Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Everyone is looking for the "killer ad".

The single, brilliant script that will fundamentally change the course of a business. The problem? It doesn’t exist.

In this episode, the team explores why ad agencies and starry-eyed clients are addicted to the "siren song" of the award-winning one-off. They compare these "Hail Mary" passes to the actual strategy that builds empires: the long-term, serial campaign.

Using iconic examples like Apple’s "Get a Mac" series and the decades-long "Got Milk" campaign, the guys explain how repetition and consistency create "mental real estate" in the consumer’s brain. If you’re tired of chasing short-term "blips" and want to understand how to build 10-year gains, this is the conversation you need to hear.

Episode Highlights

• The Killer Ad Myth: Why agencies prioritize awards over client results.
• The Mac vs. PC Case Study: How 66 commercials grew market share from 2% to 10%.
• The Pavlovian Strategy: Why branding is actually about "ringing the bell" consistently.
• The Failure of "Cool": Why you remember the CGI Seal but can't remember the brand it was for.
• Small Business Advantage: How medium-sized money can win by staying the course while big brands abandon the campaign.

🎧 Hit play to find out why the "killer ad" is a myth and how long-term, serial campaigns are the only real way to move the needle and grow your revenue. Don't just watch, start building a brand that lives firmly in your customer's memory.

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💬  Are you building a brand for the long haul, or are you just chasing a "one-night stand" with a "killer ad"?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Essential Services

On this episode of Advertising in America, we're in search of the mythical killer ad. You know the one, it solves all sales. It closes deals before they happen, and it grows back severed limbs.

There is no such thing as a killer ad. What amazes me is that ad agencies around the world think there is, and curiously, the big multinational agencies with big multinational clients are among those who behave the most, like creating one is the best goal to have.

My better-looking, more successful older brother, Chris, likes to complain about agencies focused on creating one killer ad, and he's got a point, but what I'd like to talk about is the other side of that coin. Long-running time-honoured tradition of serial advertising.  Serial, like a series.

The chances of you having a company that has an amazing origin story that is going to absolutely rock the world for the next five years are basically non-existent. There are very few of those characters, unless you're a tremendously interesting person.

Ryan Chute: On this episode of Advertising in America, we're in search of the mythical killer ad. You know the one, it solves all sales. It closes deals before they happen. It grows back severed limbs. It fills the appointment board with droves of customers ready to lay down and buy everything you sell. Let's ask Mick about his better-looking older brother, Mick?

Mick Torbay: My better-looking, more successful older brother. Chris likes to complain about agencies focused on creating one killer ad, and he's got a point. But what I'd like to talk about is the other side of that coin. Whatever happened to the campaign? The long-running, time-honoured tradition of serial advertising. No, not breakfast, cereal. Cereal. Like a series. McDonald's used to have commercials featuring those lovable McDonald's Land characters. Fucking Hamburglar.  For crying out loud, The Wendy's Company had Dave Thomas cooking burgers exactly the way their employees do it. Huge corporate CEOs never do. You kinda like Dave.

Remember the Mac versus PC campaign.

They made 66 of them, and it lasted almost five years. Oh. And it sold a lot of computers. When the campaign started, Mac had less than 2% of the market share in personal computers. By the time it was done, their market share was over 10%. That's a lot of computers, but tell me about the great campaigns of today.

Frankly, every example of great advertising that I hear about in the last eight or nine years has been, “Did you see that cool ad on the Super Bowl?” What do you mean, the one that can't possibly have a next chapter, because that's all of them?

I've got a theory as to why agencies are delivering a killer ad rather than a commitment to a campaign. Nobody's thinking long-term. Clients want results in weeks, not years. Agencies want to win an award this year. Writers want a promotion or a new job somewhere else, and they want it now. The same traps that business owners fall into short-term thinking and get-rich-quick schemes. Yeah, everyone falls for that shit.

Except for our clients, we are in this for the long haul. We want five-year gains, 10-year gains, not a blip this quarter, so we can all pat ourselves on the back. Where is this all going? What's the next chapter? One killer ad. Might get a bit of hype the day after the Super Bowl, but what are they going to do to represent the brand?

Old Spice killed it with The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. But what was the brand message? Old Spice is the one for people who want to be on a horse.

During the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl, an ad from a couple of years ago, Seal, the singer, turned into a seal, the polar bear food. What did that say about the brand? Do you even know who the client was, or do you just remember how cool the CGI Seal transformation was?

Pay attention, people. "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC." The PC is old and stuffy. The Mac is young and cool, and every couple of months, they tell that story in a new and funny way. You sure as hell remember who the client was in that campaign. Don't ya.  In their haste to produce fast results for attention span-deprived clients. The big brands have abandoned the campaign entirely, and for the owner-operated business, this is a fantastic opportunity. You don't have to fight against million-dollar campaigns anymore.

The only ones doing it now and doing it well are Wizard of Ads Partners. I've got a client in southwest Texas who can't walk down the street without a passerby calling him by the nickname that has only appeared in the TV commercials. The campaign is not just memorable, it's working. He grows by 30 to 40% a year. So really, it's okay that the big money has walked away from the campaign because now, medium-sized money can just take it all for themselves. That's what we're doing, and you should do that too.

Ryan Chute: Ooh, I call shotgun on being the Mac. You’re the PC. Now, to hear from our resident Commodore 64, here's Chris.

Chris Torbay: There is no such thing as a killer ad. What amazes me is that ad agencies around the world think there is. And curiously, the big multinational agencies with big multinational clients are among those who behave the most. Creating one is the best goal to have. But that approach to creativity is based on a premise with very little precedent that making one great, award-winning, attention-getting ad could fundamentally change the course of your client's business. It almost never has.

Oh, there are exceptions that prove the rule, but as a rule, the odds of creating a single great ad that completely reverses a market trend for a brand are worse than a Hail Mary Pass. But it's still the beacon agencies and creative people follow. Great ads are the siren song. We are all drawn to the Budweiser Brewing Company APAC frogs, or the guys yelling, Whattsss Up, Cindy Crawford drinking a PepsiCo, or Mean Joe Green accepting a The Coca-Cola Company from an awestruck little boy. The Aaron Burr ad for got milk?

Chris Torbay: Where's the beef for Wendy's? Macintosh, 1984. These are the watershed commercials, agency people yearn to be in good company with, and therein lies the problem.

Agency structure and the road to success within it are inconsistent with client success and the road to achieving that. In the agency business, creative people get promoted when they make something great, when they win an award. And awards are given for single entries, like an Oscar or a Grammy. You win for a great ad just like you win for a great movie or a great song. So people all strive to come up with one distinctive breakthrough script that will stand above the rest, and they get the client to pay for it by saying that great idea will shake the public from their current perceptions and change their business for the better. It almost never does, but there are just enough exceptions to the rule to tease starry-eyed clients into thinking they might be successful too. When Old Spice ran The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, it was a last-ditch effort to resurrect the brand. It had declined so completely in the marketplace that Procter & Gamble was literally prepared to switch the lights off. It was the stuff your grandfather used; it was dead. So they threw the Hail Mary and scored big, turned the brand around. Brilliant. Never happens. When Apple ran Ridley Scott's 1984 ad on the Super Bowl in, I guess that would be 1984, they came from nowhere in the computer market to the front and center. The Macintosh launch was a huge success, and Apple hasn't looked back.

