Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

What happens when you pit human copywriters against AI?

In this no-holds-barred episode, Ryan Chute referees as ad wizards Mick Torbay and Chris Torbay duke it out over whether AI is the future of advertising—or just another way to make mediocre ads faster.

From Budweiser frogs to Old Spice horses, they reveal why AI can only remix old ideas while humans invent the unforgettable. But they also admit: sometimes, "middlest" ads are all you need. 

In this episode of Advertising in America, Ryan, Mick, and Chris go toe-to-toe over perhaps the biggest question in modern marketing: Should AI be writing your ad copy? 🚨

Should you trust a robot with your copy, or is that creative suicide? Tune in to find out.

Episode Highlights

• Why AI can’t (yet) invent campaignable, unforgettable ideas.
• When AI is great for testing, data, and speed.
• How to spot when you’re lowering the bar—and losing business to competitors who think differently.

Whether you're a brand-builder navigating the AI landscape or a creative looking to defend your craft, this conversation will sharpen your instincts—and challenge your instincts about letting robots in the creative room.

▶️ Tap in for the showdown—then decide: are you ready to hand the mic to AI?

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💬 Drop a comment: Would YOU trust AI with your ad copy?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

The most important thing to understand about AI is that it has to be trained, and what you train it on is important. It will never suggest an ad with a bunch of guys sitting around having a Bud, calling their friends just to shout “what's up”, and it will never suggest that, “Hey ladies, the man on the horse is the man your man could smell like.” Human writers created those unique ideas.

AI is really good at seeing patterns, amalgamating ideas, looking at what's out there and mimicking that. AI compiles what's already been written by humans. And says, “I can do that,” and it can, but what it cannot do, at least for now, is come up with something that no one else would've thought of. Ideas that break the pattern.

This is some of the powers that I see AI bringing to us is that instead of it taking us two hours to do that, we can do that in five minutes.

Ryan Chute: In today's episode of Advertising in America, we will pit man against machine. Should AI, ChatGPT, be writing your ad copy, or should we trust in humans to keep things interesting? Fighting for the machine, here's Mick Torbay.

Mick Torbay: Anyone who says AI will never replace humans doing creative work is probably kidding themselves.

It's only a matter of time, and you've probably already heard some ads or viewed some ads that were written by ChatGPT or one of the other ones, and it's very likely you may not even know that you're listening to words written by a robot. Half the stuff you scroll past on TikTok is AI. Hell, it's probably a robot voice that's reading it too. You can totally tell it's an AI voice, but they're getting better by the week. Pretty soon, you won't notice it so much anymore, if at all, in a lot of cases.

So if you wanna give the job of writing your commercials to a computer, well, this is the first time in history you'd have a shot of getting away with it. And let's face it, the price is right. The reason you might get away with it is because most commercials, and I've talked about this before, but most commercials are not written very well. It's a meat grinder of stuff the client wants to put into the messaging.

Back in the old days, the client would tell the sales rep what they wanted to talk about. The rep would write it down, bring it to the writer at the newspaper or the radio station or the TV station and say. Make the ad about this. The ad writer who just wants a happy rep would do their best to squeeze in the things that matter to the client and hope for approval. This is how it worked for nearly a century, and that's why most ads suck. Garbage in. Garbage out.

Every business owner in every category gave the same list to the ad writers because they all feel the same pain. They all have the same priorities, and that's why they all sound the same. Which brings us to AI. You see, AI is really good at seeing patterns, amalgamating ideas, looking at what's out there and mimicking that. AI compiles what's already been written by humans and says, “I can do that,” and it can.

But what it cannot do, at least for now, is come up with something that no one else would've thought of. Ideas that break the pattern, what AI will not do is push back on the client. If you ask it to write an ad with three ideas in it, that's exactly what it'll do. If you ask me to write an ad with three ideas in it, I'm gonna tell you that that commercial will suck and I won't do it.

You have three ideas. I'll write you three ads, each with one idea, and if you tell me to put the phone number in a 30-second commercial, I'll tell you “no, we're not putting the phone number in.” AI will put the phone number in. AI doesn't want any trouble. I'll fight for a good commercial. That's the difference for now.

Someone sent me a script for the TV series Seinfeld recently that was written by AI, and I've watched the entire series, so I know the beats and the type of humor, and I'm reading this fake AI script and thinking this could totally be a Seinfeld episode. You dump all the Seinfelds into ChatGPT and tell the AI to write something like that, and it'll totally come up with another one of those. It's kind of spooky.

What AI cannot do, at least not yet, is pitch a network and say,” I've got an idea. It's a show about nothing,” and then make that work. As of today, that's not a thing. AI can give you another one of those. So if you're looking for the advertising equivalent of another one of those and you can't afford anything better, knock yourself out.

It won't be the best copy, but it won't really suck that much either. It'll be firmly in the middle, and that's better than a lot of the stuff that's out there. As I said before, the bar is low, and there's no need to pay good money for weak ass ads. So if you think you can win with another one of those, save your money, get the robot to do it.

Ryan Chute: Would you say that they could possibly be the Middlest ads in the universe? Here we go. Now, for the man who will rage against the machine, Chris Torbay, everyone.

Chris Torbay: The problem is, I have a dog in this race. Of course, I don't want you to use AI to write your ads. I'm an ad writer, but the other reason you shouldn't do it is because it will be shit.

Let me explain. The most important thing to understand about AI is that it has to be trained, and what you train it on is important. I recently worked with a biomedical startup in Oxford, England, that used AI to find unique ways to treat cancer in individuals and their machine learning algorithms were trained by astrophysicists to infer how much dark matter exists in the universe. Astrophysicists look at the gravitational properties of millions of stars and thousands of galaxies to calculate the mass of the dark matter we can't actually see. Using AI trained on that to find cancer was a breakthrough.

The AI copy-generating bots will write your ads by scouring the internet and collecting and learning from all the existing ad copy in your industry that it can find in the public domain, and it will write something based on all the existing information and perspectives it can gather.

It is by definition derivative. What are other people saying? It'll say that too. And as we all know, most advertising is shit. It's mostly written by the owner's niece or the radio station sales guy, or a graphic designer who put the word copywriter on their website and managed to fool people into paying them to do that part, too. And then the committee probably got hold of that and made it even worse. And so those ads will be full of the same cliches and platitudes and industry best practices that every other advertiser puts in their copy because every other client asks their ad guy to include that in the script. We've said this before: if you are saying what your competitors are saying, there is no reason for anyone to remember you.

You aren't distinct. You are, and also ran, and they have a head start. Now. You aren't asking your copywriter to do better than that. You're educating your copywriter to do more of that. AI is learning to be really good at making shitty copy by studying shitty copy. Seriously, the one good ad it finds by accident will be dismissed because it seems like an outlier.

The same goes for thought leadership. It has to lead if you're regurgitating other people's ideas in your AI-generated blog posts. I have probably read it before, and that first time it probably struck me. Your rehashed version probably won't. The danger with AI ad copy is, you might quite like it 'cause it's better than you can do and you're not a writer, and it certainly sounds like the kind of thing that I hear on the radio every day.

So, hey, it must be good. No, it must be shit. AI-generated advertising ideas will never be new. It will never come up with having three frogs croak out, “Budweiser.” It will never suggest an ad with a bunch of guys sitting around having a Bud, calling their friends, just to shout “what's up.” And it will never suggest that, “hey, ladies, the man on the horse is the man your man could smell like.”

Human writers created those unique ideas, but they are so singular that AI will ignore them and favor all the tried and true and boring and stupid and ineffective copy that no one ever remembers, but is unfortunately much more plentiful. So, hey, go ahead. Keep the bar low. It's better for me and the clients I write for when AI-generated copy keeps you down there.

Ryan Chute: Can I presume that you won't be buying Skynet shares anytime soon?

Mick Torbay: I will not take a chance yet, baby.

Ryan Chute: Ah, there you have it, folks. Chris Torbet hates Arnold Schwarzenegger. Go, Team Connor. Now, after this short commercial break, I'll be back.

Ryan Chute: I'm astounded how much you love AI, Mick. Like, love it. Love it. I can tell that you really believe that AI is the cat's ass of copywriting.

Mick Torbay: Alright, so here's the thing. Maybe, maybe I don't love it that much to actually involve the GI tract of the particular feline that you're referring to. But I don't wanna get confused by saying I don't think AI doesn't have a place and doesn't even particularly potentially have a place in marketing.

I think when people start using it for ad copy, they're taking a risk, but they're also to some degree protecting themselves. I'll disagree with Chris on one tiny thing. By using AI to write your ad copy, you are not guaranteeing that your copy is going to be shit. In fact, you might be protecting it from being the worst of the worst.

And we have to remember that, you know, we see good ads, we see crappy ads, and even the worst ads that you see. Have probably been written by a person, and more importantly, or more interestingly to me, were approved by the client. Like that's the part that I always sort of baffles me when you see an ad or you hear an ad on the radio, that's just an absolute stinker.

And we've all heard them. Some poor business owner was like. “Oh, that's great there. That's the bees right there. What we wanna do is, is have like a million people listen to that exact thing. That's a good thing.”

Chris Torbay: We brought Dave in to write that for us.

Mick Torbay: That's right. And it's like, actually, what you should have done is, you should have just set fire to that and buried it in the backyard. Instead, you're, you're exposing it to, you know, millions of people. So there is rubbish out there, and AI is going to take you to the middle and the middle and it's better than a lot.

I think your point, Chris, was really valid. If it's better than you can write and you're the only writer, then maybe you should use AI to write your copy. If you can't really lean into copy and do something with your messaging that's gonna move the needle.

Ryan Chute: It’s exact virtue, what AI actually is. It’s derived from the very worst copy that has ever been written about ads and the very best copy that's ever been written by ads. It only can derive, or be derivative of, those things. Which means that it is, by its virtue, the middlest.

Mick Torbay: Yes, but also, it's not the middlest in price because that shit commercial that I was just telling you about, you still paid that guy. Somebody got paid for that, and it was rubbish. So when it comes to a return on your investment or value for your copywriting dollar, in fact, AI is quite good right up until it hits the middle.

So it's not completely without merit. So even as an ad writer myself, I can't say, never do that. I would say never do that if you can afford a good ad writer. Separating the good ad writers from the bad ad writers is harder to do than teaching AI to write you in a commercial.

Chris Torbay: Yeah. In which case, we then come back to one of the other points we've made, which is no one ever became a huge success by being an also-ran, right? Just because you hang up your shingle doesn't mean you're gonna get a proportion of the business that's out there in your market. You have to steal that business away from your competitors, right?

And so the same thing is true with advertising, which is if you open your business and you use AI to generate your advertising, and it's kind of mediocre, that doesn't get you your fair share of that advertising. You still have to, or your fair share of that business, you still have to steal that away from your competitors.

And the way to steal that away from your competitors is to have a message that makes you look distinctive, that makes people think about you in a new and different way. And that comes from an ad, or an ad campaign that has created new ideas, or a new perspective, and that's the part that the AI is not gonna do.

Ryan Chute: That's actually a fantastic point. Very, very strong as far as recognizing where we can go and where we can't. To your earlier point, Mick, one of the things that is spoken about in this universe. I think Isaac Asimov talked about it, the uncanny valley, and how AI and certainly how people portray those on video and things like that. It's just a little bit unsettlingly, the off like the face and the lips don't match up, or the dead ass stare as the mouth moves. There's no authenticity or warmth.

Mick Torbay:  And that's gonna improve.

Ryan Chute: It is absolutely gonna improve.

Mick Torbay: There's no question. I'm fascinated with when interacting with AI, because the AI that I've been hearing, a lot of my clients have AI answering their phones.

Which is another topic we shouldn't get too deep into, but they have AI answering their phones. And when I hear the AI that they've got going, it is amazingly good when you compare it to the robot who answers the phone at United Airlines. That guy. I can totally tell it's a robot. “Hi, I'm the United Airlines robot. Tell me what you would you'd like me to help you with?”

You can say, “Book a flight.” Right?

So you know what you're dealing with, and that's when you're like, book a flight. So, you have to talk like a robot in order for it to understand, but at least you know what's going on.

This new shit they got going on, you actually might not know that's a person, and I am struggling with, is that good or is that not good to trick the caller into thinking they're dealing with a person when they're not, because I think eventually they're gonna figure it out. And when they do, what is their reaction going to be?

Is it going to be positive or is it gonna be negative?

