Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Once upon a time, there was a master plumber named Joe. His skill was unmatched, his reputation well-deserved. He was known far and wide, not just as a plumber, but a maestro of pipes and leaks. The secret to his success was a quiver full of arrows, each a different kind of competence. There were five in total, each one as important as the last.

The first arrow was Technical Competence, sharp and straight like a carpenter’s ruler. This arrow was all about precision and knowledge. It was about asking questions regarding the problem itself — like a detective piecing together a mystery. How severe was the leak? What type of bits and pieces were involved? What tools would he need for the task? The answers to these questions ensured that Joe was always technically prepared for the task at hand.

Next in Joe’s quiver was Social Competence, vibrant and energetic like the Town Square. This arrow allowed Joe to understand his customer’s needs. He’d ask about the duration of the problem, the impact on daily life, and the budget for repairs. By doing this, Joe not only understood the problem better but also deepened his bond with the customers.

The third arrow was Emotional Competence, as soothing as a calm Sea Captain amidst a storm. With this arrow, Joe gauged the emotional climate of the situation. The customer was anxious. Their routine disrupted. Just like a Captain reassures his crew in a storm, Joe used his emotional competence to bring comfort and calm to his customers throughout the repair.

Then came Cultural Competence, colorful and respectful like a world traveller. This arrow allowed Joe to assess the environment’s needs where the plumbing solution would exist. He’d ask if the household had specific times of heavy water usage, or if there were cultural norms he needed to respect while performing his work. Just like a good guest respects the customs of the land, Joe adjusted his work to align with each household’s unique way of life.

The last arrow in Joe’s quiver was Intellectual Competence, wise and thoughtful like an old owl. Joe used this to look at the bigger picture. He’d consider safety implications, local laws, and long-term sustainability. He’d ask: What safety issues could arise from this repair? What does the state building code say about such repairs? What solution will be most sustainable in the long run? This allowed Joe to ensure his work was not only effective but also safe, legal, and future-proof.

The tale of Joe teaches us that being a master of your craft is more than just skill. It’s about understanding people, asking the right questions, and respecting the environment you work in. Just like Joe, we too, can fill our quivers with these five arrows, using them to guide us in our work and our lives.

And remember, every situation is an opportunity to draw an arrow from our quiver, aim carefully, and hit the target.

You don't jave an attention problem... you have an entitlement problem.

Most advertisers walk into the market like they’re the main act—expecting people to listen, care, and convert. The reality? You’re the interruption. And if you haven’t earned that attention, you’ve already lost it.

In this episode, the team dismantles the illusion that good products, polished branding, or bigger budgets automatically translate into results. From painfully generic HVAC commercials to bloated national campaigns, they expose the real issue: advertising that says everything and means nothing.

The conversation cuts deep into what actually works—earning attention through entertainment, holding it through storytelling, and delivering a single, memorable idea instead of a laundry list of features. Because the market isn’t ignoring you… you’re just not giving it a reason to care.

If you’re still relying on “quality, service, and low prices” to carry your message, this episode is your wake-up call.

Episode Highlights

• You Don’t Deserve Attention: Why assuming people are listening is the fastest way to be ignored.
• The Opening Act Reality: Your audience didn’t come for you—how to hijack attention and make them stay.
• The 50/50 Ad Trap: Start entertaining, then switch to selling—and watch your audience disappear.
• The One-Message Rule: Why cramming in features kills recall and guarantees failure.
• Earn It, Then Hold It: The critical difference between grabbing attention and sustaining interest.
• Campaigns That Compound: How consistency, characters, and storytelling build long-term loyalty.
• Emotion Beats Information: Why people don’t buy what you say—they buy how you make them feel.
• ‍The Cost of Being Generic: If your ad could be for anyone, it will connect with no one.

🎧 Hit play to learn why attention isn’t given—it’s earned, fought for, and kept through craft. If your marketing feels invisible, this episode will show you exactly where it’s breaking down and how to fix it.

📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

💬 Are your ads actually earning attention… or just interrupting people and hoping they tolerate it?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Essential Services

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In today's episode of Advertising in America, we desperately want your attention. Like, seriously, do we matter to you? Don't you like our logo and brand colors? Aren't we the coolest three old dudes pontificating about how smart we are on a podcast in 2026? 