Brilliant. Never happens. But now people think it could happen to them if they find themselves an agency and a writer who can make an ad that's good enough. And this is how we lose clients. Actually, this is why we hear business owners all the time say stupid things like,  “We tried radio before, and it didn't work. We tried a TV ad but didn't see any ROAS.” Return on Ad Spend. Here's a safety tip, by the way. If a business strategy has ‘ass’ in the name, it's probably you.

What invariably happened, of course, is that they tried one ad, probably not a very good one, probably written by themselves or the sales guy down at the radio station jam, packed it with undifferentiated table stakes advertising blather and ran it for 13 weeks. And the world apparently didn't beat a path to their door. Their one killer ad didn't change the world. Because it never happens. What does work? Great campaigns, positionings that live long and firmly in memory because you started it, you stand for it, and you stick with it. 1984 was a great ad, “But Here's to The Crazy Ones” was a campaign and was much more successful.

“I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC” was a campaign that ran for five years, and it was much more successful. Budweiser Brewing Company APAC has been making Clydesdale's ads for decades. And if you want to know why that brand is part of the fabric of America, it's that. “Aaron Burr” was a brilliant ad for milk in a got milk campaign that ran for decades. Stop chasing the killer ad. It never happens.

Ryan Chute: You know why you should never assume, right? Because it makes an ass out of you and me. And I guess the same holds true for ROAS. When we return, we'll be arm wrestling kangaroos to see who's right about the killer ad thing we're clearly disagreeing on.

Ryan Chute: We're back. I wanted to start by talking about the short-term versus the long-term thinking that you were referencing.

Mick Torbay: I think one of the reasons why the campaign seems to have disappeared in the large agency world is very simple. It's harder. You actually have to put more thought into it. When you're just coming up with a great idea with nothing connecting it to anything earlier and nothing connecting it to anything later, that's easy. Creating a long-term thing is harder. Like, writing a screenplay is a lot harder than writing a vine. So I think this comes down to laziness in a lot of cases. Which is not to say that what Chris is saying is not true, but it doesn't help that doing it the way they're doing it is much easier than doing it the way we do.

Ryan Chute: I think one of the easy excuses is that people don't have the attention span that they used to have. And we know, scientifically speaking, the research does not support that there's such a thing as an attention span. There is no such thing as attention span. If that were the case, Netflix would be out of business and podcasts wouldn't exist.

Mick Torbay:  It's attention span on the message, on the creative. But frankly, it's also an attention span on the media. If you think about it, to do a campaign like the Apple campaigns, which we were talking about, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. You have to be committed not only to the story. You have to be committed to a five or six-year media buy. Like you have to be saying, no, we're going to do this on TV like this for a long time. And I don't know anybody who is thinking long-term. It's more just, what am I getting today? What's my return on my investment today? Is it making me money? 'Cause if not, I'm going to switch it. I'm going to switch it, I'm going to switch it, I'm going to switch it. And it's specifically this, “if it doesn't work right away, I'm going to switch it.” That guarantees it's absolutely not going to work.

Chris Torbay: Well, that's also a discipline thing on the part of the agencies, which is my part, is what that necessitates is the agency saying, "We're going to stick with this idea. We're going to see it through, we're going to keep evolving it” as opposed to, “Wait, you don't want that? I got another one for you. You don't like that? I got another one for you.”

And that's where it also goes back to, and it's an unconscious selfishness, but it's a selfishness from the creative people, which is, if we went with Dave's idea last year and it produced a sort of ho-hum reaction. It's “Okay, maybe this year we'll go with my idea, and then we'll see if I can beat what Dave's idea” as opposed to an agency saying, “We believe in Dave's idea. It started off slow in the first year. Now, in the second year of this campaign, I'd like everybody else to write more ads in the context of Dave's, and let's keep doing that.” And all these creative people have to say, “I'm good with executing against this other person's idea now for the next little while,” as opposed to trying to say, “I've got something better.” And very few people have that discipline to say, “I'm happy to go with what's there.”

This is why I think the whole agency review process contributes to it, which is when you switch agencies. The last thing a new agency would do is to say, “Good. Now that you've given us the reins on this account, I'll tell you what we should do. Let's keep doing that campaign that America's always loved, and let's stick with it.”

Mick Torbay: That's the last thing the agency was doing, which is excellent.

Chris Torbay: Of course, what they're going to say is, “All right, now that you've given us the campaign, I'll tell you what. We're going to throw out everything your last agency did. We're going to do a brand new thing,” to prove that you're worth winning the account. But from the consumer's perspective, where's the consistency? Where's that build that happens over time? If everyone wants to prove how good they are right now, right here.

Ryan Chute: It's a survival mechanism of chasing the dopamine. What's the next big high? What's the next big win? Where's the killer ad? When the truth of it is that retention and recall are the things that we're actually going for. We're looking for that echoic retention that cues us into conditioning us, as it were, with Pavlov's dog, into remembering that you matter and that you're relevant when we are remembered. Relevant to the situation.

Mick Torbay: And we have to remember that marketing meetings are conducted not by robots, but by people, and people think and act emotionally. And there is something slightly disappointing when you're having your annual marketing meeting to say, “Okay, so what are we going to do for 2026? What are we going to do for 2027?” And to say, “we're just going to keep doing what we were doing before, but change the words a little bit,” that doesn't make for a really exciting meeting.

Chris Torbay: And it doesn't sound like you're earning all the money that you're making, because we're just going to keep paying you, and your contribution should write me more of those, stay the course. That's what I'm paying you for, to stay the course.

Mick Torbay: Which I think draws attention to the way we bill our clients, which is based on results and not based on “Woo, that was a great meeting!” Our clients pay us based on their growth, their top-line revenue. And so we get to say to our client, listen, if we say we should just do more of these ads along the same lines as we've been doing, it's because I think I will make the most money if we do it this way.

If there was a new idea that's better than that, then we should throw this idea out over because a new one's so much better. You want to believe I'm going to recommend we do that because that's how we get paid! You make a dollar, we make a penny, and you make the dollar first. So we have to get you paid first before we get paid at all. But that gives us the opportunity in the meeting when they say, “Gee, that doesn't sound that very exciting.”

It's like, you don't pay me to make exciting meetings. You pay me to make you money. So if that's what we're going to deliver, that's keeping us all honest. But the fact is, agencies, for the most part, and this is not evil, it's just the way the system works, they pay based on the amount of work, billable hours. You know what a brand new campaign requires? A lot of freaking billable hours because we're throwing away everything we were doing before. Now we have to come up with a whole new idea. We gotta cast,

Chris Torbay: We're putting every team on it. So they're all billing.

Mick Torbay: We're doing market research, we're doing focus groups. “I wonder if this new idea will work?” Billable hours. Billable hours. Holy crap! There's going to be so much money to bill. And they get the client excited, because “This is going to be so great, it's going to be so brand new, and no one's going to see it coming!? It's like, yeah, but is that what consumers want? Do they want not want to see it coming?

Chris Torbay: That's interesting.

Mick Torbay: Or they want to feel good about it.