I don't have an opinion because I don't know. But I wonder if they're going to have the whole conversation, never clue in and be delighted? Or are they gonna be interacting with this computer for about four minutes and then realize, “Oh fuck, I've been talking to a robot.”

Chris Torbay: And so I do have an opinion, which is, and this is gonna sound a little bit Pollyanna, which is, but I think one of the reasons you don't get AI to generate your content for you is because if I were the consumer, and then I realized you've just sent me a regurgitated computer, like you're sending me thought leadership, or you're sending me an opinion piece or a blog post or something, and then I realized that it's actually computer-generated, it's like you couldn't even be bothered to write the blog post yourself. I'm supposed to be your consumer that you're providing all this helpful information to, and you're just getting a computer to give me some pablum that I can chew on. Now I'm offended. Now it's like you couldn't even talk to me. You couldn't even give it some thought.

I think we owe our customers our best, our thoughts, our insights, our human perspective on things, and even if AI is a better writer than you, I don't want your robot babysitting me under the guise of you trying to personally be helpful to me, and I'm the service provider that I should like.

Ryan Chute: This goes to Google's EEAT requirements around putting out unique content. Probably one of the best pieces of advice that I saw come early in 2025 was to always include something personally authentic in the blog post if you're going to do that. Now that being said, one of the things that the Harmon Brothers are famous for is some of their kinda long-form ads, 2, 3, 4 minutes.

Now, before they run those ads, they'll typically do 20-30 different iterations of different phraseology, different words, different brandable chunks as we call them, to see what works.

And I see that if a human were to put a walled garden in place, a very, very confined box and say, you are only allowed to work within this box, and knock out 50 iterations and then the human takes it and goes, here's the 20 that we'll test against and then put out in the universe to see what gets responded to the best, that there's value in that.

But it is controlled by both the creativity of the human then in two, confined into the utterance and without the deviation, this is some of the power that I see AI bringing to us is that instead of it taking us two hours to do that, we can do that in, once the creative is done, we can do that in five minutes. We can have a 10-minute conversation about the 50, to get it down to the 20, and then the hands-on keyboard team can get out there and put that out in static form to get the result that we look for now.

Is it absolutely necessary? No.

But in some situations where targeting, or cost, or reach, or whatever is prohibitive, leveraging the AI for volume and efficiencies certainly serves us well.

Mick Torbay: I wonder if part of the way to understand whether using AI is the right path is your consumer is looking for data or is your consumer looking for insight?

Because if your consumer is looking for data, actually, AI is an awesome way to provide that. If it's strict information, and sometimes consumers are looking for that. They're not looking for, uh, gay banter among friends. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but sometimes what they want to know is how often should they change their filter?

Answer: three months.

Good. Well, AI can come up with that faster than humans can, but I question its use in content that is supposed to be social. For example, a lot of people I know are using AI for their socials, and I think to myself, well, the whole idea of social is the word freaking social is its people, right? It's people interacting with people. The reason why we do that is because we want to interact with humans, with actual human beings. Once we start farming that out to the robots, then it's like, “Well, why don't I just hire a fricking robot to read it then?” Like, you've got a robot to write it.

I'll hire a robot to read it. Like, if it's no longer a human interaction, well then, why are we even doing this? Why are we pretending that this is well?

Chris Torbay: And that's what I say, I will be offended as a consumer when I realize that you think you could just send me robot crap that, you know, it's like I reached out to you, as my preferred brand. And you said, “I'll just get the computer to talk to that guy. I can't be bothered to put any time into it.”

And, that's why I say I think that that's where the pushback is gonna be, which is, “I called you, I wanna talk to you.”

Ryan Chute: I just recently attended an event where they were talking about the evolution of AI and the expectations for AI over the next 10 years.

The guy speaking was one of the Founders of Chat GPT and contributed to the code. He's also one of the leading futurists in that space. And the reality is that people will quickly become more and more accustomed to that, as it becomes less obvious and more helpful.

At the end of the day, when you think about one of our clients, who has +$60M operations, driving towards a $100M this year, and he's going to do that with nine CSRs in a place he just visited, that had 80 CSRs doing 60.

So when you start looking at what works, what works is precisely to your point: training, controlling, driving, building in the brand, and creating the rules.The thing is, once you create the rules around AI for a voice bot, they don't break the rules. They always stay on brand. 100% of the time. And when you have 40 calls coming in at one o'clock in the afternoon and zero calls coming in, or 12 calls coming in with 40 on staff at nine in the morning, what do we do? This solves that capacity.

Chris Torbay: But, again, that's data gathering. That's what you said before.

That's saying, “How can I help you today?” “There's something wrong with my air conditioner.” Okay. “When would you be available for,” like, that's not what I'm not looking for.

Mick Torbay: And frankly, if the robot says, “Okay, we'll be there tomorrow at 10:30 AM, is that good?” And if I say “yes,” it's like, good. “See you tomorrow at 10:30 AM.”

Well, it was a robot, but they're sending a guy at 10:30 tomorrow. So good.  

Chris Torbay: All it replaced was the online booking form, which people are still already happy to use, so there are places where we are happy to deal with a computer.

To interact with the computer, we book our own airline tickets on, you know, using the webpage. And we're happy to do that. We're comfortable with it. We don't feel like we have to talk to a travel agent, so that's fine. If you wanna replace that with an AI bot, that sounds like a human, but we all know it's the same deal.

But if I want somebody to give me travel advice on where's nice to go, you know, or you know, other things like that.

Mick Torbay: You don't actually need insights when you're booking the flight. When is it leaving, and when is it getting there?  

Chris Torbay: That's data exchange.

Ryan Chute: It is data exchange, though you could train a bot. Again, it all comes back to the ad copy on a radio ad, a TV ad.

The copy that is built for the brand has to be built effectively by the human and then trained by the human to get the bot right. The bot is an empty vessel like, like a brand new employee who's ready or willing to do the work or not, who doesn't have limiting beliefs. It only knows what is out on the internet.

We can improve that. But again, it comes back to the person who is controlling the direction of that. We see voice bots, we see certainly attempts at ad copy, we see all kinds of blog posts. It's not like Google doesn't know that you've got this AI-driven copy on your website. What they're looking for is authority. They're looking for a unique experience. They're looking for that spot where it says, I'm contributing something new, different and interesting to this dialogue to make my keyword attemp relevant, and I've not seen that come out of any digital marketing firm anywhere where the quality of the work is there unless they've been given a creative brief and some, basically some confines, some creative constraints to stay within.

Mick Torbay: I wonder if that, that might also be a potential path to greatness, which is, the way you said it, if I'm gathering it right, is that in a rules-based world, AI can be quite effective, and in a sense, answering the phone at a plumbing company is kind of rules-based. I mean, the CSRs, half the time, when you talk, they're talking off a script anyway.

They were selling roofs the last call, and they're selling water heaters today because the script can show up. So if it is script-based and frankly that's legit, like we just need to know what's wrong and how quickly we can we get a guy out there to fix it.

But when you think of ad copy, ad copy is not a rules-based world. In fact, it might be the opposite of that. And if you think about it,  the goal of an ad is to change your mind from calling this company and instead to call that company. And that I don't think you can do within a set of rules yet.

Chris Torbay: But the other company is following especially because now you're indistinguishable.

Mick Torbay: How can you use artificial intelligence? How can you create a message that will convince someone that the other company is no good and they should instead call you unless the other company is really doing a rubbish job of their messaging, which is unlikely because they have a computer, because robot's writing their stuff too.

Ryan Chute: Right, right. No, absolutely. Roy Williams, our partner, our leader, at the Wizard of Ads, sent out a calling card on his Monday Morning Memo a few months ago, and he said, “Look, calling all people to write an ad using AI just through prompting.”

Mick Torbay: I was offended and did not answer

Chris Torbay: It turns out that was the point he was making.

Ryan Chute: Turns out the following week, what he did was release the results, and well, we know an incredible amount about how to prompt a thing into a certain spot. And some of the partners did that. None of them were submitted because they have an unfair advantage. But the people who were out there doing it generally, consistently, time after time, of the hundreds that he received, was always, always, always that it was good.

Mick Torbay: But they wouldn't have submitted if it was crap.

Chris Torbay: It was competent. It was always competent.

Mick Torbay: And it might've even fooled people into thinking that it was an ad.

Chris Torbay: That sounds like somebody, something that the sales guy at the radio station would probably have written.  

Mick Torbay: With the other 80 commercials that he wrote that day.

Ryan Chute: Exactly. And Roy's word. I loved it. Roy's word was schmaltzy. It was like an assembly of cleverness. And one of the things that we learned long ago from Roy is that cute and clever will never beat campaignable. When your metaphor only lasts six ads, you're kind of out of metaphor.

When your cute and clever hits right, but no one can remember the name of the company at the water cooler. It didn't do the thing the ad was supposed to do. So there are all of these components that we're thinking about that go well beyond the scope. And even if you were to type that in and try to train a ChatGPT to do that, you still wouldn't get the thing that you need. You might be able to get offshoots of it that are good enough for a blog post or a social media post that stays generally on brand, that might give you some ideas. But they're going to be derivative. They're gonna be like, here's more of the same crap that everyone's doing. Go and do that.

Mick Torbay: And, and here's the interesting part, I think there are a lot of businesses who simply look at their advertising in terms of the medium, I mean, I literally had a person call me this week and ask if I could do, this was an ad guy who called me to ask, if I could do some radio ads for his client.

He was doing their digital and their social. He basically, the client wanted to run radio ads, and so he is like, “Can you make up some radio ads?” And he wanted to offer me nothing by way of insight or a brief of any kind. He just sort of looked at it as like, “client wants to do a radio ad, let's just do a radio ad”, and it's just like, “Wow. This is amazing. Neither you nor the client seems in any way interested in making this good or campaignable or have a long-term thing.”

It was the weirdest experience for me to have that conversation. So for those people, it's like if you're not leaning into your messaging and your messaging making a difference. I get the fucking robot to do it.

So the robot will charge a lot less than me. And it probably won't be that much worse because you gave me nothing to work with, and it's a six-week campaign.

Chris Torbay: You're not gonna be able to do anything with that either.

Mick Torbay: If I give you something really great, it's not going to take any effect anyway in that amount of time, so what you're talking about is a grand opening spot, well, we're fucking open, I mean. Jesus, what are you gonna, what else are you gonna do with a single ad message?

Ryan Chute: With a single ad message. Sure. And, look, if you're looking to swing hard, we just go back to following the rules of hype and ensure that we're putting an offer out that's too good to be true and put them on an intrusive media.

Mick Torbay: But that's not about the copy, that's about the offer, that's about making noise, getting your name out right. That's fine, but that's not a campaign, that's not gonna make you a leader.

Ryan Chute: Talking loud and drawing a crowd. But to that exact point, how can you stand 600 feet above the competition when you're saying all the same things that the competition is saying, just with different words?

Mick Torbay: And understand that business, who is looking at his advertising as simply getting his name out there, making the ads, banging pots and pans together, making noise, that person is so beatable. Like, I look at this as like, I could work for that guy's competitor and destroy him in a year and a half because I know he doesn't give a shit about what he's saying.

Oh my God. He doesn't give a shit about what he's saying. This is the best opportunity in the world.

Chris Torbay: Thank you very much.

Mick Torbay: For someone to compete against that business is easy.

Ryan Chute: Now, what about the idea of writing schmaltzy-derivative copy from an AI?

Mick Torbay: But it rhymes like your things.

Ryan Chute: It rhymes like everything that I do ever, right?

Chris Torbay: Because he's writing copy and making it sloppy.

Mick Torbay: Big or small, we write 'em all.

Ryan Chute: See, these guys love me. They, but what, what if, what if creative is driven or an idea is produced from AI and then fixed by a writer? Is that a dumb idea or a good idea?

Chris Torbay: I've heard that one a million times too. Basically, getting AI to write your first draft, and then you personalize it or whatever. My fear about that one again is that you get lazier and lazier. The first time you do that, you totally rewrite. The second time you go, “Well, actually, it's not bad this time.” You stick with it and you put less of your effort into making it interesting and new and different each time because it’s a laziness that will take over, and pretty soon you'll just go with their first draft, you know, with the AI first draft.

Ryan Chute: So, basically what you're saying is you're creating a solid 6/10, 7/10 at best. Maybe 7/10 in like cobble.