In advertising, there is no such thing as if you build it, they will come. They won't. 

When I watch TV or listen to the radio, I am constantly amazed at the mediocrity of the commercials, and it's not just from the small businesses, large brands, national brands are phoning it in as well. 

If you talk about your company's quality, service, selection, low prices, free parking, and qualified staff who really care about your needs, I assure you no one is paying attention.

I think 2026 is a renaissance of shitty advertising. I don't think it's ever been this bad.

Ryan Chute: That's right. Attention. Do we deserve it? How do we get it? How do we earn it? And more importantly, how do we keep it and convert it into American currency that pays our mortgages? First, here's Mick to give us some tough love and a few choice swears. Mick. 

Mick Torbay: The topic today is, do we deserve the audience's attention? No. Over to you, Chris. No, wait. I have some more cursing to do. When I watch TV or listen to the radio, I am constantly amazed at the mediocrity of the commercials, and it's not just from the small businesses, large brands, national brands are phoning it in as well, filling their ads with features and benefits based on the assumption that people are hanging on every word.

They're not. The people are there, but did you give them anything worth listening to? Last week I saw a TV ad for a heating and air conditioning company, and I pay attention to that stuff because I have a bunch of clients in that exact space. So I want to know what other people are doing in that category, and wouldn't you know it. It starts with a handsome actor, he is driving up at the truck and has shockingly clean fingernails. He comes to the door, and we see him putting on his cute little booties, close up on the booties. We respect your floors. Then a shot of the technician, pretending to use tools on the air conditioner, and then he polishes the compressor section clean with a nice clean cloth, and then the final handshake with the impossibly attractive homeowner. All the while, a voiceover is telling us about their commitment to quality, service, selection, price, and their professional staff who really care about your needs. Just canned rubbish. Could be for any HVAC company anywhere. And this was a national brand, not some mom-and-pop shop. These people should have known better. This is what I'm competing with. And man, is it ever easy to make something better than that? 

Their mistake began before they even started writing. It was all, “Should we tell them this or should we focus on that?” with the assumption that people will be paying attention to whatever it is they decide to say? It's the perfect commercial for a bathroom break. 

When you're making your ads, begin with this thought instead: Why should anyone watch this? What will make them want to stick around and watch the whole thing? What will they remember about this commercial? What about it is worth telling their friends at work around the water cooler tomorrow?

If you don't have solid answers to those questions, don't bother shooting it. It's going to be crap. It won't work, and you'll blame the TV station or the radio station for not having enough viewers. The problem isn't a lack of viewers, it's that you gave them nothing worth viewing. 

When we make a commercial, there's an idea, and that idea is not interchangeable with any other company in the category. Frankly, any other category, for that matter. There's a story that began long ago, and this is the next chapter. We have characters that are interesting and unpredictable. You never know what he or she's going to say next, and there's some drama or comedy or fucking something to make you feel something. I wonder about the guy who wrote that HVAC ad I told you about? When it comes on the TV, does he say to everybody, “Shh, look, I, I wrote that, the closeup on the booties. That was my idea.” Take some pride in your work. If you wouldn't happily play that commercial for your entire extended family and expect to get a really enthusiastic response, then it's not good enough. Shame on you. You forgot the first rule of advertising. Say something worth listening to. You do not deserve the audience's attention. They are not your audience. They're someone else's audience. You're the opening act for a big stadium show. The seats are filled with an audience in the thousands, but no one came to see you. So your job is to deliver something that moves them, earns their attention, and entertains the living shit out of them. If you can do that, maybe they'll come back for more. 

Ryan Chute: The funny thing is, they sell those exact same ads to multiple HVAC companies across America. Imagine thinking generic ads would actually help you sell more. So embarrassing. Turning our attention to mix older, much wiser, much more handsome brother Chris. What say you?

Chris Torbay: In advertising, there is no such thing as if you build it, they will come. They won't. No one cares. The Super Bowl ads aside, there is no advertising that people look forward to. No one owes you their attention. When you decide to write an ad, even better, create a campaign. The first question should be, how do we earn people's attention?

