too?”

A good ad makes a single point, powerfully. A bad ad sounds like a grocery list.
The only person impressed by such an ad is the advertiser who wrote it.

If this document is meant to be a list of recurrent copy-points, it is incomplete. Consequently, the adoption of this list would put us at risk of focusing too much of our airtime on too few objectives.

Our strategy is to win not only the mind, but the heart as well. We need our prospective customer to feel good about us. This is very delicate and difficult and is not likely to be accomplished if we are constrained by a regimented list of intellectual copy points. My experience has been that such lists lead to the ad campaign becoming more structured and informative, but less persuasive.

You’ve mentioned on a number of occasions that you believe the strongest response we’ve had was triggered by an ad I sent you that was written in a very intimate, confessional style. The effectiveness of that ad rose from the fact that it didn’t speak to the listener in the style of an advertiser speaking to a customer. It spoke in the style of a friend speaking to a friend. That ad surprised and delighted the customer. It’s hard to put surprise and delight on a checklist, but I know how important they are. Every fiber of me knows it. Thirty-seven years of attempting to persuade the public and then monitoring the results of those attempts has carved it into my soul.

It’s perfectly natural for an organized person to want a document that summarizes the intellectual elements of their advertising, point by point. You have several years of experience as a CEO that has taught you the wisdom of this.

My experience as an ad writer has been otherwise. This is at the root of my anxiety, I think. The hidden danger of lists is that they lead to predictability.

If you continue to feel that you need a checklist, I suggest that we add the following to the top of it:

1. Be remembered.
   We must be memorable. This requires us to surprise the customer in some small way in every ad. Without an element of surprise, there can be no delight.
2. Make them like us.
   If we win the heart, the mind will follow. Our minds routinely create logic to justify what our hearts have already decided.

Add these to your list and I’m good with it. There will be times when these two points will be the only two things I attempt to accomplish in a script.

Thank you for asking for this clarity in such an elegant and respectful way.
Your style of communication is one of the things I like best about you.

And it’s one of the things our audience likes best about you, too.

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

Showmanship is symbolism, the essence of pageantry and tradition: the sweep of an extended arm with an upraised palm in an expansive gesture; a deep bow with the added flourish of both arms extended to the sides, again with palms turned upward; dramatic emphasis expressed by hopping in place on the balls of your feet – timed precisely to the syllables you speak – pent-up energy that demands release.

Showmanship is mesmerizing but it takes courage because it’s easy to feel you’re making a fool of yourself.

Storytelling requires finesse and restraint as you work your way through a series of small reveals, waiting with the patience of a magician for the moment of the big reveal.

Showmanship and storytelling don’t change reality but they do change perception.

Are you beginning to understand why an ad man might be interested in these?

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford’s business school determined that the intensity of the pleasure we experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. “And that’s true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it’s exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.”

The story you tell about the wine affects how it tastes.

The study wasn’t speculative; it was medical. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to monitor the medial orbitofrontal cortex – the pleasure center of the brain – of wine connoisseurs who tasted wines after hearing stories about them.

The scientific verdict: good stories accelerate the physical pleasures generated through our senses. This should come as no surprise, really. We’ve known for decades that humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sounds.

Words. Work. Magic.

Daniel Whittington’s “Tour of Scotland” – an adventure in storytelling and showmanship and single malt Scotch – has attracted so much attention that Wizard Academy is launching the world’s first curriculum to officially certify Whisk(e)y Sommeliers. In this endeavor he’ll be joined by cognoscenti Tom Fischer, the founder of BourbonBlog.com, one of the world’s most authoritative voices on corn liquor (Bourbon.)

Whisk(e)y Marketing School isn’t about making whiskey; it’s about putting on a great show and telling great stories to accelerate the pleasure of customers “taking a Tour of Scotland” or “going on a Bourbon Run.” Fine restaurants worldwide will soon have tables full of people mesmerized as their Whisk(e)y Sommeliers wheel carts to their tables, open elegant wooden boxes, slip magnificent badges of office over their heads, and begin their tales of wonder.

Same song, second verse:

Angel Skating^TM is a new organization whose mission is to use storytelling and showmanship to popularize a little-known sport called artistic roller skating. You’ve seen figure skating in the Winter Olympics, right? Now imagine exactly that, but on roller skates. The objective of Angel Skating is to help artistic roller skating become the figure skating of the Summer Olympics.

Angel Skating was born last week when Craig Arthur, the director of Wizard of Ads, Australia, was in Austin for 10 days of catching up at the home office. Wizard of Ads partners Tom Wanek, Paul Boomer and Dave Young flew in from Columbia, Cleveland and Tucson to hang out with Craig, who mentioned that his daughter, Bridget, was becoming rather good at artistic roller skating, but that the sport wasn’t very well packaged or promoted.

Packaging and promoting are just different names for showmanship and storytelling.

A Tour of Scotland and a comical comment from Indiana Beagle was all it took. Angel Skating^TM was born before the sun went down. An official logo, a cartoon character mascot, a series of domain names and the rules of advancement through a series of “elegance levels” were all agreed upon within 36 hours.

Showmanship and storytelling – packaging and promotion – are what whiskey tasting and roller skating have in common with what you do.

And now you know what we do.

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