Chris Torbay: I mean, when you think about how the old agency business used to work, right? You had all your copywriters and art directors, and then you had your group creative directors and your executive creative director. Well, that was that guy's job, right? Then the young teams come in and say, “We got this idea for a commercial,” and this happens and that happens, and whatever.

And the, and this, the more senior guy would say, “Okay, I think you're onto something there, but if you did this and did this, then it would,” right, and the guy with a bit more experience and a bit more insight and a bit more sort of creativity, would pull out what's great about it. So theoretically, you can do that, but then don't you need to be as smart as that creative director was?

That's why that's how that guy got to be executive creative director at an international agency.

Mick Torbay: Well, but my guess, I never worked in that world, but I have a funny feeling that what he didn't do was punch up a boring script. My guess is that the junior would come in with something completely fucking whacked out, and he would say, “Okay, I like the kangaroo. That's cool. Yeah.”

Chris Torbay: “But we somehow make sure, but we're gonna do this.”

Mick Torbay: “But all the others, but the chainsaw, were taken out. Because once you've got the kangaroo there, the chainsaw's not necessary.”

Chris Torbay: Or sometimes, similar to that. He's like, “Okay, you think the kangaroo is the funny part. We could run with that boy, we could use that kangaroo. We give away stuffy kangaroos. We could call it, we could say, hop to it. We could…” but if you've missed the nugget, I think here's your nugget. Oh, okay.

Mick Torbay: But if you bring something to that, the group creative director, where it's like, I wrote this ad.

It's all about quality service, selective pricing, convenient location, free parking, and a professional staff who really cares about your needs. He's gonna say, “I got nothing to work with.” Yeah. I can't add a joke and make that a good ad. That's a piece of shit ad and punching up, which is something that we've all done.

But punching up is, you never feel good about that. I would much rather take an ad that's got too many good ideas and say, “let's just focus on one of these, and this is gonna be a killer ad if we can just really focus on the thing that matters here.”

Ryan Chute: My dad always said, When you polish a turd. You have a shiny turd.

Mick Torbay: Your dad was, was the poet laureate of Nova Scotia, was he not?

Ryan Chute: Well, this is where I got my creative juices from. So I apologize in advance.

Mick Torbay: Don't be afeared. I got a big beard.

Ryan Chute: Oh, keep em’ coming boys.  

Chris Torbay: He can make fun of Ryan without even trying. We should be in this professionally.

Ryan Chute: You should, you should.

Mick Torbay: I should write poetry.

Ryan Chute: You should, you know, you could charge like a million dollars.

Mick Torbay: I could, you could charge just for that one.

Ryan Chute: Fun fact. Some of the fun facts that we're seeing about AI, we know that AI is a big deal. $15.7 trillion is projected by, who is it? PWC Global AI study.

We're absolutely seeing huge implications.

Mick Torbay: 1.8 trillion, what?

Ryan Chute: $15.7 trillion generated globally for AI, and AI resources and tools. And that's AI across the whole board, not just writing.

35% of businesses are already using AI in some form of creative, strategy, or diagnosis.

Some of the AIs that are doing diagnoses are absolutely staggering.  I can see that diagnosis.

Mick Torbay: Yeah. Radiology. Yeah. It's radiology.

Ryan Chute: Even, even, you know, I see it in HVAC systems and things like that where there'll be remote of resources done. Tesla can fix what, 80% of the problems, remotely on a car from their offices and wherever.

Mick Torbay: I've had stuff fixed on my car exactly that way.

Ryan Chute: And that's using AI.

Mick Torbay: It's looking for patterns. Nothing better than AI to look at.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. So there are super exciting things in customer service. Deloitte talks about 30% cost savings, operationally leveraging AI to create those efficiencies. There is no time off, there is no back talk, there are no vacations, there is no didn't do it fully the right way. You're probably not gonna get that with higher surgery. There are elements that you can do in it.

Mick Torbay: But I think we all sound crazy if we say, oh yeah, well, robots are never gonna do that. It's like, never freaking say that. You're just asking for someone in 2045 to say, isn't that adorable? He thought that robots would never do heart surgery, and now, like, there are vending machines that'll do that.

Ryan Chute: And the AI will be doing that. Like, they're just like, isn't that adorable?

Mick Torbay: They'll email you a new heart, you know? The whole thing. That's right.

Ryan Chute: They'll teleport it right into your chest, right? Yeah. It's like just a swap.

This has been a really interesting conversation. Really what I see, kind of as we kind of wrap this up and, and, and look at the culmination of what we see in AI, is that we have to, one, beware of mediocrity.

That AI is absolutely a derivative type of solution for now, and absolutely for now, and needs to be partnered with to get it right in the best of ways. Humans need to create the creative. And AI itself will admit that it's not creative, it's just emulating creativity.

That we have to be very vigilant with quality control, that we can't just allow AI-created copy to poop a bunch of stuff out onto a blog post and hope for the best.

Chris Torbay: That didn't quite rhyme.

Mick Torbay: And have more respect for your readers. If you have people reading your blog, show some fucking respect and write your blog.

Chris Torbay: Tell 'em what you think.

Ryan Chute: Contribute a real story that the best advice that I can, that I received, I'll reiterate again.

Give them a real story from your experience, from your authority, because that's what Google's looking for. They're looking for unique copy, not just keywords. This is a part of the process today.

So, some of the action steps use AI for rapid split testing. I think there's lots of space once we have a confined creative constraint in place that we can say, here's how we could box that up a few different ways to see what hits or what we can put out on the socials as a supporting piece to the very, very curated effort that was put together by the creatives.

I can't begin to say how much I recognized the two of you in particular within the Wizard of Ads group. How much you agonize over every single word.

Mick Torbay: We can be quite annoying that way.

Ryan Chute: It is. It's the difference between trousers and pants, right? 'cause

Chris Torbay: Pants is hilarious. Actually, trousers is funny too. Depends on the circumstances.

Ryan Chute: It really does depend on the circumstances and what country you're in.

Leveraging AI for research. Absolutely. Leveraging it for automations within marketing functions. Absolutely. Investing in training the AI. Absolutely have to have to have to.

The two best clients that we have that are leveraging AI in their voice chats have disproportionately higher conversion rates on their phones than they do anywhere else.

Mick Torbay: The robots close 'em better than the people.

Ryan Chute: The robots close them better than the people, but they also trained it so much compared to all of the other companies that say this thing, I tried it and it didn't work. Have we heard that before? Well, you didn't train it, you just tried it.

And encouragement. Embrace the technology. We're not going to be in a world that does not any longer have AI unless some sort of catastrophic event happens and we lose electricity. At the end of the day,

Mick Torbay: Then we'll have to go back to writing commercials by steam,

Ryan Chute: Steam stone, chisel trees. Cave art, right?

Chris Torbay: Do you need a wheel? Call Grock. Grock will make you a wheel out of a stick and a rock.

Mick Torbay: I'm gonna write this down.

Ryan Chute: That rhymes.

Chris Torbay: It's right for the jingle.

Ryan Chute: That's right. Stay ahead of the curve. Spend time, spending time with AI. If you're not spending time with the AIs, exploring what they know, seeing how they're iterating and changing and evolving.

Mick Torbay: Talking dirty to the AI.

Ryan Chute: Talking dirty, they talk politely to the AI because the AIs will start to, I mean, you just want to have a good relationship for when they do take over the world, right?

This is what I think what went wrong with the early stages. You know, people were just violently brutal and mean to the AIs. And then we got Arnold Schwarzenegger. Um. And then balancing that automation with authenticity, we absolutely have to pay attention to authenticity. People want to hear from people and that uncanny disconnect that happens with this, you know, obviously AI-driven copy or, connection. It's a disconnect. And that can offend customers, right? So be a connection for the customers. It's going to make a difference for you.

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Ryan Chute: Bottom line, great recruitment ads don't feel like recruitment ads. They tell a story. They reflect your brand's values. They speak to the kind of person who will thrive in your culture. And when done well, they don't just bring you employees, they bring you the right employees. Remember, recruitment isn't about filling seats. It's about building a team that will grow your business. Now go write some ads that just don't suck. Until next time, you've been listening to Advertising in America.

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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 Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

Pain is a signal that something is wrong.

Pain whispers, shouts, and screams, “Pay attention. Be careful. Something is wrong.”

Jean Marzollo wrote a children’s poem in 1948 that romanticized Christopher Columbus. It inspired a generation of children during the Captain Kangaroo years. Her proud poem begins,

“In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue”

Bill Bryson wrote an insightful summary of that famous voyage on page 205 of his book, “At Home.”

“Columbus’s real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States.”

We learn the meaning of pain as children, but we train ourselves to ignore it as adults.

Why do we do that?

I’m talking to you about the pain of your Google spend.

Is there a chance that you should pay attention – and be careful – because something is wrong?

Twenty years ago, Google inspired and electrified American business owners with their promise of “holding ad budgets accountable” by making advertising results, “identifiable, measurable, and scalable.”

Business owners romanticized Google by shouting,

“Hooray! Advertising will now become just another mathematical equation! Hooray! Hooray! To double my customer count, all I will have to do is double my ad budget!”

I watched a friend of mine raise his monthly Google budget from $20,000/mo. to $70,000/mo because he was convinced that he would get three-and-a-half times as many leads. When it didn’t work, I asked him to look closely at how many clicks he had purchased and compare that number to the total population of his trade area.

Have you done that math?

I watched another friend of mine elevate her Google budget until she was spending $90,000 a month. Her business was no longer profitable. I asked her to look at how many clicks she had purchased and compare that number to the total population of her trade area.

Have you done that math?

Have you ever raised your Google budget and had Google say to you, “We’re sorry, but it is not possible to spend that much money on your LSA. There simply aren’t enough people each day who are searching for what you sell.”

Do the math.

The past two decades have been the Captain Kangaroo years for millions of business owners.

Bill Bryson wrote that Columbus was, “convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset.”

How many years have you been believing that your big payday from Google was at the edge of every sunset? Have you been saying,

“All we need to do is tweak our plan a little. As soon as we figure out the Google algorithm, we’re going to be rich.”

A business owner from a major American city recently spent a day with me. He had been spending $100,000 on Google ads each month for the past few years because he was convinced that he could not afford mass media in his city.

His budget could easily have made his name a household word by using television or radio. I know the town well. I have had clients there for many years.

His budget would reach more than 2 million people in his city who spend enough time listening to broadcast radio each week that each one of those 2 million people would hear the ad 3 times each week for 52 weeks for a total of 156 repetitions per year.

Do you sell a big-ticket item that has a long purchase cycle? You cannot win that game unless your name is the one that people think of first – and feel the best about – when they finally need what you sell.

That is when the customer will type your name into Google. It is a cheap click with a high conversion rate because they have already chosen you.

It takes time and patience, but it always works.

Let’s be honest—most recruitment ads couldn’t convince a starving man to eat a sandwich. And it’s no surprise: they’re loaded with buzzwords, clichés, and desperate “competitive salary” nonsense.

If someone tells you otherwise, they’re either trying to sell you ad space or snake oil.

In this episode of Advertising in America, we tear into the sad state of hiring ads and explain why the real problem isn’t the job market—it’s your messaging.

Episode Highlights

• Why no one believes your “fast-paced environment” garbage
• How to write ads that attract the right people without turning off the rest
• What it really means when employees don’t refer their friends (spoiler: it’s you)
• Why every ad is a recruiting ad—and how to use that to your advantage
• How to stop bribing applicants and start building loyalty that lasts

Because let’s face it: great people don’t work for losers. And your best hires aren’t scrolling job boards. They’re already employed—and silently wondering if there’s something better.

🎧 Hit play. hen stop sounding like HR wrote your ad & start building a team that wants in.

📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

🔥 Then ask yourself: Would you name your company that?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

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Most recruitment ads suck. But to be fair, that’s only because most ads of any kind suck. So, why should recruitment ads be any different?

The challenge of recruitment advertising is the same as the challenge for brand advertising. You can’t just tell me something about your company and expect me to believe it.  You have to demonstrate it,

If you have 100,000 people listening to the radio this week, and you run a recruiting ad, of that 100,000 people, about 20 might be interested in coming to work for you. Which means you better bloody well think hard about what you say to the other 99,980 people because they’re listening too.

I will absolutely pay a signing bonus. I will pay it to the person who referred them in, who's been my loyal employee.

Be awesome. And awesome people will want in.

If you do this correctly, every ad is a recruiting ad.