Maybe that should be the first three things we ask ourselves, like the real estate agents and their stupid location-location-location thing. How do we earn people's attention? No one owes you their attention. Hell, that's why Mick and I spend weeks crafting these profanity-laden rants for the top of every show.

No one particularly wants to listen to three guys yak about whatever. So we earn your listenership by researching and planning and crafting a brilliantly profane monologue about the topic of the week to draw you in, disrupt your preconceived notions and make you interested in the ongoing conversation that follows.

Just because three handsome, wise gentlemen have microphones doesn't mean people are going to listen to everything they record with them. The trouble is in marketing, the way we think about these things and work on these things means we always move past the part about earning people's attention and start talking about the content.

“We need to tell people that the all-new J2000 has a new defibrillator attachment with a 1.8 gigawatt flux capacitor that will really save people time and money. Let's put all that in.” 

If that is a product your target is already passionate about, they might be eager to hear what you have to say. Tell a Porsche driver about a new gearbox design, and they're all ears. But tell a homeowner about a new breakthrough in air conditioner compressor motors, and they don't really give a shit. They just want the thing to work. And that, by the way, is the best-case scenario when you actually have something new and exciting to say. Most people fill their ads with messages that are not new and not exciting, and importantly, not differentiated, and expect people to take all that boring information in, not a chance.

If you talk about your company's quality, service, selection, low-low prices, free parking, and qualified staff who really care about your needs, just like every one of your competitors does in their ads, I assure you no one is paying attention. That's ad speak, and they tuned out as soon as they started hearing it.

The problem is you looked at all that stuff in the script and thought, “Great. Look at all the things our consumers are gonna learn about us.” They would have if you had earned their attention, but they aren't because you didn't. The weird part is this is a lesson no one ever seems to learn, and that includes the top of the advertising food chain. Big agencies working for big multinational clients. They get it wrong just as much with more money on the table. In the big agency world, people like to use focus groups mostly to cover their ass, but quite often to save themselves from having to actually think for themselves. “Let's ask a focus group if this is a good ad.”

A focus group, if you are unfamiliar, is when an agency and a research company get together and pay 12 people 75 bucks on a Thursday night to sit in a room with the agency and the client behind one-way glass and listen to the ad idea and tell you what they think. A moderator plays the ad and then asks a bunch of questions.

What did you think of the ad? What did it say about the new J2000 defibrillator? Would you recommend this product to your friends and family after what you just saw? These all seem like good questions, except you just paid people to watch the ad, and they paid damn good attention because you told them you were going to ask questions.

Hell, I've heard moderators start with, " Did this ad get your attention?” They're being fucking waterboarded with the ad. Of course, it got their attention. But all the intel you get out of those detainees is now bad data because you don't know if the ad met the most important criteria it was crafted to meet. Is it deserving of someone's attention? 

Focus groups and marketing committee meetings, and pouring over the script, checking to see if all the stuff from the brief is in the script, will not answer the biggest question you need to ask when evaluating and approving the ad. Does this ad deserve the attention of our audience? Until it does, everything else in that script might as well be written in invisible ink.

Ryan Chute: It's so nice to see you pay such strict attention to the three-minute rant rule we uphold here so diligently. Reverend Bastards. When we return, we'll turn our attention to the finer points.

Ryan Chute: So the thing I'm most interested in is this thing about the table stakes. 

Chris Torbay: Mick, you're a vegetarian. Tell us about steaks. 

Mick Torbay: I think  2026 is a renaissance of shitty advertising. I don't think it's ever been this bad, and that is so good for us. Literally on our way, driving down in the car to the podcast today, I heard an ad, and I'll get some of the details wrong, but it basically said this, and this is for a national campaign. This is a coast-to-coast retailer. And they said I'm paraphrasing, but play along.

“We are asking people how they feel about how you can get triple the rewards points when you use your linked card to make purchases at any of these three retailers.” And then the person that they're talking to says, “That's a good idea. I think that's a pretty cool idea. I'm really excited about it.” “There you have it, folks. You can get triple the reward points when you use your linked card to get to use your reward miles to make purchases from these three retailers.”