Chris Torbay: Thing is, you ask, and this is an unscientific statement, but here you go. If you ask an average person in regular conversation, tell me about some advertising that you like? Sometimes they will name a specific ad. They will say, “I remember one of those guys shouting, ' What's up? ' That was very funny.” But then, more often than not, they'll say, “Ah, I like that lizard for the insurance company” (GIECO). Or, “I like the one where you,” oh, it is like they will, the ones that they're actually remember if you say to somebody, tell me some advertising you like. They're at least as likely or probably more likely to name a campaign because they've seen a few of those, and it's built up over time, and it's gone into the chemical memory, and that's what they remember? “Oh, have you seen the lizard for Geico?” Yes. Everyone's seen the lizard for Geico. They may not have seen the most recent one with the most recent specific joke, but they all know the campaign.

Mick Torbay: And they know he's an East Ender.

Ryan Chute: And that's what market research has also proven to be true. If we just look at the data, we see the results of these things, work tells us through their study that it's not the award-winning single campaign, single ads, that move the needle in any way. In fact, they've disproven that, that they don't move the needle at all. They get a blip of attention and an award. Great. You've got an award. The most prolific part of winning an award for an ad is the award, not the revenue that you wanted from it.

Chris Torbay: You very rarely get, but the problem being, and this is the thing, because there are exceptions that prove the rule, then everybody's holding out for that one. And to go back to the football analogy, every once in a while when the clock's running out and you're down by a few points, and you just send all your receivers to the end zone and lob the ball. And it's a jump ball, and sometimes you can actually haul it in and win the game, and sure, but that's not a strategy.

Mick Torbay: It doesn't mean throwing from the midcourt is a great idea.

Chris Torbay: It's not like it's a great idea. We've all seen it in a highlight reel, and everybody says, but you don't make that your game plan. Let's fuck up for three and a half quarters, and then in the last 10 seconds, let's throw it to a whole Hail Mary, except make sure this time you catch it. That's not a strategy going into the game. That's a strategy that kind of works occasionally, but not something to learn from.

Ryan Chute: And that's, that's effectively what we see from Les Binet and Peter Field's research, which shows us that long-term brand awareness building generates two to three times more profit for the company than a short-term sales activation strategy of the killer ad. Let's see what we can do to generate sales right now. And Byron Sharp, another famous market researcher, has taught us that we don't win at the moment of persuasion. We win many months before when we've built up momentum in the mental real estate of the brain.

Mick Torbay: I think what surprises us, maybe the people at in on this panel, is that we spend so much time working specifically on the campaign, building something that is going to generate a certain reaction in year one. And we know that if we can just get our clients from that to year two, it's going to be even bigger. It's going to be even bigger. It's going to be even bigger. And we've demonstrated it over and over again. It's pretty much. I don't want to say it's the only thing we do, but it's darn close to the only thing we do. We don't do these one-off things because that just will cause consumers to be distracted and confused.

It goes against the entire concept of branding, which is attaching this idea that the consumer cares about, to this idea that the consumer doesn't care about. What's the thing they don't care about? Our client.  Water heaters, or specifically water heaters from Dave's Water Heater. So we're trying to connect a thing they care about to a thing they don't care about, and that takes time, it takes investment, it takes consistency. This is all Pavlov shit. That defines the campaign. That's what Pavlov did. He had a campaign where he would ring the bell and give the meat. And then only give the meat when he rings the bell. And only ring the bell when he gives the meat. But it happened over and over and over again. And if next week he decides he is going to blow off an air horn and then give the meat. The dog would be like, “What the fuck's going on with the meat? I don't know what's going on.”

Chris Torbay: And I can't change, train, train my dog to do that by just having a better bell. If I had a really great bell, my dog had learned to salivate the first time. It’s not going to happen

Mick Torbay: Exactly. And if they change their mind every three weeks on what this thing's going to be, it will never work. So why do big agencies understand the concept of branding, but they don't understand the concept of a campaign, which is just branding expanded?

Chris Torbay: And the holy grail, and it almost goes back to the very first thing you talked about, it was laziness, that's the really best thing to have is a great campaign idea into which you can then put individual ads, which are even better than all of that. And if you think of it, think of it in terms of sitcoms, right? You have a great concept for a sitcom, and then there are the standout episodes within it, right? We all love Seinfeld. It was a great idea for a sitcom, and then Master of My Domain became a standout episode. Or The Simpsons has been on for however long, and the Monorail episode stands out. And if you can create a campaign where all of the ads are good, I mean, got milk won tons of awards, over the years, because the Aaron Burr ad won, and then the next year another one won because it's a great idea. You put people into this awkward situation and then, got milk? Then you've created a great campaign idea into which you can then create individual great spots.

Mick Torbay: If you're a good writer,

Chris Torbay: If you're a good writer, and that's the hard thing to do, which is to come up with a great idea that works with mediocre spots, and then works even better when people write really sweet ones.

Ryan Chute: And this isn't new information either. In 1956, Eugene Schwartz talked about this in his book, Breakthrough Advertising, and it's very much about the state of awareness and the state of sophistication of the market that we're talking about. Milk is a very sophisticated market. Everyone knows milk. So, who are we speaking to, and what is the mass desire of that need? It's put in cake. It's put with cookies; it's put in all of these different recipes. There are all of these different situations that we can make fun and interesting to remind people that is the place to find that solution. So product awareness and solution awareness. People who are most aware that they need that thing right now, “don't forget the milk when you come home, honey.” We need to have that thing.

Air conditioning, jewelry, all of these things fall into different categories, and they're on different people's spectrums of awareness and sophistication of understanding. And we have to, as writers and creative people, find an interesting way to be able to introduce these ideas back into the brain, and go, “Oh, remember that?” If we can anchor that to our brand, the bell, as it were, with Pavlov's dog, that's when we start to get the sales from that. And that takes repetition, that takes consistency. That takes something that has some sort of emotional hold because the feelings are what's anchoring it into our long-term chemistry.

Chris Torbay: And then you're going to want to watch each quote-unquote episode of that campaign. If you think of Nike's Just Do It campaign, which has been running for 30 years. They're all good, they're all emotional, they're all interesting. They all draw you into a storyline. And then within that, every once in a while, there's one that's really great.

10, 15 years ago, Shadow Runner, the woman who's jogging and managing to always find her way through the city, and sweating in the hot city, and always jogging in the shadows, including a jet goes over by and she crosses the road under the Jet's shadow. It's everything we love in a Nike ad.

Everything we expect from that campaign. Everything we know that campaign does. And yet that one you go, “Oh, that's a really good version.” Even within that, that one wins the award. Cool. You can still win an award for a one-off, but that campaign, that whole approach of here's how we are going to market Nike, we're not going to talk about the s sponginess of the air cushions or the technicality or whatever. We're going to tap into people's inner drive to reach personal bests and all that kind of stuff, that Just Do It stands for. That was in the campaign idea. And then there was a great one-off within that.

Ryan Chute: And there was an emotional environment, right? There was context, there was reference. There was that ability to make it salient, to make it relevant, to make it real to me. That’s what allows us, gives us permission as viewers, as consumers, to look at it and go, “Oh yeah, that one's good.” Because they have that's a vibe now, right? We're hanging onto something that's bigger than just this little tiny sliver.