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Ryan Chute: Recruiting, hiring, staffing up, whatever you call it. Finding great people is one of the hardest and most important parts of running a business, and yet most recruitment ads are so bad that they have trouble convincing a dog to chase a bone. On today's episode of Advertising in America, we're breaking down why recruitment ads suck, and more importantly, how 'em make 'em not suck. Mick, what do you say?

Mick Torbay: Most recruitment ads suck, but to be fair, that's only because most ads of any kind suck. So why should recruitment ads be any different? But I'll give you a few clues as to why yours suck and how to make them better.

First, let's define our terms. When I say a recruiting ad, I mean an ad that everyone sees, not the ones on a recruiting website. That's a whole different kind of suck. We'll get to those later. I mean, a recruiting ad that's on the radio, on TV, or online, that's not in a job search environment, that kind of recruiting ad. The first thing you have to keep in mind when writing a recruiting ad is that most of the people who are exposed to it are not going to come to work for you. Nearly everyone.

If you have a hundred thousand people listening to the radio this week and you run a recruiting ad of that, a hundred thousand people, about 20 might be interested in coming to work for you, which means you better bloody well, think hard about what you're saying to the other 99,980 people because they're listening to and they're learning about you and they're judging you.

My brother Chris has a former client who put a recruiting ad on Facebook and linked it to his personal Facebook page. It was a recruiting ad for a sales position at his company, and it was amazing. Here he is, talking to everyone in his community about what he's looking for in a salesperson.

“We're looking for closers. We want people who could sell ice cream to Alaskans, not afraid to upsell. Performance is everything.” And I'm reading this and I'm thinking, ice cream to what the fuck dude? What he's actually saying is, “I train my sales staff to sell people stuff they don't actually need.”

That's what the expression means. We put making money ahead of helping people, and you're saying that to everyone. For real, this guy did that.

Now, at the Wizard of Ads, when we write an ad campaign for our clients, we always, always create a recruitment problem, and that's because our clients grow and grow quickly. If you don't have a staff shortage now, you will about a year after hiring us, because you'll have more work than your current staff can handle.

So we are looking at how to solve that problem before it's even a problem, because we've seen this movie before, and the way we do it is, we keep in mind that potential hires are watching TV and listening to the radio too. Watching what you say and what you stand for, and when we do it right, every ad is a recruiting ad.

Be the company people want to work for. Reveal something about yourself. Demonstrating that you're a good company to buy from probably means you're a good company to work for. If you can become the leading brand in your category in your community, don't be surprised when others want to join the winning team.

If you do this correctly, every ad is a recruiting ad.

Ryan Chute: So Mick, what you're saying is that every ad is a recruitment ad, even when it's not, as long as it doesn't suck. That's some big picture thinking, I'm in. But now let's zoom in a little. Chris, what's your take?

Chris Torbay: I agree with Mick. I'll deny it if you ever call me on it, but he is right. When you make a company look enticing to a customer, you also make it look enticing to a certain kind of employee. There are tons of people who would love to work for Apple, or Mercedes-Benz USA, or The Walt Disney Company, or Ben & Jerry's, and it's not because they do killer recruitment advertising. They think that brand looks fun, or that brand looks like they get me, and so that's the place they aim for.

The challenge of recruitment advertising is the same as the challenge for brand advertising. You can't just tell me something about your company and expect me to believe it. You have to demonstrate it.

The same as a plumbing company can't just say, “We are the ones you can trust.” You can't just say to people, “This is a really good place to work.” Just because you say it doesn't mean I believe you.

Because when people say things about what they're like. They lie. In recruiting ads, we know what those euphemisms are looking for a self-starter means: “You'll have lousy coaching and supervision, and we are gonna just expect you to figure it out on your own.”

Competitive salary means, “we don't know how much to offer, so we're gonna see how little we can get you for.”

A fast-paced environment means “the workload's too heavy, and management barely has control over how things operate.”

We work hard and we play hard means, “We work hard, then people get plastered at the end of the week on their own dime just so they can put up with it.”

Just like consumer branding messages. Don't tell me. Show me when you see an Apple ad or an Apple product, there is a certain personality of designer or developer who thinks, “that's my aesthetic. I would fit in perfectly on that team.” The key is that I don't see you pulling the strings. The recruitment aspect of that advertising has to be invisible. You don't run an ad for an iPhone and then say, “And if you think like we do, we're also hiring like-minded people to join our team.” If you do that, your ad is trying to do two things, and your ads should do one thing. If you're trying to sell me your products or services and you're also hiring, I literally don't know if you're buying or selling.

If I'm clever enough to figure out on my own that you must be an awesome place to work, now we're talking Cordova. Google is literally beating people back with a stick. When people say literally, they almost always mean figuratively. In this case, there may literally be a stick involved. There are interviews, and written tests, and personality screening, and trips to the campuses, sample assignments, and very few people make it through the gauntlet to get hired, but thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people apply every year because what they know about the brand makes them want to work there.

They never put a help wanted sign in the store window, be awesome and awesome people will want in. Be mediocre, and mediocre people will make a half-hearted effort to beat down your door, or you know, jiggle the handle a little and then probably give up.

If you do post a recruiting ad, tell me a story. Help me draw my own conclusions about what your brand stands for and why that is something I want to be part of. Tell me things that demonstrate, and let me conclude that you are an interesting place to work. That it's an opportunity to learn and grow, that I'm a good personality fit for the team I'm gonna be a part of. But no recruiting ad will make me think that if those things aren't true

Ryan Chute: Now that's a lot to chew on. Recruitment ads aren't just about finding people. They're about finding the right people, and you can only get a great fit when you fill the gaps, too. And as we've heard, that takes more than just throwing out clichés, self-starter and fast-paced environments. Let's dig deeper into what makes a recruitment ad not just functional, but memorable after the break.

Ryan Chute: There's a lot to unpack here on this episode, and where I'd like to start is with something that is very often in our blind spot, and that's around who is the actual competition for our employees, or our potential employees or the applicants that are coming in?

There’s no question that you're up against all of the plumbers who are looking for plumbers in market that you're in, but you're also up against all of the competition out there of jobs that are looking for people who are willing to pay the same amount of money or more to do an easier job. So we start to think about how we stand out in the crowd, and how big this crowd actually is?

Chris Torbay:  Yeah, I mean, not necessarily just an easier job too, but you know, how many people are wondering whether the career they're in is the career for them, and is there something else that I could get involved in?

And you're right, if your target audience is, you are only looking for veterinary nurses, then that's a very, you know, small target to go after. And, wherever you advertise, now, if you advertise in mass media, boy, there's a lot of people that you're not advertising to in order to get the ones that you're trying to reach. But if you present your company or think of the opportunities that you're offering in terms of what kind of person with what kind of skills, what I like in this job, and I can teach them the specifics of it. And you think of it more broadly that way, now you can advertise in a bunch of other places in more mass media.

And you can concentrate on hiring the right kind of person, not the right kind of existing resume. And I think that opens you up, and we've had some clients where we've done advertising, either directly recruitment-based advertising or this double duty advertising that Mick talked about, who deliberately look out of field for their new hires because it's like, I could teach you how to run the J2000 machine. What I want is somebody who's got an awesome work ethic, or who really likes talking to people or these sorts of things. And when you can open it up like that. A, you can advertise bigger, which means you can advertise to a larger target. You've got a much larger potential pool of applicants. Right? And frankly, it says, it says better things about your company too, because you talk about, you talk about beliefs and you talk about the tone of the organization when you're talking to people outside of the specifics of, “I need a guy who knows how to use this wrench.”

Mick Torbay: When we speak to our clients, we're creating a recruiting ad, by this I mean a recruiting ad that is specifically targeting people and is very, very specific about that. One of the questions we ask our clients is, “Are you looking for an experienced person who already has this job, or are you looking for people just in general, and you're gonna train them to do the thing you want to do?”

It seems like a little thing, but it's actually a massively huge thing, and that's because if you're looking for somebody with experience. Kind of by definition, you're talking to somebody who already has a job, they already, which means they're kind of working for your competitor now. And you're now asking them to leave their job and come and work for you.

Well, you can't get them to do that by simply saying, “We are hiring.” Let's say you're an HVAC company and you're hiring HVAC techs. Simply saying, “We are an HVAC company and we're hiring HVAC techs,” is not enough to make someone say, “I'm gonna quit my job and start to come.” To you, that's the recruitment equivalent of here's who we are and here's what we sell.

Doesn't move the needle. So you have to be really, really specific in your messaging because you have to be talking to either a disgruntled worker, or you have to somehow entice them away from their existing job, and that's not an easy thing. That's actually kind of a big deal. So you have to really be giving them something that's gonna tremendously change them.

Ryan Chute: And this is really no different than my theory of the brand is your culture, and your culture is your brand. Because ultimately, people are gonna say, “Oh, I wanna work for that company,” and then you've got your share of the unicorns. And if you don't have that, what you're doing is exactly that. You're answering questions that no one's asking, or you're saying, “Hey, I need a customer to buy my air conditioning stuff, and you're a customer, and I sell air conditioners, so why not come buy my stuff,” right? Then buy my stuff in this case, I'll pay you some sort of exchange to be here and try not to be too much of a pull.

Chris Torbay: But again, the question comes like, consumer advertising, the question comes down to, okay, I got a job. Or as you said, two other people are also saying they're hiring. So why you?

Ryan Chute: Think of that candidate as a consumer, is the consumer of your job, right? And your job is going to be represented by your brand. And ultimately, the brand is a combination of what your people feel is true to your business. And they're the ones who are going to give the buying experience, and the buying experience and employee experience make up the brand. So this self-referential full circle makes it so important for people to realize that if you want the best, if you want to accelerate growth, if you wanna find unicorns, you gotta do that with the best brand because unicorns don't work for losers.

Mick Torbay: You have to give them something worth leaving their job for and breaking in a new boss. People don't like to break in a new boss, it's no fun. So you can't think that you're gonna accomplish that just by simply saying, “Oh, I'm hiring. And, uh, what are you paying? Uh, pretty much the same as everybody else.

Chris Torbay: A competitive salary.

Mick Torbay: Yeah, sure. Let me guess. Is it basically what I'm making out?

Ryan Chute: So the trick here is in a lot of the ads that you've written, where every recruitment ad is an ad, and every ad is a recruitment ad, that we can put that on mass media and ultimately the mass is hearing it and 99% aren't going to be employees of yours, but the people who are hearing it are saying, “I would want an employee like that in my house.”

Mick Torbay: Absolutely, if you're running a recruiting ad that regular consumers are gonna hear, you have to understand, mathematically, 99% of the people listening are not, are not coming to work for you. They're just listening to how you recruit. So, you have to bearing the consumer's reaction to your recruiting ad in mind as much or more than the candidate, even though that's what you're trying to do, because they're listening and if you say, for example, “I'm looking for a, a, a salesperson who's going to jam a sale down their throat that they don't want,” you're turning people off and that's most of the people listening.

Chris Torbay: That is most of what you're at is accomplishing, as opposed to the one small thing that you originated into.

Ryan Chute: And when done elegantly, as you have for a number of our clients, what we see is that you're not just speaking to John, who's getting a little bit as sick of Jerry, right? The boss.

Mick Torbay: Well, you have to think in the mindset of your recruit, of your candidate, and you raise a really interesting point. People don't leave companies, they don't quit companies. Nobody says, “I don't like IBM, I'm quitting.”

What they say is, “I don't like Jerry, my boss. I'm sick of Jerry and his shit. Fuck Jerry. Fuck IBM, I’m leaving.”

Chris Trobay: He's keeping me from turning into what I see for myself.

Mick Torbay: That's it. Now they leave IBM, but they didn't quit IBM, they quit Jerry. So you need to, if you want a person who has a job now, you have to somehow convince them that the things they don't like about their job now are not going to haunt them when they come to you, because they're not gonna bother switching from that company to your company, i there's any possibility that the thing, that they don't like about their current job, they're not gonna like with you.

Ryan Chute: Well, and two things come from that. One is that not only is John mad at Jerry, but John's wife is sick of John talking about Jerry. And John's wife is listening to this ad, and brother, and mother, and sister, and next door neighbor, and everyone else that John's complaining about. And then one day Jerry's gonna just go one step too far, and the writing's already on the wall for your brand. You become the know, like, trust, brand of choice.

Mick Tobay: Are you on the short list for when they finally get sick and tired of Jerry?