And I'm like, God, that was like the brief, read, and then “we are asking people about the things on our clipboard that say we have to put these in the ads,” and then they say it again, this is what you guys have come up with.

Chris Torbay: And they sell it to the client by saying, “Here's the idea for the ad. It's like a man on the street thing. Like we're out asking people these things.” It's like you didn't actually get to any fun with a man in the street kind of scenario, which could be fun. And you could put jokes in there, and you could put entertainment in there because you had to do that huge intro with the very convoluted details of what it is that they're asking people about supposedly, and then repeated again at the end, you burned up 25 of your 30 seconds. In fact, the thing that is supposedly this scenario doesn't even get referred to. 

Ryan Chute: It's the thing that we are taught when we were first being taught to write by Roy, and you write basically the four minutes of context out before you actually start writing the thing that matters. And then he says, take the lead that you buried and put it to the top. And they didn't, they just kept the context. 

Chris Torbay: I think partly what it is that people get the ratio wrong of how much entertainment versus earns you how much content. And it goes back to my lifelong sort of rant, which is that people can remember one thing. They can normally remember one thing about a brand, I guess if you advertise enough, you enough advertising, you can do one thing per ad. But that's where Mick talks about those table stakes, there are seven boilerplate table stakes that people always refer to, right? The quality, service, selection, free parking, low prices, all that kind of stuff that you hear in every ad. That's too much content for how much entertainment you have. You need to flip it. You need to mostly just earn my attention. I was listening to the radio, I was listening to Taylor Swift, I was watching the football game, whatever I was doing. You have to earn my attention from that thing. And spend most of your effort doing that, and then give me one nugget that I can remember. That's the ratio. 

Really make your advertising memorable and interesting, and something I can talk to the people at the water cooler about the next day. Spend most of your time making sure that happens. And then give me one nugget, which you can attach to that, and the problem is, I think most people flip that, and they go, “let's fill it full of stuff and put a joke at the end. Or let's do a gag opening and then dive into the strategy document.” 

Ryan Chute: Open big and big. I liken it to sneaking it into the sauce. When you have a little kid, you don't want them to know that they're eating the broccoli. You chop it up real fine, you sneak it in the spaghetti sauce and all of a sudden they're eating their veggies. And they don't know it, but you snuck it in. And they're getting their veggies. It's not unlike that with entertainment. The whole thing is entertainment, and you snuck a little bit in the sauce, and they're going to accidentally learn something about you through humor and or something else. Something that made them feel. 

Mick Torbay: And we're in a lucky position if, in our category, it's well understood what we are. If you're in the trades, if you're a plumber or HVAC technician or a roofer or a garage door guy or an electrician, any of the things where people basically understand what it is, then really you don't have to do any heavy lifting. I don't have to explain what a water heater is. All I have to do is let people know my company does water heaters. Then, what I have left is to entertain them for 60 seconds, and maybe like that company and make them like those people. And it's amazing when you get a client who gets that, and I have a client who gets this. My client in southwest Texas, whose marketing person was trying to suggest some particular angles that were very specific to them, very specific to the company. And he said, “Just have the characters be interesting and don't worry about it. That's the good part.”

And it's that's actually the good part. It's hot in southwest Texas. They fix air conditioners. I don't have to go into any detail. All I have to do is make people like them. Liking the brand is so much more important than ticking the boxes of all the things we wanted to talk about today. So I know that the brand manager probably said, “It's really important that people understand that they can get triple the reward miles, but they have to use a card that's linked. It's not just using the card. It has to be a linked card to do, and it's only these three retailers because there's own all owned by the same parent company,” and it's so fricking specific. And what do I care about that? 

Chris Torbay: And you've ended up, to your point of burying the lead, you've buried the lead, which was probably triple the miles because you've included a bunch of specificity that I'm not going to remember. What are the three retailers? Is the card linked, actually, or is it like those sorts of things? I'm gonna forget all that stuff. But it did, all it served to do was muddy the waters, and so now I probably missed, “Hey, I can get triple the points!” because if I actually have that rewards card, and you're suddenly there's a triple the points offer out there. Man, if you'd have just somehow been clearer or more entertaining about making, about one thing that you wanna say about it, the triple points opportunity, maybe I'd have remembered that and been excited about it because I collect those points.