Mick Torbay: See, I would submit that even a shitty campaign is better than no campaign at all. If you can find something consistent, something you can commit to, something you can do all the time. Something where consumers can put you in a box. That's not a bad thing. Consumers want to put you in a box. What's a Volvo (Volvo Group)?

Chris Torbay: Safe car.

Mick Torbay: It's a safe car. That's it. That's just it, that's it. It's a safe car. Good. That's fine.

Chris Torbay: At least you're in a box.

Mick Torbay: At least you're not in a box that people understand not, and when someone says, “I'm buying a car for my kids. She's going off to college. I wanted to have a car that's not necessarily super fast.” Well, it's like, she’s getting a Volvo. Safe car, at least you got that thing covered. It ticks that box.

Chris Torbay: A great example of that too, is what's the pizza place in your town where you always sing the jingle, right? Like you, you remember, and every town's got a pizza place where everybody can sing the phone number that is not particularly brilliant bit of information to have put into people, but it's enough. It's at least something to Mick’s point, it's at least something to have that campaign. If you can also, then convey other higher-order benefits. It's got real Italian flavor. It's got other things, other than just memorability.

Mick Torbay: But that would be a good campaign. I'm saying even a shitty campaign is good. Who's the car dealer? I think he's dead now. Who’s likes “it’s gonna be HUGE!!” Awful idea. If they'd come to us, we would say, " You can't build a brand on ‘HUGE’.” But fuck it. He did it for 30 years, and everybody knows who I'm talking about. I don't know his name, and I know he is dead.

Mick Torbay: But the point is, it was not a good campaign, but I'll bet you if you were one of the 10 guys competing against that bastard, you'd be like, “son of a bitch. I wish we at least had that.”  At least had fricking HUGGEE.

Ryan Chute: There are sales guys in there going, " Man, we can't beat those guys. They always get all the customers.” They are huge.

Chris Torbay: “Why is huge getting people, and we're trying to talk about our expertise and our quality. They're just a bunch of idiots, and yet huge is winning.” It's because he's been consistent, and at least people know him, and it stands for something, and it reaches a certain part of somebody's psyche somewhere.

Ryan Chute: It’s enough to get them in the door.

Mick Torbay: Give them a shot. Get them on the short list. Even if it's “ah, I hate that guy's commercials.” You hate what guy's commercials, right? “That guy.”

You're on the short list, which is why I believe for the small and medium-sized business, this is a unique time in the world where the biggest agencies in the world have abandoned the most powerful thing that there is. And that you can do this, and you can do it yourself. You can do it with us. That's the only thing we do. But in fact, you can do it by yourself by simply finding something that matters, connecting it to the thing that doesn't matter, that's you. And then do the same thing over and over again. Even if you think it's boring or at least not novel anymore, stick with it. Because after five years, people will tend to want to. See it again and like it, and they'll be like, “Oh, that's crazy, Chris, with this thing.”

Ryan Chute: And it's this juxtaposition of people are looking for something new, interesting and different, and the equal and opposite truth is consistency helps embed, and help with retention and recall. So which one's true? And the answer is they're both true, but you can have one with the other. It's not one, they're not mutually exclusive.

Mick Torbay: Having both is ideal. Having one is really good. It's still better than most, which has nothing. And in the trades, a lot of our viewers are in the trades. Which is not a category that is inherently interesting or exciting. So to have something in the trades that jumps out is not easy. If you're writing for a parachute school, fucking easy as hell. But if you're writing for oven cleaner, it's harder. But major advertisers, national coast-to-coast advertising in the trades. Absolute shit. Just table stakes, quality service, selection, and price. It's just so done, so badly and with no effort whatsoever, that the small business owner working with his local radio station or TV station can absolutely come up with something that beats a national brand. It shouldn't be possible, but I'm telling you it is. It happens all the time because we're beating these guys, and we're a bunch of freaking dudes on a podcast.

Ryan Chute: It's true. And it is. That's the competitive advantage. When you think about gorilla warfare, that's exactly how gorillas win the game. That's why Gorilla Marketing is a thing. We win them out through sentiment. We don't win them out through sheer force, right? They're going up against formal armies that have the resources, have the manpower, have everything that they need to win. The only way to win this game is through a gorilla effort of communication at a higher level. And I think that's really to make our final point is where people struggle the most with their stories, and with their interesting, and differentiators. So new, interesting and different is in the campaign idea. It's not new, interesting, and different every time you run an ad.

Mick Torbay: No, it's still water heaters.

Ryan Chute: It's still water heaters. But every single time, you started off with having the mad scientist in the basement and the logical, stable wife who does all of the things and holds the ship together. That's an interesting dynamic that we can lean into. That's the new interest characters.

Mick Torbay: Characters that don't go together there, simple as that. Characters that don't go together, this person and this person do not fit. Now jam them together and watch what happens, sir.

Ryan Chute: Watch what happens. Watch the chaos ensue, and therein lies that, so where's the consistent come in, the jingle, and the sound effects, and the slogans, and what we call brandable chunks that are repeated over and over again, that embed into the fabric of your brain that think. That bad thing happens. I call these people because good things come from it.  And that's fundamentally this juxtaposition, this mix working together in an interesting way. The chances of you having a company that has an amazing origin story that is going to absolutely rock the world for the next five years is basically nonexistent. It just doesn't happen. There are very few of those characters.

Mick Torbay: Unless you're a tremendously interesting person. Which Chris is.

Ryan Chute: Chris is a tremendously interesting compare to the rest of us.

Ryan Chute: So what does this mean for small business owners? It means that ad campaigns will be cute and clever every single time. You have to commit to a lot of affordable retention and an amazing message that makes people feel. Not everything all at once. Rather, more and more familiar and confident that you are the company to know, like,  and trust when they need what you have to sell. The message has always and will always make the media channel work, not the other way around.

Your greatest and best use of your marketing dollars will continue to be getting your message right. And the best way to get a potential buyer to love you for a long time is to invest a long time in communicating with your prospective buyer. Skip the short-term instant gratification and invest in your courtship. The longer your purchase cycle, the longer the courtship. Great businesses are built on repeat buyers. Not one-night stands. Until next time, this is Advertising in America.. Thanks for tuning in.

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Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nugget of marketing magic. Wanna hear more? Subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with your friends.

Do you have questions or topics you want us to cover? Join us on our socials @advertisinginamerica.

Wanna spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Ryan Chute today.

Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

MARKETING & CAMPAIGN REFERENCES:

• Dave Thomas, Wendy’s Founder, Commercial Appearances Record Set
• 2010. Old Spice, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
• 2006. Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign
• 2025. Mountain Dew Super Bowl Commercial, Featuring Seal
• 1995. Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial, “Bud” “Weis” “Er”
• 1992. PepsiCo Cindy Crawford’s Pepsi Commercial
• 1993. Aaron Burr, Got Milk Commercial
• 1984. Apple’s Super Bowl Commercial, directed by Ridley Scott
• 2026. Budweiser, Super Bowl LX Commercial 'American Icons'
• 1986. Budweiser, Clydesdales TV Campaigns
• 1978. Coca-Cola Super Bowl Commercial, “Hey Kid, Catch”
• GEICO Mascot
• 1997. Apple's "Think Different" / "To the Crazy Ones"
• Les Binet & Peter Field, Long-Term Brand Campaign Result
• Classical Conditioning: Pavlov’s Dog is Advertising
• 1956. Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising [Book]
• 1988. Nike “Just Do It” Campaign
• 1992. Seinfiled, Season 4, Episode 11. “The Contest”
• 1993. The Simpsons, Season 4, Episode 12. “Marge vs. the Monorail”
• 1988. Nike, Shadow Runner Ad
• Fuccillio Autoplex “It’s Gonna Be HUGE” Campaign

When marketing departments begin advertising campaigns, they consider numerous factors.