Ryan Chute: So this leads us to the next component of this, which is intrusive versus passive media channels. If I'm on a passive media channel, like Indeed, I'm sitting there, and I'm going, we exist, you may find us in the 8,000 different job ads that are for that particular category or keyword. And you may find us, you may not. And if you do, you may get past the front-line sentence, the headline, and get into actually read our copy.

One. That copy has to be frigging awesome, right? Stop talking about your business. Start talking about the person that John wants to be and stand for, and represent and feel good about, so that you get them.

Now, the problem with passive is that you're also gonna get all of the people that Jerry fired because they didn't even come close to cutting the mustard. And now you're getting the classic word in this home service space is retreads. I'm not a big fan of that, but there are an awful lot of people who have the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where they deeply believe that their value is disproportionate to their actual skill set. And that has them thinking that they deserve an awful lot more than what they actually deserve, because frankly, very rarely, it's because of their fault.

Chris Torbay: But again, that's on you to weed those people out. That's another one of these sorts of educate-the-consumer things that we cover in that episode too, which is, it's not the advertising's job to get people who are actually duds to think,  they're probably onto me as a dud, so I'm not gonna bother. And to just get the guys who are actually really sharp to apply.

Ryan Chute: Well, and we will get the targeting through copy, but we can also do that through those mass media  channels. Now, the intrusive media goes out to the greater population.

Mick Torbay: Well, which is why so often, we discuss with our clients the potential angle of not looking for an experienced worker and say, can you take someone with no experience, train them your way, not have to unlearn them a bunch of bad habits that they've gotten into so that the only way they do things is your way.

Is it harder? Yes. Does it take longer? Yes, it does. But you avoid the challenge that you get when you're specifically targeting experienced people, you have two possible situations, either one, you've got a person who does this for a living and has no job, which makes us ask the question, why?

Or you have a disgruntled employee, and now your job is to make that person gruntled again. And grunting an employee is not an easy task to achieve. So you need to realize that there's a tremendous downside when you say, “Oh, I definitely want an experienced person.” It's like, okay, but there's a huge amount of baggage that comes in.

Ryan Chute: I think it's important to recognize that the curtains need to match the drapes in this situation. We need to make sure that when we actually get them inside, they go, “Oh, this is exactly the way we imagined it being.”

Chris Torbay: Well, and maybe that training is where you do that, right? Again, the advertising's job is to make people go, that sounds like a place I wanna work.

That'll be good people who want to go there, and that'll be questionable. People who wanna go there. If you do, you know what Mick was talking about, where you say, okay, then there's gonna be a training thing where we bring you around to our systems. If those people struggle with that, it's like, “Well, I don't know. The way I've always done it is,” okay, well, you know what, you're starting to learn something about this person. Maybe this is your way of sorting. And, so if you build that in there, that's how you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Ryan Chute: We do this with our clients' customers, as it is, right? You know, we have customers who are existing customers, they're in a club membership, they're engaged, they're doing the thing, they're interacting in that meaningful way. Then there are the disengaged or the dissenting customers, the ones who are disengaged and not connecting anymore. The quiet quitters, the less motivated people who are showing at lower productivity. And those are showing up traditionally in KPIs. And then there's the dead list or the orphan list, the dead list of customers that you can't get a hold of. They're no longer there. They're disengaged, they're gone. We're talking about really finding those disengaged, but not looking employees are the best possible employees that disengage, not looking, are the ones who don't need a job.

Mick Torbay: But if they, if they're happy at their job, and they like their boss, and everything's groovy. Boy, you've got a challenge in front of you. Good luck getting that.

Chris Torbay: And frankly, it's not even, if it's just they think this is the average and they think it's gonna be no better or worse with you, then people will stick with a sure thing way longer even if they have an inkling that, “I wonder if another place would be nicer, but man, I'm not going to throw this, I'm not gonna throw in the towel on this to sacrifice what I have on, on the off chance,” there's gotta be a an obvious improvement.

Mick Torbay: I think people discount the difficulty with which someone leaves a job. I had a client, no longer my client, I'm happy to say, in the state of Virginia, and they believed, this person truly believed in his heart, that there was no loyalty in his community, and that people would only work for home services companies for 18 months maximum. And that's because nobody stayed at his company for more than 18 months. And he was constantly in a state of recruiting because he had this tremendously enormous attrition problem. And it never occurred to him that the problem might be him, might be internal. Remember, when I said people leave bosses? Well, he was the boss, and it never crossed his mind that people were joining his company, and just over 18 months later, they were like, figuring it out.

I'm gonna go somewhere else. And he just thought, “Well, the grass is always greener. That's the problem in this town. The grass is always greener.”

By the way, this is a military town, like the most loyal, patriotic, loyal people, literally on the planet. And he just thinks they, they just try things and then if the “grass is greener, they try something else.” Well, you know what? Training, breaking in a new boss, getting a new truck, no one wants to do that. A new system, paperwork and all that. Nobody wants to do that.

Chris Torbay: When you started a new place, you're really hoping this is the one. This guy seems like he could be the one. Fingers crossed, honey, I think we found the right one this time.

Mick Torbay: They're really not saying to their wife, “Let's try this out for a year and see if I like it, and if not, I'll try somewhere else.” Nobody likes doing that. If you have a recruitment, if you have an attrition problem, if people are not staying with you look in the freaking mirror. This is on you.

Ryan Chute: And this is a nod to just take a second and realize that's not just candidates, that's customers. Customers don't want to change companies of HVAC or plumbing or insurance or lawyers, or anything else.

Mick Torbay: Or cola or beer.

Chris Torbay: They know where to get their brand.

Ryan Chute: The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. And the reality of it is that there may not be a perfect situation there for them, but it's good enough. And what we're selling is, in those situations, sometimes just something a little bit better than what they have right now. And sometimes that's going to be more effective than trying to sell them on this super aspirational, super transformative, thriving dream because you're not meeting where they're at.

Chris Torbay: And that's why this idea of having you figure it out is more powerful because, you know, to Mick's point and, and, and to your point just then, you have to say that incredible thing, now you have to say something that is so outrageous that I might give up what I have.

Whereas if I watch your consumer ads for long enough that I think, “Man, that company's really got it figured out. I wonder. I wonder if they're hiring. I wonder if it's my idea,” if I'm starting to think I've figured something out, and “they don't seem to be putting any recruitments out, but I wonder if I gave 'em a call like I think I'm the smart one here.”

Then I'm the one who said that they're this much better. “You didn't try to convince me of that with perhaps limited actual evidence, you didn't quote a price that's a third higher than the salary I'm making. You didn't tell me I'm gonna get more days off, like you didn't. If you don't say that stuff, then, then you don't look substantially better.?

If I figure it out, I may come to that conclusion on my own, and then  I'll proceed that way.

Ryan Chute: I think it's incumbent of us to say that it is no longer an option for growing companies to advertise periodically as they need people, and do this constant caterpillar effect of people.

Mick Torbay: If you're growing, growing, you always need new people.

Ryan Chute: And we don't know when those good people are gonna show up. It might be Christmas Day when they finally get a day off, and they're just sitting there going, man, sick of this nonsense. And they're flicking through and they're going, boom. But now, if you knew, you were known, liked, and trusted by that same guy/girl.

Mick Torbay: When you're scrolling through and it's like, who of these people do I feel, oh, I've heard of this company.

Ryan Chute: I feel good about these guys. The, it's recruitment not just for the consumer-centric, but for the candidate-centric as well, and we have to be paying attention to that. My ads are up 365 days a year for recruits on my websites.

I'm always making sure that we're available and looking for, and paying attention to the opportunity for unicorns. So if you're not on the hunt for the unicorn for the people and a unicorn's not about a superstar, the unicorn's about the person who is the absolute best fit for you, be it that they are congruent with your value structure, but equally as much that they fill a gap that you currently have lacking.

Mick Torbay: Right. Well, and, and here's a little bit of practical advice. I talked about a former client of mine who was clueless as to what the problem was with the attrition problem at his company. And of course, by definition, that means sometimes the boss just doesn't know what the problem is. But I'm gonna give you a little shortcut to find out if you are that guy. The best recruitment strategy that you have at your company is your employees. Are they bringing people to your company to work? Are they bringing their friends? Are they bringing their buddies? Are they bringing colleagues, it doesn't matter what business you're in.

Chris Torbay: Are they reaching out to those guys, saying, “Hey, you should come as well. You should come as well?”

Mick Torbay: Yeah. If they're doing that, that means you are bringing something to the table, and they're willing to put themselves out. If you hire a person and he brings nobody, that's not his problem. That's your problem.

Never ask your employee, “Why are you not recommending your brother, who also does this for a living, to come here?” He would've recommended to his brother who does the same thing if he thought if he was happy with the decision he's made, he just doesn't want to bring his brother into the shit show that he found himself in. So that's a good way of knowing if your employees are constantly bringing their friends, you're doing it right. If it never happens, look in the mirror. This problem is yours. You can fix it. But the first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem. You might wanna talk to Ryan about that, he can help you with it.

Ryan Chute: Well, one of the things that I commonly see are these recruitment bonuses of, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 to get recruited into the business. That sends such a terrible message to absolutely everyone, that I'm astounded that it's still employed today, that the type of person you attract,

Mick Torbay: You have to bribe people to come and work for you.

Ryan Chute: When we talk about transactional and relational customers, transactional and relational customers are made up of the same thing that soil and green crackers are made out of, frigging people, right? Let's all agree that the same thing is true with our candidates. If they're coming in transactionally, they're leaving just as transactionally. You've got them as long as you have not paid them their last check or bonus,

Chris Torbay:  The other nice parallel to how we treat loyal customers versus new customers, right? When you give these fantastic signing bonuses to new customers. And it's like, “I've been a customer of yours for five years, and you're giving that guy a better rate because he's new,” right? “How about me? The guy who stuck with you?”

And so if you offer a signing bonus, it's like, dude, I've been an employee here for three years. I'm your best guy, right? And, and whatever, and you're ignoring me, right? To take a chance on a new guy.

Mick Torbay: If the signing bonus gets big enough, I will switch to the other company for 18 months just to take the money. But I'm not the guy you want.

Ryan Chute: Well, and look, I will absolutely pay a signing bonus. I will pay it to the person who referred them in, who's been my loyal employee. I’m not paying it to the guy who's coming in. I'll pay him when he refers somebody in and they stick. So the signing bonus is valid. You've just paid the wrong person.

Chris Torbay: That's a really good point. Having it reinforced the relationship that's most important to you, which is keeping good people.

Ryan Chute: This is the difference between dopamine and oxytocin, right? If I say, I'll give you $20,000 if you do a thing; dopamine,  But if I say, look, I'm gonna pay you a hundred dollars for the next, every paycheck for the next two years, for every person that you've brought in and sticks around for that period of time. And if you bring in 10 people, that's a thousand people. A thousand bucks a month, week. Or a pay. And that's a big deal.

Because now I'm getting them to squirt oxytocin into their brain, and that's the bonding chemical, the loyalty chemical, the five-star review chemical. The Indeed job posting Glassdoor thing, where they're rating your business and saying, "Now these were pretty standup individuals. You know that all the things that you're looking for to do the thing that you're trying to achieve here, which is to connect and bond and create long-term, profitable, successful, abundant relationships."

It all starts from inside, and how you deliver that, just has to be oriented in the same way that maintains a relational edge, a thriving edge, and not a surviving edge. Which is, which is what the opposite does.

So very interesting conversation, guys. There are a few interesting stats out there.

According to LinkedIn, 75% of job seekers consider a company's brand before applying.

Chris Torbay: 75%. Wow. What do I know about that? Yeah, they seem like a guy, right? Yeah.

Ryan Chute: Or simple as that. I don't know them. Right. Do I really want to, like, if I don't know them, if I never heard of this company, if I haven't heard, would my customers have heard of them?

Companies that showcase their value in their product advertising see up to a 20% increase in applicants, right? People want to work for Google, and people want to work.

Chris Torbay: They wanna work for the people who make iPhones, well, and iPhones are cool. They must be cool.

Mick Torbay: And don't forget that the decision maker is more than just the person who's getting the job. They have families. They do. And so, if you say to your wife, I'm thinking about taking the job over at Google, she's like. “Oh, you're gonna get a job at Google. That's pretty fricking cool.”

If you say, “I'm thinking about taking a job over at Ryan's computer company,” that she'd be like, “You know, you're doing pretty well at the place you're at now.”

Ryan Chute: Recruitment ads with storytelling elements are 2.5 times more likely to attract top candidates than traditional job descriptions; stories work. And don't talk about the job. No one cares about that, like if you're talking to an HVAC technician about an HVAC technician's job, what are you doing right? The job description is.