Ryan Chute: It's worth the effort. We have three currencies, right? Three tangible currencies as human beings, whether we're the consumer, whether we're the employee, it doesn't matter. Money, energy, and time. That energy is expended. We're paying people attention. We are given the gift of their money or their time. And they will pay us only so much as it's not too much of a burden. When it becomes stressful, and anxious, and frustrating, they tap out, they're going on to the next thing.

Chris Torbay: And I'm not going to use my energy just because your ads are on the air. I'm not going to use my energy to try to decipher something from it. You need to use your energy. 

Ryan Chute: To pull me in 

Chris Torbay: To get that time out of me, I guess in right, in your equation. 

Ryan Chute: Why pay anybody anything that's without some sort of return on investment?  My investment in time, my investment in energy, my investment in money. 

So it's it is an equation. This goes back to the same notion that Eugene Schwartz talks about back in 1956, where he's dealing with the state of awareness and the state of sophistication in hot water tanks. It's a very sophisticated market. Everyone knows what a hot water tank is, right? New innovative technologies. Different story. Right now, we're teaching people about it. It's a different message. That message that we talk about in hot water tanks won't work in the latest computer, specialized camera, or whatever the case might be. So we have to pay attention to who our biggest audience is, who is most likely to be moved. If we think about home services, people aren't going to be moved by maintenance. That is a proactive thing. The majority of people are only gonna be moved when they are forced to move in an externally triggered grudge purchase.

So speak to that pain and make it painless in that way. How are we getting their attention? Is based on the words we choose to use. Words are absolutely the most powerful elements of what your brand has to offer. It's not your logos, your colors, it's not any of these things. It's the things that represent relief for the customer in the home services space, for pleasure or identity in the other. 

Chris Torbay: And very seldom is the specificity of something. You talk about there could be new technology and water heaters sometimes, that's interesting, but rarely, and that's why I make that example about Porsche. If you're talking to a Porsche driver, they are interested in gearboxes, and cubic centimetres of displacement and all that kind of stuff, and suspensions and whatever, new technologies. But largely, most drivers are just concerned about the driving experience, and so in most things, the details of the product are not what's interesting.

You just want to buy a brand because you like that brand. Rolex will tell you why Rolexes are great and why they are expensive to make, and things like that. But most people buy a Rolex because they want to have a Rolex, because of an emotional thing. And Mac are the same. Apple will tell you about their processors and their engineering and all the kinds of things. But it's like Mac people are Mac people, and you want to be that if you want to be in that group. It's an emotional reason. There's some justification, but you don't put it in the advertising. The advertising isn't about the new process, or the advertising isn't about those sorts of things. It's about something memorable and interesting. 

Ryan Chute: So one of the things that I'm hearing is that we need to recognize that attention comes from identity. That even the person who wants to get their air conditioner repaired has the identity of, I don't want to be duped, I don't want to be taken advantage of. I want somebody who I can know is going to play fair. 

Chris Torbay: Yeah. And in southwest Florida, it's hey, that guy from the, the mixed client, it's like that guy from the ads, he seems like the kind of guy, 

Ryan Chute: he's an all right guy.

Chris Torbay: And I'll ask him what is good with air conditioners, and he can tell me about the new J2000 compressor or whatever. If there is such a thing, but it doesn't go in the ad. It, it doesn't need to. It's that character that was created in the advertising, and in this ongoing story that makes me go, “If there's a guy I'm going to call, it'll be that guy. He seems cool.” 

Ryan Chute: It's the two on the nose type of messaging that we need to avoid. If you have to say, trust us, then you've done it wrong. If you have to say we're honest and have integrity, then we've done it wrong already. It's how do we make a person feel trust for us? We show up empathetically. We show up in good humour. We show up in competence. We don't say we're competent. We show up in that, in the message that we do, and we paint the interesting picture. The novelty comes from. The interesting picture, and this goes back to [David] Ogilvy, back in the fifties, when he's talking about the headline has only one job, to get you to the first sentence. And the first sentence has only one job: to get you to the second sentence. And that's the same thing as we hear from all of the social media gurus talking about hooks and this and that and the other thing. Nothing has changed. The psychology, the biology of this whole thing, stays the same.