They might wonder…

• ‍Who are we targeting? What value are we providing? What problem are we solving?
• What needs or wants does our audience have? What’s the goal of the campaign?
• What stage of our marketing funnel does this fit into?
• ‍And perhaps most importantly: What makes people do the things they do?

For marketers to have effective campaigns, they need to understand the philosophy behind advertising.

What Is Advertising Philosophy?

Advertising philosophy relies on techniques and knowledge from liberal arts and science to predict human responses and behaviors to ads. By predicting those responses, marketers can run campaigns to fulfill their company’s needs.

Understanding the philosophy helps them to persuade users to take the action they want them to.

These persuasive messages are crafted, and then data is used to track consumer responses and adjust accordingly.

Once advertisers have run multiple campaigns, they’ll see trends emerge that they can capitalize on to increase sales.

Traditional advertising, though, is being questioned more and more lately.

Why Isn’t Traditional Advertising Good Anymore

Since in traditional usages, advertisements tended to be forced upon unwilling audiences, it has been seen as unethical.

In the age of technology, though, users are able to seek out information more purposefully. This gives traditional advertising schools of thought room to evolve.

Now that your audiences are gathering by themselves, you can approach them more thoughtfully and ethically.

If someone is conducting research on a topic your company is an industry expert in, then that user will benefit from your content.

You can offer information and design marketing materials for more willing audiences than ever before. Being an educational source is going to benefit your audience because they’ll be learning from an expert.

But it’ll also benefit you, too. Your ads will be more effective once you establish trust with potential leads and authority in your industry.

If you’ve ever had a hard time designing advertising campaigns to align with your ethical beliefs as well as the needs of your company, then we’re here for you.

At Wizard of Ads, we understand that consumers shouldn’t be accosted with selling messages that they don’t want. We can help you design materials that land in front of your audience when they most want and need them. That makes for more effective marketing.

Ready to start? Contact us today!

The 7 Types of Advertising Media

Before we get to the two secrets of designing highly ethical and effective advertising materials, let’s go over the seven most common types. That will give us a good background before we go on to the secrets.

Direct Mail Advertising

With direct mail advertising, you’ll be sending printed materials through the mail. This is one of the oldest forms of advertising.

To be successful with this type of advertising, you’ll need to either send out a massive amount of materials, or you’ll need to very specifically target an audience. Typically, companies focus on sending out as many letters and envelopes as they can.

Mailing lists can be purchased based on the criteria your marketing team sets for your success.

Social Media Advertising

By creating social media accounts for your business, you can interact directly with customers.

Social media is a great way to get your brand messaging out there. You can easily discern who your ideal audience is because of the way people use social media.

When users follow and like other accounts, it provides a clear picture of their interests. That means you can really be specific with who you’re targeting. You can also build and maintain a strong customer base. By posting regularly and providing valuable information on social channels, then your followers will grow to trust you.

When customers trust a company, they’re much more likely to purchase services or products. Social media allows you to stay on the forefront of people’s minds.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

This one is exactly what it sounds like. Every time a potential customer clicks on your link, you pay for that click. There are many different forms of PPC advertising, but search ads through search engines are one of the most utilized.

By identifying keywords and search terms related to your service or product, you can attach your ads to searches that are relevant.

If you sell chocolate, you could utilize PPC to have your ads show up when people search for “Valentines Day.” It would be a good use of your marketing budget to align with searches that are relevant in this way.

Mobile Advertising

This is a broad category. Mobile advertising refers to any type of ad that shows up on a mobile device.

The two main types of mobile devices are phones and tablets. You can use SMS text messages to send ads directly to people’s mobile phones. Or, you can use banners and pop-ups that appear on the mobile version of your website.

With so much data available, you can tailor your mobile ads to any particular group of people you think is likely to respond.

Since people almost always have their mobile devices on them, this is an increasingly important ad medium to utilize.

Print Advertising

Print ads, like in newspapers or magazines, are another more traditional way of advertising.

It involves choosing a print publication that you think would align with your values and provide you with readers who need your solution.

This can be an excellent method to select particular sub-groups of the market.

There’s a magazine for almost every interest or hobby, and there’s a local newspaper in many communities. These are two good filters to start with: interest and location.

With geographic location and information on interests, you’ll be able to carve out a space for your brand where viewers will appreciate the message. That means they’ll be more likely to engage!

Broadcast Advertising

Broadcast advertising refers to television ads, radio ads and billboards. These ads are “cast” to a “broad” audience.

While you can still narrow down the audience somewhat with this medium, the point is more to reach many people at once.

Think of the Super Bowl. You’re targeting people who like football…sort of. With a much broader audience than most football games, companies take advantage of the opportunity to reach so many people at once.

The Super Bowl’s broad audience puts the commercial slots at a higher price than for regular season games, where the audience is more narrow.

Reaching as many people as possible is becoming less utilized, but it remains a significant method. It can work, but it works best for companies with huge marketing budgets.

Other Media

It’s essential to leave this open ended. With the rate of change that we experience with technology, there are going to be new media opportunities popping up all over the place.

Take advantage of new channels to spread your message, otherwise you could risk being left behind.

The world is increasingly moving toward digital media and resources, and you have to follow your audience.

The Secrets in the Philosophy of Advertising

Now that we’ve covered the seven main types of advertising media, it’s time to discover the two secrets to optimal advertising philosophy. This philosophy is adjusted from the traditional philosophy to fit the current state of our society as it relates to marketing.

Assert Your Presence Where You’re Wanted

To avoid bothering an audience that has no interest in you, send your marketing messages to people who want to hear it.

People often mistake this theory to mean that you can’t contact anyone who doesn’t already know about you.

What it really means is to focus on forming relationships with people who are likely to engage. It’s more effective for you. You’ll spend less time and money getting your leads.

Sometimes people don’t know they want or need your product or services. So you can align your business with something closely related that the consumer does know they need.

For example, if you are selling protein bars, you might want to advertise to gym-goers. If people go to the gym, they’re more likely to focus on their macronutrient intake. Even if they aren’t looking for protein bars in their head, they are aware of their desire to focus on nutrition.

And your company offers a nutritional solution that won’t fall on deaf ears to that audience. If you advertise your protein bars to everyone walking down the street, you’re wasting resources.

And you’re bothering an audience who isn’t going to be as likely to care.

The takeaway is to go where you’re wanted. It will make the most of your dollars and time, and it will be better for your audience too.

Provide Value Before Purchases

For advertisers to maximize their credibility, they should offer information for free to their audience. Your audience is giving you their time (and often information) when they engage with your materials. Make it an even trade each step along the way.