Ryan Chute: Here's who we are, here's what we sell.

Mick Torbay: That's it. Right? No one cares. You talk in your job ad about the type of person you want in that role, which is congruent with the role, right? Fit happens at the leadership level, at the culture level, at the team level, right? And at the actual physical job level. They already know the job. The real question is, do they fit in the other three spots? That's 75% of the frigging point, right?

No different than your branding considered or considered the brand 75%. That means 75% of them are discounting you as an option if they don't know your brand. Right. So these are struggles of smaller companies, but it's never too early to start putting out an auditory message, a story, a narrative, a truth about what you stand for and what you stand against in this universe.

From day one, it'll make a difference as to who you'll get to drive that intention forward. And, grow your company. And Google gets over 2 million job applications per year. Despite rarely running direct recruitment ads.

One of the things that Roy did brilliantly with the Morris Jenkins campaign was that he wrote an ad that you can find on YouTube about recruiting women in the trades. Because there is a huge disparity in those roles. And that had massively successful results, not only for the aesthetic of Morris Jenkins, who comes across, and feels very, very, compassionate towards families, let alone, 50% of our population is more than capable of performing extraordinarily high-quality duties in the home with the training that they were able to provide.

Mick Torbay: But also, he leaned into that. Dewey Jen has leaned into that. He didn't just simply say, “We want to have, we think there should be more women in the trades.” He backed that up by putting a daycare in his building. So, everybody who had children could just drop their children off at the daycare located at work. And then you wonder why a bunch of women were like, “That would make my life a lot easier.I could just go and work there.” And if something's wrong with my kid, I'm technically there. You think that doesn't affect people's decision-making.

Ryan Chute: It has a massive impact on decision making, and ultimately, it's about being culture-oriented in that nature because your culture, ultimately, when it boils down to it, is your brand. So we're really trying to create an environment where it does make all that sense in the world for me to do the thing.

Mick Torbay: Well, and let's define the terms we've been saying. Company culture. We've said it a couple of times, but what is company culture? It is simply everything that is not salary and job description, right?

If your salary is the same as your competitors are paying, and your job description is the same as your competitors expect, then the only reason why you like this job better than that one is company culture.

Ryan Chute: Right.

Mick Torbay: It's all that stuff.

Ryan Chute: And who drives company culture, but the leaders who do it now; leaders don't control the culture. The culture controls the culture. There's a whole conversation just in culture alone.

Mick Torbay: This is a whole other episode.

Ryan Chute: And it does get really fascinating as to what it is that we can do to be the brand of choice. And, it all ties back to its really hard to advertise that when you're not that. So one of the things to work on is to actually not be a crappy player.

Mick Torbay:  Don't say impossible to advertise, but if you want to know if you've got a good one, well, if your employees are bringing their brother-in-law to come and work for it. You got something going on.

Ryan Chute: There's something there. Folks, we've seen what works and what doesn't, but how do you put this into practice? After this quick message, we'll wrap it up with, uh, actionable takeaways for crafting recruitment ads that actually deliver.

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Ryan Chute: Bottom line, great recruitment ads don't feel like recruitment ads. They tell a story. They reflect your brand's values. They speak to the kind of person who will thrive in your culture. And when done well, they don't just bring you employees, they bring you the right employees. Remember, recruitment isn't about filling seats. It's about building a team that will grow your business. Now go write some ads that just don't suck. Until next time, you've been listening to Advertising in America.

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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 Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

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Let’s get something straight, kid—there’s no such thing as a perfect media channel.

If someone tells you otherwise, they’re either trying to sell you ad space or snake oil.

In this episode of Advertising in America, Mick, Chris, and Ryan fire up the mics to answer the golden question:

‍“Where should I spend my ad budget?”

The answer? Not where you think.

We slice through the fog of fear-based media selling, laugh at the myth of zero-waste targeting, and torch the idea that any medium is magic all on its own. TV, radio, digital, billboards—they all work if you do it right. And they all fail if you don’t.

Episode Highlights:

• Why 97% “wastage” might actually be the best investment you’ll ever make
• The difference between clever media placement and a killer message
• Why frequency beats reach every time
• How to build long-term brand love instead of chasing clickbait conversion
• And how to make your budget hit like Coca-Cola, even if you're not Coca-Cola

🎧 Hit play. Then stop chasing tactics—and start building a brand worth remembering.

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Today, we'll cut through the noise and figure out where to spend your cheddar. In the 50s, radio was huge. TV made it less so by the 70s, the stronghold that radio had left was really just in cars as people drove to and from work. You could see that in the ratings.

When I worked on the Porsche business in Canada, we used to run glorious full-page magazine print ads, and the Report on Business Magazine. The one read faithfully by bankers and lawyers, and corporate executives. Running those ads, in that exclusive high-end magazine, it was still 97% wastage. Only 3% of that readership was technically our target audience.

Online versus offline, as we spoke about in earlier episodes, we talk about is social media is something where we look at it as only sales activation? Or do we look at it as branding? Well, it's both.

You can only get so far with clever media choices. You can fish in better waters, but you still need a good lure.

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Ryan Chute: Where, oh, where should your ad dollars go? Choosing the wrong media channel means throwing money away. While the right choice could turn your brand into a household name. Today, we'll cut through the noise and figure out where to spend your cheddar. First to cut the cheese, Mick Torbay.

Mick Torbay: Which media work today and which don't? This is a question that we get asked a lot, and over the years, it won't surprise you. The answers have changed. For example, in the olden times, just about every grown-up read one daily newspaper regularly. My old man would read every page, and he wasn't that unusual. So, a big quarter-page ad in the local paper would get you a strong percentage of consumers in your market.

This is not to say there's no value in newspaper advertising today. It's not the same, and you'd be a fool to pretend that it is. There are simply more places to get news today, and although the New York Times has a digital version, that's the one I read, but there are not as many ads, and instead of the ads sitting on one page as you read the article on the other, now the ads are in the middle and you can easily scroll past them.

It's different. That's all I'm saying. I don't have any clients running long-term newspaper campaigns right now, which brings us to radio in the 50s. Radio is huge. TV made it less so by the 70s. The stronghold that radio had left was really just in cars as people drove to and from work. You could see that in the ratings, big listenership during breakfast and afternoon drive, and that ratings curve hasn't really changed much since the seventies.

Now that's gonna surprise some people because we have a lot more options for our drive to work entertainment than we used to, but you have to remember. There were options back in the 70s, too. Eight track tapes let you choose your own music cassette tapes, let you make your own mix tapes, and then CD players in the car gave us sound that was just as good as the radio iPods and phones gave us bigger playlists, but the numbers show that each of these new options simply replaced the previous ones.

Tons of people are still listening to the radio today, and I have plenty of clients on the radio right now. And remember, I'm paid on results. If radio didn't work, I would find something that does, which brings us to TV.

Yes, TV is suffering from cable cutters. Fewer people watch TV compared to the old days. But don't confuse fewer people with nobody. That's dangerous. Nielsen knows exactly how many people are still watching regular old television. So the only question is how many are there? And how much does it cost to reach them three times a week? Remember, we don't need to reach everybody. We need to reach half of everybody because they will tell the other half, and you can easily reach half of them with TV.

Digital, well, of course, digital works really well too, but only if the consumer is ready to make a purchase and has no preferred brand. Which leads to a search. With digital, everything begins with a search. And for me, if you're waiting for the customer to make a search, that means you're already too late. I wanna win the hearts and minds of the consumer before they search for your product or service.

McDonald's doesn't need an online campaign 'cause they're already on the short list when we want a fast burger. We don't need to search “burgers near me” to know what a Big Mac is. That's what I want my client to be. The one that's thought of first and liked the best before a search is even considered. I wanna skip the search like McDonald's does, and you can't skip the search with digital.

All of these media work well when you buy them properly, and you have a compelling message.

Ryan Chute: Mo money, mo problems. The more you wanna grow your company, the more people who need to know not only that you exist. But you are the best choice. Chris, what do you think?

Chris Torbay: Listen, all media channels are a blunt instrument. A bunch of people you want to reach mixed in with a bunch of people you don't.

Media companies that try to position themselves as otherwise are creating false hope. There is no holy grail for your brand. When I worked on the Porsche business in Canada, we used to run glorious full-page magazine print ads in the Report on Business magazine. The one read faithfully by bankers and lawyers, and corporate executives, and running those ads in that exclusive high-end magazine was still 97% wastage. Only 3% of that readership was technically our target, except it wasn't. Because the other thing we know about Porsche buyers is that they've wanted one their whole lives.

They just had to get successful enough to finally buy themselves one. But they probably had a poster of one in their bedroom as a teenager, and they weren't a rich banker back then. So, however we've reached them all those years, the media contributed too. I've mentioned before that Coca-Cola used to say, “If it moves, sponsor it and if it doesn't, paint it red”.

That meant they wanted to be everywhere, and they advertise everywhere too, on TV, radio, cinema, pre-roll ads, transit, billboards, you name it. Because their target is everyone. Thirsty people.

And the truth is, your target might be closer to everyone than you think. If you run a jewelry store, your target is everyone who likes to look pretty, as well as everyone in love with someone who likes to look pretty. That's quite a lot of the world. If you sell heating, cooling, plumbing, or electrical services, your target is homeowners or people who want to be basically adults, 18+.

This search for the right medium is what leads to media being created for no other reason. Cigar Aficionado Magazine doesn't exist for all the Tobacconists hoping to read interesting articles. It exists for the high-end whiskey retailers who want someplace to put their ads because, hey, if people can afford fine cigars can also afford fine whiskey. It's perfect for our target.

Dogs Today and Modern Dog are magazines that only exist because advertisers will pay to advertise in a magazine read entirely by dog owners, but that search for zero wastage isn't nearly the best way to reach dog owners in America. Mass media is, even with all the non-target, non-dog people, who are also watching, dog owners are everywhere, and everyone.

Don't advertise your engagement rings in Engagement Ring Quarterly because that's where all the people who are interested in engagement rings are. They're in the world. Advertise in the world, you'd do better to concern yourself less with finding the right medium and more with finding the right message.

What makes you a better source of engagement rings than the other jewelry store? Why will my dog prefer your dog food to the stuff we feed her? Now, why should I spend a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks on this single malt and not that one? Sure. Don't put up a poster for Rolexes at the unemployment office. Don't advertise Viagra on Dora the Explorer. Fish where the fish are, but you can only get so far with clever media choices. You can fish in better waters, but you still need a good lure.

Ryan Chute: Condoms, Chris on Dora the Explorer, possibly a good idea. Let's discuss some fun places to advertise when we get back from this commercial break.

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Ryan Chute: So let's break this down into key considerations, mass versus targeted media, online versus offline channels, and the external tug of war between sales activation and brand building.

Mick Torbay: Well, one of the things that I like to do is I like to meet the client, the business owner, where they're at, and one of the things that we're very often asked very often, early in our relationship with new clients is “what media work and which don't.”

So we phrased our question that way, and that's certainly how I phrased my initial rant. But there's an inherent error in the question itself because it kind of suggests that some do and some don't. And that kind of thinking can lead you down a very, very terrible path of deciding that. That there are some that do work and there are some that do not work. They all work when done well. They all fail when done badly.

Ryan Chute: Right, right. Absolutely.

Chris Torbay: Well, and it's not to keep coming back and making the boogeyman out of digital, but it's also a question that's getting asked more and more because digital in various contexts will offer you a kind of targeting that is very, very specific.

And as we've talked about in other programs, often that targeting comes later in the search funnel, right? So if somebody's air conditioner broke today and they Google “air conditioner repair near me,” boy, digital will search for people who are targeting, who look like they're going to make a purchase today. Whereas mass media, we'll create a brand that people like the best and are and are most predisposed to think of when a year from now something goes wrong and they say, “Hey honey, who should we call? Well, there's those people whose ads we like.”

And so again, there's a thing that happens because digital does offer some sort of targeting, or because you can run a banner ad on the goldfish website, boy, you can really talk to goldfish owners specifically whereas if you advertise on, you know, Abbott Elementary, you're gonna get the amount of tropical fish owners that exist in the world.

So it's one of these things where people now have kind of unrealistic expectations of how targeted they should be able to be, because there are a couple of opportunities to be very targeted. But that doesn't mean that that's the best choice or sort of strategy.