Where I want to shift next is to shift into the difference between getting attention and holding interest, because there is a fundamental difference between getting attention and earning attention. 

Great. We can get attention. I believe any idiot can get attention. You do something audacious enough, and you've got attention. How do you hold it? How do you keep them in your corner until such time as they buy the thing that you sell? Because in a lot of our categories, they're long purchase cycles. We need to hold that intention until such time as they're ready to buy. We need to have them make that decision. Days, months years. 

Mick Torbay: There's really two questions there, which are, holding their interest through the length of the ad or holding their attention for three years. And those are two legitimate problems. Holding the interest through the ad, that's hard enough. In the example that I used at the beginning, I instantly started another conversation because it's not relevant to me this is clearly an ad that was not written for the delight of the consumer. It was written for a committee somewhere that had a bunch of boxes that needed to be ticked. And we know they're going to evaluate the ad, not by how persuasive or how powerful or sticky it is. It's did they mention all seven things that we had that we said had to be in the ad twice? 

You are writing for the wrong fucking person. That person has to buy this product. The challenge we've got is that the people don't care about our client, don't care about the category, don't care about any of this stuff, and in fact, are not even listening to this radio station or watching this TV program because they particularly want to hear anything from us. That's why I use the example of the opening act, like, they're not here for you. Get that through your head. 

When you're at a marketing meeting, and you're just poring over a script and discussing it and bouncing the ideas off of it, you've got this broken sense that everyone is going to care about these minute changes that you're all talking about. It's like they don't even give a fuck about any of it, let alone did you use this word rather than that word. You don't deserve their attention. They're not here for you. You have to hijack it. You have to hijack their attention. They want this, and they're getting you. And you have to make them happy about that. That's really hard. And you don't do it by simply telling them the things that you would like to get off your chest. 

Chris Torbay: And the point where they, where you lose their attention within the ad is soon as you go from being entertaining to, and now clearly this is the advertising stuff that you wanted to piggyback on, that you start with a joke and then you launch into talking about the product and it's I know I can tune out now because you've stopped being entertaining and you've started being advertising, which is going to wash over my head. What you have to resist is saying I think I've earned their attention, and now I can just bombard them with all this stuff. 

No, that is the turning point, which we, and there are lots of people who will tune out, that they will tell you they heard the joke, and they go, “I forget who it was for because then they went on and they talked about the product.” 

Mick Torbay: Chris calls this the 50/50 ad, and you hear it all the time. And not for small advertisers.  Big, big advertiser will use the 50/50 ad where it starts off with a really funny line, and then is just details and back to the boilerplate, and it's just “oh, great, so I don't have to listen to this part. You've given me the entertainment, and now you think you've earned me that.” No, you have to weave it. It has to all be part of the same idea so that they will pay attention.

Chris Torbay: People will tune out halfway through. They will pay attention to the part that's interesting and then ignore the part that's not interesting. It's not that if you get their attention in the first 10 seconds, the next 20 seconds of attention are a given. They can change their mind halfway through your commercial. It doesn't necessarily extend to the end just because you got them in the first third. 

Ryan Chute: And we see that on social media with view rates. We see if you can get a person to watch you for six seconds, you're better than 99% of the internet. 

Mick Torbay: Wow. 

Ryan Chute: Six seconds. The average gets less than two. Yes. 

Chris Torbay: We're really good at swiping

Ryan Chute: Because it's not fitting into our dopaministic urge. It's not hitting our relevant center. It's not on point to anything that matters to my existence right now. And that again, it comes back to the state of awareness, state of sophistication. Where are we with that? We're not gonna get everyone. That's okay. But if we can get more people to stay because we've done something that not just gets their attention but holds their interest, now we've got momentum and that builds over time, which is why it takes time to build a brand.