When you sign a client, they pay you for a service. Establish a strong connection by trading their initial time for valuable expertise.

This method will help prevent users from feeling tricked, led along or that their time was wasted.

Do your current marketing strategies include these two secrets?

Maybe you need some help choosing your captive and willing audiences.

Or, maybe you need help providing value before the point of sale.

Either way, we’re here for you. Let’s get to know each other to decide if Wizard of Ads would be a good fit for you.

Whatever your needs are, we’d like to hear them. Contact us today!

Two weeks ago, one of my clients asked me to explain our marketing strategy to a guy from a private equity firm that is hoping to buy a chunk of my client’s company for a few hundred million dollars. When we were retained 7 years ago, the company was bringing in barely $9m a year. Using radio as our primary driver of new business, we did nearly $250m in 2020 and are tracking to surpass $300m in 2021. So far, so good, right?

The private equity guy suggested that we should redirect our radio budget to online advertising because, “no one listens to the radio anymore.”

I said, “You’re a numbers guy, right?”

“You could say that.”

“Have you ever heard of the Gallup Poll?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Are you familiar with the math that determines the sample sizes required for statistical accuracy?”

“Only the little bit that I was taught in college.”

“So you understand the margin of error depends inversely on the square root of the sample size. The smaller the universe of people, the larger the percentage of that universe must be queried to achieve statistical accuracy. If you want to measure the opinions of 10 people, you have to ask all 10 of them. You can’t ask just 5 and then extrapolate.” His noncommittal grunt made it obvious that he knew none of this, so I continued.

“But the larger the universe, the smaller the percentage you have to poll. You have to query 250 persons to measure a universe of just 700 people with a 3 percent margin of error, but a sample size of only 384 persons will measure the opinions of one million people with that same degree of accuracy.” Another noncommittal grunt. I continued, “When they want to get blisteringly accurate, The Gallup Poll will have 1,500 persons in final tabulation, but they typically use just 1,004 respondents to measure the entire population of the Unites States. Nielsen, on the other hand, polls 1,011 persons per day just to measure the radio audience in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dallas, Denver, Tampa, and Phoenix each receive sample sizes of 1,200 per day, and Nielsen samples 4,494 New Yorkers per day just to measure the city of New York.”

And then I dropped the technology on him. “Nielsen respondents carry an electronic device called a portable people meter that detects an electronic watermark identifying the radio station a person is listening to. These electronic devices don’t lie. They tell us exactly how many people are listening, and when.”

But the P. E. guy didn’t give up. He said, “The online budget rises and falls seasonally with the sales volume of the business, but the radio budget remains the same every month. How do you account for that?”

Fortunately, my client has an in-house employee who manages the online budget and she was on the phone with us. I said, “The objective of a radio campaign is to become the name the listener thinks of immediately and feels the best about whenever they need what we sell. Today’s ads aren’t meant to sell customers today. Today’s ads are just one more tap of the hammer as we drive our message into their minds. We want to achieve automatic, involuntary recall. Scientists call it ‘procedural memory.”

That’s when I asked the digital manager, “Do you agree that Google is the new phone book?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“How many search strings account for most of the clicks that send people to our website?”

“Just 10 search strings are responsible for most of our clicks.”

“And how many of those search strings include the name of our company?”

“The top 9,” she said. “So the radio ads are selling the customers, then they go to our website to retrieve our contact information?”

“Exactly.”

“Search string number 10 – the one that doesn’t include the name of our company – what percentage of our clicks does it get?”

“About 5 percent.”

“So without the name recognition and goodwill built through radio, we would have done only 12-and-a-half million dollars last year instead of 250 million dollars. Is that what I hear you saying?”

“Yes.”

And then I wrapped up my conversation with the private equity guy by saying, “Roughly 50 percent of America spends enough time listening to the radio each week that you can easily reach them with sufficient repetition to become a household word. The other half listens rarely, if ever. But it’s amazing how much you can sell to half the population of America.”

‍Let's connect when you're ready for this.

We are exposed to countless amounts of ads in our lifetime. Most we don't remember, but there are some that we will never forget and more likely than not, we are universally remembering the same ones. So, why do these ads remain in our heads years and years later? It certainly isn't on accident. The truth is, the best ads follow a very specific and thought-out formula created and designed by some of the most talented advertising wizards. They are the masterminds behind what makes these advertisements truly legendary. If making famous ads was easy, we'd probably remember most of the ads we've consumed throughout our lives, but we don't. Legendary ads aren't created overnight it takes careful planning and a lot of wizardry. What wizardry do you ask? Well, you're in the right place. We've got the spell book on the greatest ads of all time and how you can join the roster of legends.

4 Basic Types of Advertising

Advertising has come a long way over the years. The digital age has certainly transformed how we advertise in the modern world. However, we've also remained to keep using the same traditional mediums as they are still highly effective. Let's go over the four most basic types of advertising used today.

Internet Advertising

Starting with our most modern advertising platform, the internet. Internet advertising is a form of advertising that uses the internet and the World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising) and mobile advertising. Internet advertising evolved rapidly in the early years of the 21st century with the emergence of web banner advertising, text ads and then rich media ads. Some reports place the global digital advertising market at nearly $980 billion to over $1 trillion in 2026.

TV Advertising

TV advertising is a form of advertising that uses television commercials to deliver messages to consumers. TV advertising is one of the most popular forms of advertising, and it is used to promote a wide variety of products and services. One of the benefits of TV ads is that they can reach a large number of people at once. Additionally, TV advertising can create an emotional response in viewers, which can make them more likely to remember the advertisement and what it was for. TV advertising is also effective at building brand awareness. When viewers see an advertisement multiple times, they are more likely to remember the product or service being advertised and to consider purchasing it in the future. Want to enhance your TV advertising? At Wizard of Ads for Essential Services, we help businesses become advertising masters. With our acclaimed expertise, you’ll soon be generating ads that attract more customers and boost sales.

Radio Advertising

Radio advertising is a form of marketing communication that uses radio stations to deliver advertising messages to the listening public. Radio advertising may be local, regional or national in scope. It may be targeted to specific demographic groups, or it may be broad-based. Radio advertising has been around since the early 1920s, and it continues to be a popular marketing medium today. Several things make radio advertising an attractive marketing option. For one thing, radio reaches a large audience. In the United States, there are more than 225 million radio listeners. Traditional AM/FM advertising is forecast at $12.73 billion, with digital radio adding roughly $2.9 billion to $3 billion. That’s a lot of potential customers! Radio advertising is also very affordable. It’s usually less expensive to advertise on the radio than it is to advertise on television. And, because radio commercials are brief, they don’t require a big investment in time or money.

Print Advertising

Print advertising is a form of advertising that uses printed materials to promote a product or service. Some of the most common forms of print advertising include newspapers, magazines and direct mail. Print advertising can be a very effective way to reach out to potential customers and generate leads because it allows businesses to target a specific audience based on their interests (i.e. advertising a make-up line in a women's magazine). However, it is important to make sure that your print advertisements are well-designed and engaging to achieve the best results.

8 Best Ads and Ad Campaigns of All Time and Why They are Successful

Now that you know the four basic types of advertising and how they are effective, let's go over the best ads and ad campaigns we’ve seen throughout the years.