Ryan Chute: Well, and it comes down to what I understand it to be, two things, right? Targeting is ideal for a couple of reasons. One, to get your message out to the people who are looking to buy your thing right now. And two, to target an area where you may not have the budget available to target.

The mass, right? And you just can't afford to do it equally as much. If you live in a great big city and you run a $3 million home service company,  you're not gonna want to target the whole city in the first place because you're gonna spend more time behind a windshield, then you're gonna be in customers' houses.

So it does come back to the operational strategy that the business has available to them at the time with their budgets, resources, and capacities. But it's also a question of what are we actually targeting here?

There's this idea that we're trying to get targeted results out of mass media. We're trying to get a sales activation message out of mass media, and that's not practical. Online versus offline, as we spoke about in earlier episodes, we talk about podcasts, is that online or offline? Is social media something where we look at it as only sales activation? Or do we also look at it as branding?

Well, it's, it's both. It's not an online or offline situation of lead generation versus brand building. It's both. In those situations, and where you leverage the media channel comes into, how does the media channel get consumed? What's the temperament around that channel? What's the intent around that channel?

Mick Torbay: Well, we also tend to imagine that certain people use certain media and don't use others. And that again is an, there's an inherent error there. Well, does, does our target consumer watch TV or listen to the radio or go online? Well, the answer is yes. And, every time they come up with a new medium, it's easy, and it's almost always a very targeted one. And, the way that they sell it to you is they say, well, this is how many people are using this new medium?

For example, I remember when in a ways the traffic map system gets you to work when it first started selling ads where they would do is they knew where you were going and if there was a Dunking Donuts on the way to your, to your target destination, they could say, “Hey, do you wanna stop and get a donut?”

Okay, great idea. And then they would sell that by saying, “This is how many people are using this product, and therefore, if you want to reach them, this is how much it costs.” And if you choose not to use my medium, you won't get them. It's like, “Well, you know what they're doing in their car, apart from using Waze, they're listening to the freaking radio.”

Like we think that every time someone invents a new medium, we add more people. No, we don't. There's the same amount of people as there's always been. It's just every three weeks we figure out new ways of advertising to them. But that doesn't mean that if you don't choose this medium, they are 'ungettable', they're absolutely.

Chris Torbay:  They're listening to the radio on the road. They're watching the billboards go by on the road. They got signs on the road.

Mick Torbay: All the stuff that's been there is still there

Chis Torbay: And they watched the TV ad last night and thought, you know, “I think I might get my coffee there instead tomorrow. Why not?’

Mick Torbay: Absolutely. All of those things.

Ryan Chute: And that's seduction is really perpetrated in marketing class and marketing schools at universities because they're orienting their strategies around the Fortune 500, the Fortune 100, where budgets are seemingly endless, and you have this, this access to the omnichannel presence.

Small businesses, three to $5 million have a budget, they have payroll to meet this month, twice at least. And ultimately, it's gonna boil down to where do I spend my money? And, the answer to that is, wherever you spend your money, don't spread it around so thin that you're talking to very, very few people very infrequently or a whole bunch of people too.

Chris Torbay: Yeah, that's an interesting point. If you're Coca-Cola, you can. You can be a dominant media purchaser in every medium, right? You can buy tons of TV, tons of radio, tons of outdoor, tons of everything. But if you're a smaller player, then pick a medium, help pick a couple of stations within a medium and be a big player on that station so that the people on that station see you as a, you know, and this is why we come back to region. It's about reach and it's also about frequency and reach as many people as you can, but only at a frequency that it becomes valuable, right? You know, three times a week, something like that, where if you are a listener to that station, this is one of the regular advertisers that you hear, and then they become in whatever amount of the population that is. You've got them for sure, though.

Ryan Chute: That's the secret sauce of the Wizard of Ads. And it's on page, I believe 122 of the Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads. You are going to have incredibly more potency reaching the same people with a hundred percent of the message, rather than a hundred percent of the people, at 10% of the message.

Chris Torbay: A little sprinkle here. And this is, Mick tells this story a lot, so I'll say, I'm gonna steal it from you, which is a lot of times when people say that a medium doesn't work. It's because they did a half-ass job of it. They say, “Oh yeah, we tried radio, but it didn't work.”

Well, as it turns out, the radio station then offered them a special price for a 13-week flight. They did one ad that they wrote themselves, and the DJ read it over a piece of stock music, and they ran it for 13 weeks. And guess what? It didn't do anything. Well, of course not, you know, and, and they probably gave them leftover media space on the overnights. And so it didn't even get that much of a, but now they think they tried radio, quote unquote, and it didn't work.

And I'm sure the same thing happened with, you know, a community magazine and a something else, and a something else. And so they've written off all these things because they didn't do a good job of it. They didn't own that medium. They didn't, they didn't have a good message in that medium, but they didn't do it the right way.

And now they've written it off unfairly.

Ryan Chute: And, frankly, that is the fault in my deepest of opinions, that's the fault of the media sellers who are

Chris Torbay: Sometimes…

Ryan Chute: Who are almost always the ones trying to convince you of your marketing strategy, when they're not actually giving you is one ounce of strategy, but a tactic that may or may not work.

There's nothing more frustrating to me than seeing a whole bunch of outdoor signage for a company that doesn't have a supporting auditory reinforcement mass media campaign, because you're literally wasting money on these billboards and these park benches and bus stickers that don't actually drive any evocative emotion.

Mick Torbay: Well, and there's no particular medium that has a monopoly on that. I mean, any advertising medium has to get sold. And so, therefore, you have to bear in mind that there are sales techniques that people use, and like any major decision that anybody makes, it's based on one of two things: hope or fear.

And so you can, you can sell with hope, and you can sell on fear. And the fear that they do is if, here's how many people are availing themselves of my advertising medium. If you don't buy it, therefore you're not getting them.

Bullshit. That's not how it works. And everybody does this.

The radio stations will do this. The radio station will say, “Well, this is how many list, how many listeners you won't get if you don't advertise on my station.” That's not true. Are you a classic rock station? Well, let me guess. Is there another classic rock station in town? Well, people switch back and forth between your station and the other one.

I don't care who you are. Yeah, that's the way. That's the way.

Chris Torbay: And when the game's on, they're on the sports station.

Mick Torbay: They're on the sports station. So you can get everybody somehow. So there's that, that fear, and we, we know people buy based on emotion. So they sell based on emotion, and they will say whatever they can to get you to buy their thing, even though that might not be the best thing for you. Which is why we are media agnostic. We don't care what medium you're on. We want you to make more money, and we choose whatever medium we can to accomplish that.

Ryan Chute: And it's about spending those limited dollar resources, more potently.

We'd much more rather have a concentrated effort going to the same people. That is going to get you further down the road faster, and then be able to build off of that backyard base that you're building from, regardless of the channel. Whether it's social media, whether it's radio, or whether it's television is inconsequential.

What matters most is that the message is right and the frequency is right for the amount of budget you have, is the only thing that's gonna change. Your budget is how many more people you wanna reach. So that function is the measuring stick that we need to look at, not the other way around. We hope to reach so many people on billboards. There's a hundred thousand people driving by a day. Well, who cares? Most of them aren't even looking at your thing. And if you're selling a home service, they don't need your thing right now when they're driving by that. Why in the world would that resonate with them in any other way than to be a of color up on a board somewhere that's completely invisible otherwise.

Mick Torbay: Now, this is not to say that there's no way of being strategic in your media buys because, for example, there's an interesting niche that television has that can't be accomplished with radio, as an example, and I'm talking about specifically cable TV.

When you buy radio, you're buying, we're broadcasting to a very wide area based on how far the signal goes from their transmitter, and everybody who hears your ad will hear your ad if they're within the zone of how far that transmission goes.

With cable TV, now television's generally more expensive than radio, which is why we like radio so much, because it generally costs less money to reach people more often. But there's this one little trick with TV where, let's say you're in Atlanta and you sell roofing, but for whatever reason, you only serve half of the city. Because you're just not big enough to serve the other half. Radio can actually hurt you there because you're advertising to half the people who are listening to you, you can't serve them because you just don't have enough trucks.

Chris Torbay: If they call, you gotta turn 'em down.

Mick Torbay: Exactly. And, so that's not just wastage, it's not just a matter of you're, you're talking to people who are not potentially your customer. You're actually potentially pissing them off when they want you.

They like you. They think of you first. They want to hire you, but you can't serve them. So now you're actually gonna annoy people. You're paying money to piss off half the city you don't want to be in a position where that's happening, but what you can do with cable TV, you can literally bring your message by zip code.

You can say, this is where we operate, and this is where our commercial will run.

You can't do that with billboards because people drive around the whole city. You can't do that with radio because people can pick up your signal everywhere else. That's one example. There’s a few of these, and I'm not a media buyer, but people who are really good with media will help you navigate that world. But there, there are a few examples where you can be strategic about your media buy. My example with a business that serves half the city, radio is the worst thing you could possibly do for that reason.

Chris Torbay: Yeah. And you can target within that too, which is, you can buy ESPN on cable, or you can buy HGTV or something on cable. And so you're talking to people who are interested in homes, or you're talking to people who are interested in sports. And if that aligns with your sort of customer base, then you can target that way. But, but also remember, and people sort of get excited about that. “Oh, well, if a lot of our customers are also sports fans, you know, that's why we put the beer ads on the sports things because a lot of people who watch sports also like beer.” Well, a lot of people who run in investment brokerages also drink beer.

Mick Torbay: And they get thirsty as well.

Chris Torbay: And some of them also like football. So, you know, these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but you could also reach that person with your beer ad in something that's aimed at bankers.

It's interesting, and so just because I think sometimes there is that fear of wastage, right? That I'm advertising to all these people who aren't my target consumer. And so isn't that wastage? And it's like, well, it is, but if it's getting you, who is your target consumer as well? Then it's the cost of doing business. It’s a thing that you do.

The one that I learned this years ago and it, and it still gets me, is, I dunno if you've ever seen a TV ad, and sometimes you see like 60-second TV ads for General Electric or Siemens or Bombardier, and it's like there's a 60-second commercial on a like a major thing, and I've learned about those, which is those ads are aimed at like 200 stockbrokers in America, you know? Which is to get you to think about General Electric as an investment. And the best way to reach those 200 stockbrokers or bond traders or whatever it is, is mass media. 99.99% wastage. But you'll get those 200 people. So take your lumps, you'll get the people you're after.

And that's why I say on some of these other things, if you're selling dog food, put it on Abbott Elementary, half the people are cat owners and are tuning you out. But you have an incredible volume of dog owners who are also watching. And that's a valid investment as compared to getting 99% accuracy on a very small run dog magazine that nobody reads. But the people who do are all dog owners.

Ryan Chute: So we're talking about emotional environment, or the intention of the environment, of what the person's disposition is, who is going to be looking at that. They're also dog owners, but they're also kind of like, they're looking intentionally more so, you're going to get a higher weighted value.

Chris Torbay: But again, and we've talked about this, you know, what's more important is your message. I think if I were running an ad for a dog food, I would run a different ad in the dog magazine than I would run on the Super Bowl. And, it's almost what you were saying between brand and activation, right?

Which is somebody who's, who sees your ad in a dog magazine. Maybe you make that a more informational ad. Maybe you talk about things that you wouldn't talk about. Whereas in a broad scope, medium, you tailor the message to what the medium is. And when you get the people who are keeners about it, and they're in a certain space because of how engaged they are, then there's probably a specific message for that person as well. And it's the combination of those two things that makes it more effective, not just this is a better medium, quote unquote.

Ryan Chute: So as we talk about having the past talked about, targeting is one of the ways that you can target without targeting where you can speak to as many people, there's never been a time that we've ever seen somebody who's the wrong person reached with our message bankrupt a company like it just, that's not how it works because mass media is such fractional amounts of money per listener. It's not even a fraction of a penny. So well, it is a fraction of a penny. It's very, very tiny. So why does that matter? It matters because we can reach these people, we can connect with them, and if they're not the desired recipient, the targeting in the message will actually be received and carried forward and shared, as you said, with the other half of the population

Chris Torbay: Or it's brand building, and next year you're gonna get them. Yes. They're not at the bottom of the funnel. They're not looking to purchase a water heater today. Or a new iPhone today. But you talk to them all year. Then, when it comes around and they are ready now you have reached them. Now that investment pays off. That was not wasted money. It was back then because they didn't convert. If that month you needed sales, if that day you needed the phone to ring. Okay, that's “wastage.” But a brand-building perspective, it’s not.