Mick Torbay: And that, that's leading to the second part of your question, which is how do we hold someone's attention for weeks and months and years. And the answer to that is a campaign. A campaign that has that consistency, has that familiarity that makes people want to listen, make them, that makes them want to turn the volume up when they hear the commercial, because they know that these commercials are always entertaining, always interesting. What the heck is he going to say next because they just don't know. And so they're paying attention. That's how you get that. And since I made this point slightly differently in our last podcast, but if you do that even not perfectly, it still counts.

It's still better than not doing it at all. And the proof of that is there's, if you talk to somebody from whatever small town you came from or whatever, small neighbor, whatever neighborhood you used to talk to or you used to live at, and you talk to somebody who used to live there, they will inevitably say, “Oh, you remember that, that coffee shop on the such and such, oh, they had just the best ham and cheese sandwiches,” and it's no, they didn't. They didn't have the best ham and cheese sandwiches. It's just that you used to have a ham and cheese sandwich every day, and all your buddies were there, and that was growing up and familiar. That was life, and familiar, and nostalgic. It was nostalgic. That's nostalgia. That's not good.

“Oh, remember that pizza place? Oh, they had the best pizza.” If they had the best Pizza… No Napoli is. That was not the best pizza in the world. It was your local pizza joint.

Chris Torbay: And you miss it and you came to love it. 

Mick Torbay: But it wasn't great. It's exactly the same in advertising. If it's familiar and warm and you feel something because you're in it, the ad has made you feel it. Then being consistent and always there, is actually half the battle. You could also make the commercials excellent. 

Chris Torbay: Yeah, it's interesting when you say that, turn the radio up, turn the radio down thing, it works both ways, which is if you say, “Oh, I like these guys. They're always have funny things to say.” You turn the radio up, and you listen all the way through. Equally, if you say,” Oh, these are the guys where they always start with a knock, knock joke, and then they go on about the product and a bunch of details and sales and promotions and shit,” the audience will learn that. They will learn that after hearing the joke, they can tune out just as much as they will learn. “I always like these guys, they always do 60-seconds of interesting conversation, and I like them.” 

Mick Torbay: I wonder sometimes if almost by design, they don't give per people permission to tune out. Because sometimes they'll be having these two characters and they'll be, the one's a kangaroo and he's talking to the penguin and they do something interesting, and it's, oh, that's hillarious.  And then an announcer comes in and says, “0.8% financing on the such and such.” 

Chris Torbay: Even that is the permission point.

Mick Torbay: That's the point where you're giving the listener permission to tune out because of nothing entertaining is going to happen. 

Chris Torbay: Now you might as well say, and now a word from our sponsor person so that I know that can, I can stop paying attention.

Ryan Chute: And a lot of these same lessons that we're seeing in social media about how do you get the person to last past six seconds, how do you get them to hang onto the end of the video, are the same rules that we've always followed, that we've always had out there. You give a partial reveal, you do a random entry, you do something that's novel in its entry point. You have characters that you can invest in emotionally in some case, and want to see what the outcomes are. When you start with something outrageous and tease the exciting ending, the customer's more inclined. The audience is more inclined to listen through to the end. And that's really quite important. It also is equally important what environment you're in on social media it's easy to swipe. On the radio, the most you're going do is turn it down, turn it up, turn the channel. But, if you've got proper repetition, like our good friend Beth has helped us with frequency on the radio, you're going to be haunted no matter what channel you turn it to, so it's inevitable that you'll hear our ads.

Mick Torbay: It just goes to show there is actually nothing new here. Like what you just said about social media is exactly what Ogilvy said about the ad, about the newspaper ad. The picture gets you to read the headline. The headline gets you to read the body copy. It only works in that way, and if your picture's shitty, it doesn't matter. They won't read the headline. It does work in order, and that's grabbing attention, keeping attention, and then managing to deliver something important, whilst keeping the person motivated and engaged. That's the thing. It's been the same since the fifties. It's exactly the same on any digital source. It's the same stuff. The digital people understand it more. It's almost like the TV and the radio people have just said, “nah, fuck it. We're just gonna tell people what it is.”