Google - Year in Search

Let's start with Google's "Year in Search" ad. This popular ad campaigned on the internet as a YouTube video back in 2010. It was ranked as one of the best ads of that year. The video is a montage of the most popular Google searches from 2009 to 2010. The ad is interesting because it doesn't focus on selling a product or service. Instead, it focuses on showing the viewer what has interested people over the past year. This makes it a great way to connect with potential customers. It also gives them a glimpse into what Google is all about: providing information to their users. This type of advertising is called "brand marketing." It's a way to build awareness and create an emotional connection with potential customers. When done well, it can be very effective in getting people to remember your company or product.

Procter and Gamble - Proud sponsors of Moms

Next on the list is Procter & Gamble's "Thank You, Mom" TV commercial ad. This ad came out in 2012 and was one of the best ads of the year because it showed the power of a mother's love. It was very emotional and tugged on people's heartstrings. The ad also provided a feeling of nostalgia. It showed different mothers from all over the world helping their children with various activities. Nostalgia marketing is a powerful tactic that can be very effective in getting people to make buying choices. In the commercial, different Olympians thanked their mothers for everything they had done for them. The ad was very effective in showing how much mothers mean to their children. This made it very memorable and truly resonated with viewers.

Coca-Cola - Share a Coke

This ingenious ad campaign started in 2011 in Australia. Coca-Cola took its famous logo and replaced the text with 150 common first names. For example, “Share a Coke with John” or “Share a Coke with Sarah.” This was a fun and unique way to motivate consumers to buy a Coke and share it with friends and family. The campaign was an instant success and was eventually rolled out to other countries. So what made this ad campaign so successful? There are several reasons. First of all, it was very creative and unique. Most people had never seen an ad like this before. Secondly, the campaign was very interactive. Consumers could go online and find out what name was on their Coke bottle. And lastly, the campaign was very social media-friendly. Consumers could post photos of themselves with their “Share a Coke” bottles on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, which boosted Coca-Cola's brand awareness.

Absolut Vodka - The Absolut Bottle

In 1986, the famous Andy Warhol created Absolut Vodka's famous print ad campaign, "The Absolut Bottle." This campaign was one of the best ads of its time because it took the generic shape of the Absolute bottle and made it the most recognizable bottle at the time. The print ads were designed to make the bottle look like it was part of the environment, i.e. yellow cabs arranged in the shape of a bottle. This campaign was so successful that it ran 25 years and is still recognized today as one of the best ads of all time. When you can take a generic product and made it a work of art that grabs people's attention, that is where true print ads thrive.

Volkswagen - Think Small

Let's go back in time to an even older print ad campaign, Volkswagon's "Think Small" ads. This campaign challenged its viewers with the idea that driving a smaller German car instead of the bigger, more popular American car was the cool new thing. Mind you, the ad came out 15 years after World War II when everyone was driving American cars that were HUGE by comparison. The "Think Small" campaign was a hit and helped Volkswagon become one of the most successful car companies in America. It played off of Americans' pride in their country and their desire to be seen as cutting-edge and fashionable.

California Milk Processor Board - Got Milk? (feat: Wolverine)

One of America's most famous ad campaigns, "Got Milk" really hit it home when it featured Wolverine. The California Milk Processor Board's print ad came out in 1993 and featured the X-Men character with a milk mustache and the slogan, "I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do is drink milk." The ad was so popular that it was even turned into a TV commercial. The California Milk Processor Board did a great job of playing to Wolverine's persona as a badass superhero. The ad's clever slogan and visual punch helped it stand out from other milk ads at the time. It's no wonder that it became one of the best-known milk ads in America.

Apple - Get a Mac

Apple's "Get a Mac" commercial ad was one of the best commercials of all time because it was funny, relatable and memorable. The ad campaign ran from 2006 to 2009 and featured Mac (played by Justin Long) and PC (played by John Hodgman) competing with each other in a series of tongue-in-cheek ads. The ads were so popular that they spawned several parodies, and even today, people still reference the "Get a Mac" ads when talking about Apple and PC rivalry. The ads were successful in highlighting the differences between Macs and PCs and made Macs seem cooler and more user-friendly than PCs. They also provided a 42 percent increase in Apple's market share growth.

KFC - F*CK Apology Ad

KFC's "FCK" Apology Ad was one of the best ads in recent memory. The ad was in response to when the business ran out of chicken in the U. K. in 2018. In the print ad, it shows an empty KFC bucket with the letters jumbled around to read "FCK." The ad was praised for its humor and honesty. It was a refreshing change from the usual corporate apologies, which are often dry and formulaic. The ad also helped to increase KFC's sales in the U. K. after the chicken shortage. The jumbled letters created a visual pun that was amusing and memorable, and rather than trying to gloss over the problem, KFC owned up to their mistake and apologized publicly. This showed that the company was willing to be transparent and accountable for its actions, which promoted positive feelings about the brand.

Bonus - An Ad that Went Terribly Wrong

While it’s always important to share the good ads, it's just as important to share the bad ads as well. Bad ads are a standing example of what you shouldn’t do when creating your ads, so let’s get into it.

Facebook - Introducing Meta Video Ad

Facebook is no stranger to creating interesting and innovative ad campaigns. However, their latest attempt, "Introducing Meta," was anything but a success. The ad features Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg giving a walk-through on how he is changing his company name to "Meta" and introducing his new project, "The Metaverse." This ad was a huge flop because first, they have Zuckerberg, one of the most awkward and controversial figures in recent years, presenting the commercial. The ad also gives off an unsettling "Black Mirror" vibe if you also mix it with the longest and most boring infomercial you can think of. In the end, this campaign was nothing more than a mess and a costly one at that, dipping their trustworthy score by 6.2 percent. If you want to create legendary ads that are remembered for years to come, contact Wizard of Ads for Essential Services today. Our team of advertising wizards will help you create engaging, entertaining and profitable ads that stand out from the competition. With our help, you can boost your sales and take your business to the next level. Contact us today to get started!

Your sales pitch is ineffective and your content is not persuasive. In other words, your customer is not impressed. Your offering, however, is groundbreaking. Everyone who sees your solution is wowed by your creativity, your innovation, and your value. So how do you get your foot in the door? The answer is simple: ethos, pathos & logos. Ethos, pathos & logos are essential elements of persuasion. From television ads to public speeches, understanding how these elements work can help you be a more effective communicator. But why are ethos, pathos & logos vital for your business? As a business owner, communication is paramount to your business's success. In fact, effective communication is often what separates successful businesses from unsuccessful ones. Regardless of your profession, understanding how to use these elements can make you a more persuasive communicator. The fact is, humans are complicated creatures, and we don't always respond to advertising in the ways that marketers expect. From weak arguments to emotional manipulation, there are several ways that persuasive ads can fail. Fortunately, understanding how to use ethos, pathos & logos effectively in your advertising can help you avoid many common mistakes.