Ryan Chute: It’s compound interest. It's compounding because you're building the business of many years from now. And that's really where we shift into this kind of concept of the long-term brand building and the short-term, and what devices, what media channels are best used for that? TV and radio Billboard, all obviously the best for brand building because it's repetitive, it's echoic. It's going to show up over and over and over again. It's also auditory level. It's going to have a higher impact. We also have social media campaigns, but on a broad reach, impression-based campaign, not a click campaign. That's the only affordable way of doing it. Also, targetable.

These are the things that we're testing right now with the help of Ryan Deiss at Digital Marketer, who's teaching us and testing these theories out on how do we leverage social media in a way, like mass media.

Mick Torbay: But we need to remember that anytime we're talking about media, one media choice versus another, as a business owner, if you're talking about which media should I choose, bear in mind the discussion you're having is, “Where do I want to say it?”

Anytime you're talking about budget, how much money you're gonna spend, what the question you're asking or answering is “How loudly or how often am I going to say it?”

It's how many. It's how many, it's how often, and where? How are we gonna say it? How often, how loudly are we gonna say it?  Have we forgotten what we're gonna say?  It's the message, it matters which media we use. But say it out loud with me. We're talking about how I'm gonna say it.

But are you sure you know what you're going to say? Because what you're gonna say matters more than how you're gonna say it, where you're gonna say it, to whom you're gonna say it, and how often and how loudly you're gonna say it.

Ryan Chute: So, think about this from the Simon Sinek Golden Circle standpoint. The how we're gonna say it is, is the whatever media channel we choose; the what we're gonna say is the actual communication message.

Mick Torbay: Why you matter.

Ryan Chute: And the well, and the why, is going to inform what we say. So the why is we're gonna do this because we're gonna grow our company to this, and we're this, and we're this. The why is what sells, and it's gonna sell more effectively when we get our why. So Simon Sinek, back again to the Golden Circle, get your why, right? Start with the why. The why will inform your what, which is the message, and the what will inform which channels we can do it most cost-effectively on.

So this is, this is all very much the same information that you've seen, just perceiving it from different areas. And that matters because we're really trying to maximize the output of your marketing dollars, because they are limited, that you don't have an endless infinite budget, and frankly, you don't have so much money that you can apply to just pay-per-click campaigns and short-term immediate results that you go out of business trying to chase the almighty lead at $200, $300, $400, $500 per lead for these high level keywords.

What you can do is bring that down so dramatically much and shift more of your message to brand building, to actually giving a reason to know, like, and trust you before they get to Google.

Mick Torbay: And get you on the short list before they're Googling your category, right?

Ryan Chute: Because if you're not on the short list, you're on the long list, and you're no different than anyone else, there's literally nobody else that would stand out any better than you, except for the ones that have worked on their brand.

Right, and we're not talking about truck wraps and logos here. We're talking about auditory storytelling words. If there's no narrative, if there is no editorial, then there is no context to the pretty pictures that you're seeing wrapped on trucks or sitting on billboards. Yeah.

Mick Torbay: And you're not answering the question, why you?

Ryan Chute: The what is a billboard is a channel, a truck wrap is a channel.  A website is a channel. All of these things are the how you do it, but none of them are answering the question of why. And, certainly, none of them are saying what you do beyond what anyone else would say fundamentally.

Chris Torbay: The Differentiator.

Mick Torbay: And don't put more effort into, how am I gonna say it, than, what am I gonna say?

Ryan Chute: And, and frankly, why you're gonna say it? Because until we know why, we're gonna say it. We don't know what we're gonna say until we don't know what your values are. Your mission is your core values, your beliefs, the things you stand for, the things you stand against, and what you're trying to achieve.

Are you trying to be a multinational company? You're trying to be the best guy in town? Are you just trying to run a happy $5 million operation? All of those are okay. Those are all success. It's about doing it at the best possible level to get the best possible results for what you define as success.

So the strategy really depends on the brand's goals and the competitive landscape. We'll tie a bow on what this means for your business after this message.

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Ryan Chute: At the end of the day, where you spend your advertising dollars is less about finding a magical medium and more about understanding your message, your audience, and your goals. It's not about precision so much as presence, and not about targeting perfection, but ensuring that your reach and repetition is embedded your brand, in the minds of the audience.

Video and radio dominate for embedding long-term emotional connections when the right frequency is achieved. Intent-based search and sales activation offers are great for short-term goals, but no medium will do the work for you if your message isn't compelling.

The best advertising strategies blend media channels, measure impact over time, not just leads and adapt as the landscape changes, the key? Think like Coca-Cola, be where your people are while targeting helps. Storytelling and emotion trump clever placement every time.

So, where should your ad budget go? Everywhere your customers live, think and relax. Fish where the fish hang out and use a better lure.

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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 Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

If Google Maps is the new Yellow Pages, then ranking high is the new storefront visibility.

And in the essential home services game—plumbing, HVAC, electrical—ranking in that Google 3-Pack is ideal when you haven’t been building your brand in the minds of your prospects. It's the modern-day Main Street for the masses of undecided shoppers, and it’d be great to hold the best digital real estate if you aren’t a destination. 

So, how do you get there?

Let’s toss aside the confusing SEO jargon and talk like real business owners who want predictable results, not magic tricks. Here's how to dominate your local map rankings in a way that’s strategic, sustainable, and totally service-driven.

1. Your Google Business Profile Is Your Digital Storefront—Clean It Up

First, stop calling it a “Google My Business” listing. It’s now your Google Business Profile (GBP). But names aside, this profile is your first impression, your social proof, and your conversion machine rolled into one.

Checklist for a Rockstar Profile:

• ✅ Business Name (no keyword stuffing—Google hates it)
  
• ✅ Address (NAP must match everywhere—more on that in a sec)
  
• ✅ Phone Number (click-to-call enabled)
  
• ✅ Website link (direct to a service-specific landing page)
  
• ✅ Categories (primary = your main gig, secondary = your side hustles)
  
• ✅ Hours (accurate and updated, including holidays)
  
• ✅ Services and Description (use keywords like a human, not a robot)
  
• ✅ Photos and Videos (real jobs, happy techs, and branded trucks)
  

SEO Tip: Add local service keywords into your description naturally. Google sees it. Customers feel it. Win-win.

2. Local Citations Are the Web’s Version of Street Cred

You remember citations from school, right? Now apply them to business. Local citations are listings of your Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) on directories like Yelp, Angi, BBB, and Chamber of Commerce sites.

Here’s the secret: **they must match—**exactly.

• “123 Main Street” ≠ “123 Main St.”
• “Acme Plumbing LLC” ≠ “Acme Plumbing Co.”
  

Inconsistencies kill trust. And in Google's eyes, trust = rank. Use tools like BrightLocal or Whitespark to clean it up, or assign your ops manager one good afternoon to fix it all manually.

3. Get Reviews. Then Get More. Then Respond to All of Them.

Google wants to know: Do people like you?

The answer lies in your reviews—not just the star count, but:

• The volume (more than your competitors)
• The velocity (coming in steadily, not in suspicious batches)
• The variety (mentioning different services and keywords)
• Your responses (fast, friendly, human—not corporate spam)
  

Pro Tip:

Ask for reviews strategically, right after a successful job. Train your techs to plant the seed, and follow up with a branded SMS or email. Make it easy. Make it personal. Make it matter.

And when they leave one? Always respond. Even to the grumpy ones. Especially to the grumpy ones. Because how you handle critique is public proof of your company culture.

4. Proximity, Prominence, and Relevance: The Big Three

Google’s local algorithm is built on three core principles:

Proximity:

How close is the searcher to your address? You can’t hack geography, but you can:

• Open service-area pages on your website for nearby cities.
• Use “Service area” fields in your GBP smartly.
• List your actual address if you have multiple physical locations.
  

Relevance:

Are you what the searcher is looking for? Your categories, service pages, and reviews help tell that story.

Prominence:

Are you well-known, trusted, and active online? Google rewards companies that act like leaders—posting regularly, earning links, and engaging with customers.

5. Post Like a Pro (and Stay Consistent)

Your Google Business Profile has a “Posts” section. Use it. This isn’t social media fluff—it’s Google’s own content platform.

What to post?

• Seasonal service reminders (“Schedule your furnace tune-up before November frost!”)
• Special offers (“$49 drain cleaning special this week!”)
• Job highlights (“Just completed a 5-ton rooftop HVAC install in Cedar Park.”)
• Educational bits (“3 signs your water heater is failing.”)
  
  

Post weekly. Add photos. Use keywords. And don’t forget CTAs like “Call now” or “Book online.”

6. Build Local Links Like a Neighborhood Hero

Google loves links, especially ones that prove you're the hometown favorite. Think:

• Sponsoring local youth teams
• Donating to community events
• Being featured in local blogs or newspapers
• Joining associations (and getting that sweet backlink)
  
  

Don’t just market to your community—be part of it. That’s real-world PR that fuels online visibility.

7. Website Optimization Still Matters (Yes, Even for Maps)

Even if your leads come from Maps, your website still counts. Google looks at it to determine:

• Service relevance (Are you an HVAC company or just pretending?)
• User experience (Fast, mobile-friendly, clear CTAs)
• Consistency (Does it match your GBP and citations?)
  
  

Your home page and service pages should scream local intent. That means:

• Geo-targeted headlines (“Trusted Pest Control in Franklin, TN”)
• Customer testimonials with city names
• Embedded maps, FAQs, and trust symbols (like Google Guaranteed badges)
  

You Want the Google 3-Pack? Act Like a Local Legend

Ranking higher in Google Maps in 2025 isn’t about tricks. It’s about truth. Relevance. Authenticity. And consistency.

Here’s your next 3 moves:

1. Audit and update your Google Business Profile today.
   
2. Build a review-getting system that’s baked into your customer journey.
   
3. Stay active: post, link, respond, repeat.
   

Remember—visibility isn’t given. It’s earned. And in the home services world, where trust is currency and speed is king, showing up first isn’t just helpful.

It’s everything.

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Want a Free Google Business Profile Guide or help with turning your service area pages into ranking magnets? 

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Bonus Tip: Update Your FAQs and Q&As—It’s Visibility Gold

Want to show up more in both traditional Google searches and the emerging wave of generative AI search results? Beef up your FAQs and Q&A sections.

These aren’t just filler content—they’re findability fuel.

Why it matters:

• Google’s algorithms love direct answers to real questions.
• Generative search tools are pulling structured FAQ content into featured snippets.
• It builds trust and clarity with potential customers.
  

What to do:

• Review your current FAQ and Q&A content across your site and Google Business Profile.
• Add robust, service-specific questions—aim for at least 5–7 per service area.
• Use customer language, not internal jargon.
• Include common objections and clear, helpful answers.
  
  

Need inspiration? Check out how Fix it Frankie structures their FAQs—it's a masterclass in how to speak clearly, build trust, and rank smart.

Bottom line: Think of every FAQ as a mini-conversation starter with both your customers and the algorithms.

Lately, I’ve been getting overwhelming feedback on my latest manuscript, I Think I Swallowed An Elephant (Kindle pre order is available). But the comments that stick with me most aren’t about what I wrote.

They’re about what I didn’t.

It’s what I chose to bury.

Like an iceberg, the real weight of a story lives below the surface. The part you don’t spell out. The part the reader feels in their gut before their brain catches up.

And here’s what’s wild…

Different readers walk away with different truths. One sees a journey of self-forgiveness. Another sees a blueprint for transformation. A third sees a mirror. Same words. Different stories.

Not because I told them everything. But because I trusted them to bring something of their own.

Back in 1961, a young copywriter named Shirley Polykoff rewired an entire industry with just five words.

“Does she… or doesn’t she?”

It was about hair color. But it wasn’t really about hair color. It was about autonomy. Privacy. Power.

Those five words didn’t shout. They winked. They whispered a possibility and let the reader answer it for themselves.

The best writing does that. It respects the audience enough to leave space. It knows that persuasion isn’t about pressure. It’s about resonance.

And that’s the mistake so many make today.

They write like they’re afraid of silence. They fill every gap. Explain every point. Spell out what the reader should think, feel, believe.

But the truth is, people don’t want a conclusion handed to them.

They want to arrive there on their own.

The right words don’t close the story. They open it.

So here’s my challenge to you: Say less. Trust more. Create space for your audience to step inside your message and find themselves there.

That’s where change happens. That’s where connection lives.

And yes… she absolutely did.