Role of Rhetoric in Advertising

As defined by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, rhetoric is the art of persuading an audience through effective communication. From politicians and lawyers to advertisers and educators, rhetoric is a critical tool for anyone who wants to influence others. And while it can be used for good or evil, the power of rhetoric should not be underestimated. Divided into three main branches (ethos, pathos & logos), rhetoric can be used in various ways to persuade an audience. To be successful, however, rhetoric must consider the audience, the speaker, and the purpose of the communication. Using ethos, pathos & logos, rhetoric is used to appeal to the consumer's sense of credibility, emotions or logic. Unfortunately, rhetoric is not always used for good. In fact, it can be used to manipulate an audience and achieve selfish goals. Thus, it's important to be aware of the different ways rhetoric can be used, and to use it responsibly. Wizard of Ads for Essential Services houses the strategies and methods to help you improve your persuasion skills, regardless of your industry. To learn how we can help you develop impactful, non-manipulative content, book a call today.

The Rhetorical Triangle

The rhetorical triangle is a three-sided figure that represents the relationship between the speaker, the audience and the message. The triangle is a valuable tool for understanding and analyzing the different elements of a conversation. For example, if you're presenting to your client, they’re the audience, you’re the speaker, and your presentation is the message. The rhetorical triangle can help you analyze the different elements of your communication and understand how they interact with each other. It can also help you understand how to create an effective communication strategy. Using ethos, pathos & logos, the speaker can effectively communicate with their audience with credibility, emotional and logical appeal. But it's not just about using these elements in isolation. The speaker needs to use them in a way that is appropriate for the situation and the audience. So how do these three categories in persuasive advertising work?

The 3 Musketeers Of Persuasive Ads

Each of these rhetorical strategies has the potential to be effective in its own right. When they are combined, however, the results are far more powerful. Used for business content or sales pitches, ethos, pathos & logos make the difference between boring and engaging content. To create the most effective content possible, here's a quick overview of how each element works:

Ethos

Ethos, the appeal to ethics, is a way of convincing someone of the reliability of the person making the argument. In other words, ethos is all about convincing your audience that you're someone worth listening to. If you can establish yourself as an expert on the topic or as someone with a reputation for being trustworthy, your audience is more likely to be receptive to your argument. Many advertisers do this through celebrity endorsements. If you’re not a celebrity, however, there are many other ways to establish ethos. One is to point out your credentials or qualifications. Let your audience know if you're an expert on the topic or have done extensive research. This will help to build trust and credibility. Another way to establish ethos is through your tone and delivery. If you come across as confident and sincere, your audience is more likely to trust what you have to say. Finally, you can also try to establish common ground with your audience. If you can find a way to connect with them on a personal level, they'll be more likely to trust your argument. Establishing ethos is an integral part of any argument. By taking the time to build trust and credibility with your audience, you'll be more likely to win consumers.

Pathos

Pathos, the second mode of persuasion, appeals to your audience's emotions. This is often done using stories or examples that evoke an emotional response. For example, if you're trying to convince a consumer to purchase your product or service, you might tell them a story. This story can be about how it helped someone in a similar situation. Furthermore, you can also use pathos to create a sense of urgency or excitement about your argument. This is done by appealing to the audience's desire for change or their fear of missing out on something great. When used effectively, pathos can be a powerful tool for persuasion. However, it's essential to use this mode of persuasion sparingly and only when appropriate for the situation. Otherwise, you run the risk of coming across as manipulative or insincere. By effectively implementing pathos into your argument, you can more effectively connect with your audience and persuade them to see things from your perspective.

Logos

Logos, the final mode of persuasion, appeals to the audience's sense of logic and reason. This could involve using data, statistics, or other evidence to support your claims. According to Aristotle, logos is often thought of as the most objective and practical mode of persuasion. This is because it relies on facts and evidence to make its case. When used effectively, logos is a powerful tool for convincing your audience that your argument is valid and worth considering. If you're trying to convince your audience of something using logos, it's important to ensure that your evidence is strong. You'll also want to be careful not to over-rely on logos, as this can make your argument seem impersonal. Using logos alongside another mode of persuasion, such as pathos or ethos, can help create a more well-rounded argument. When used effectively, logos can be a powerful tool for convincing your audience that your argument is worth considering. From getting to know your customer to crafting powerful arguments, a lot goes into generating persuasive content. By implementing all three rhetorical devices into your argument, you can create a well-rounded and persuasive case. However, this can be a timely and challenging task for business owners.

At Wizard of Ads for Essential Services, we have the knowledge and experience to craft powerful and compelling content to grow and scale your business. Our team of experts can help you design and implement a rhetorical content strategy that will engage and convert your audience. To learn more about how we can help you close more deals and grow your business, book a call with us today.

Chronos is chronological time.

Chronos appears more than 50 times in the original New Testament.

Kairos is a pregnant moment in time, an inflection-point of consequence.

Does it surprise you that Kairos appears more than 85 times?

Each of us vividly remembers those Kairos moments when we decided to turn the steering wheel of Life and begin traveling in a whole new direction.

Jim Burns is a counselor. His voice is heard on more than 800 radio stations each day and he has 3 million books in print. But I didn’t know any of that prior to him appearing as a guest speaker at our church last week.

I tell you this only because Jim Burns said something that I really needed to hear.

“I had to learn to say ’no’ to good things, to say ‘yes’ to the most important things.”

That was a Kairos moment for me because it instantly crystallized something in my mind that had previously been only the foggy awareness that I was speaking with so many people each day that I no longer had time to take a deep breath and calm my thoughts.

Then Jim said it again, but differently.

“But see what I’m saying is sometimes we just have to say ‘no’ to good things even, to say yes to the most important things. That’s how we declutter. That’s how we run light.”

Two days later, I was surprised by a video on Youtube in which my friend Ryan Deiss mentions me by name. He had posted that video a couple of weeks before Jim Burns spoke at our church.

Speaking of himself, Ryan says,

“I literally had zero recollection whatsoever of what I did, or what any of my companies did those weeks, either. It’s just like they were a complete blur. More than likely, I spent all my time responding to whatever emergency someone else decided was important for me on that particular day.”

Wow. Ryan Deiss was speaking exactly what I had been feeling for more than a year.

There are now 87 Wizard of Ads partners and many hundreds of clients, so I go to bed most nights exhausted by the long days, the countless conversations, and the constant feeling that I am somehow letting everyone down.

But Ryan wasn’t finished.

“Scale creates chaos. So if you want to get bigger, you have to insist on focus and simplicity. It is a bit of a paradox, but the key to scale is actually to do less, not more. Because when you force yourself to do less, you shift the emphasis from quantity to impact. And at scale, output matters a lot more than activity.”

We – not just me, but all of us – need to be on guard that we don’t allow the “merely urgent” to displace the truly important.

Have you ever noticed that the things that are truly important are rarely urgent, and things that are “exclamation-point URGENT” are rarely of lasting importance?

Urgent things are momentary, but constant.

Important things are forever, but they can always wait.

And then one day, they can’t wait any longer.

And by then, it’s often too late.

For those of you who are curious, Indy Beagle has posted in the rabbit hole the Ryan Deiss Youtube video that I mentioned, as well as the Youtube video of Jim Burns speaking at our church.

Those two messages, just 48 hours apart, created a Kairos moment for me.

If you have been feeling what I was feeling and what Ryan was describing, maybe those videos will do the same for you.

You can watch the videos or click past them if you don’t have time.

Believe me, I completely understand.