Ryan Chute: Let's just get to the cut to the chase, and we do, we have this natural urge as business people to cut to the chase, to forget the romance. 

Mick Torbay: The chase is the best part. There should be the chase in a movie is the part the consumer wants to see. When a client says, cut to the chase, they mean. Cut away from the interesting thing, 

Chris Torbay: Cut to the end of the case where we've caught the guy. 

Mick Torbay: And cut to the part that I want to talk about, which is what shit that matters to me. We have these sorts of difficult con conversations with our clients all the time where we have to look them in the eye and say, “Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about your products, nobody cares about your services, and how do you like that?”

 Now that doesn't make for a good meeting, but it's honest, and it's true. And we have to remind them that our job is to be that opening act that will distract that consumer who did not come here for advertising and yet stick through it. And you're not going to get through that by telling them who you are and what you sell. 

Ryan Chute: A hundred percent. This has been fantastic. Thank you, gentlemen.

Ryan Chute: So what does this mean for our listeners? Say something that matters. People are looking for leaders who stand for something and stand against the things they stand against. Craft a story that can continue in an entertaining way. Any idiot can get attention. It takes a skilled storyteller to hold a prospect's interest until such time as they need what you have to sell. Make people feel. The stickiness of your brand comes from the feelings you stir up in your audience's soul. In a transactional world where you sell all the same things as everyone else, the only differentiator you have is how you make people feel. People are desperate for connection, confidence, and certainty. They're going give their money to the people who deliver that, with the goods and services that they sell. Until next time, this is Advertising in America. Go start a subreddit and tell the planet how gay we seem to be. 

‍

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

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

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

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

MARKETING & CAMPAIGN REFERENCES:

• 1956 Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising [Book]
• David Ogilvy

Some brands are built to be seen.
The great ones are built to be felt.

Five years ago, the company now known as Call Dad didn’t exist. It operated under a different name, delivering solid HVAC service but blending in with every other provider in the market.

What changed wasn’t just a logo or a truck wrap.

It was a strategic decision to build a human-centered home-services brand. One rooted in trust, familiarity, and emotional connection.

Why Traditional Home Services Branding Fails to Create Distinction

Founder Matt Pozda didn’t set out to disrupt HVAC marketing. He set out to solve a trust problem.

After nearly a decade in investment banking, Matt experienced two very different HVAC companies as a homeowner: one efficient but pushy, the other genuine but unreliable. Neither delivered the experience people actually want from a home services provider.

The real insight came when Matt realized something deeper: this was the one situation where he couldn’t call his dad for help.

That realization became the foundation for a brand positioned around care, reliability, and peace of mind, the very things most essential services companies struggle to communicate.

How Wizard of Ads for Essential Services Branding Uncovered the Real Brand Story

When Matt and his leadership team partnered with Wizard of Ads for Essential Services, they expected a marketing strategy session.

Instead, they experienced a full uncovering.

Rather than focusing on trucks, tools, or service menus, the conversation went deeper—into values, family stories, leadership beliefs, and personal motivations. What emerged was undeniable: this company wasn’t built by technicians first.

It was built by dads.

The existing brand name had no emotional relevance. No memory trigger. No meaning.

And that’s when the idea surfaced:

Call Dad.

Not as a clever hook, but as a brand promise.

Rebranding a Home Services Company: The Risk, the Dip, and the Breakthrough

The rebrand was bold, unconventional, and intentionally different from anything in the home services category.

Growth dipped. Exactly as predicted.

Significant capital was invested. The leadership team had to sit in the discomfort of short-term uncertainty to achieve long-term brand equity.

Then something shifted.

Customers didn’t just recognize the brand, they connected with it.

• People submitted thousands of jokes
• Listeners remembered the ads
• Customers sent handwritten letters
• One woman called after losing her father, saying the name alone made her feel seen and understood

At that moment, it became clear:
Call Dad wasn’t a marketing campaign. It was a relationship.

Why Storytelling in Home Services Marketing Builds Long-Term Trust

Instead of scripted corporate messaging, Call Dad leaned into story-driven advertising, the kind rooted in shared memories and universal experiences.

Dad jokes.
Holiday stories.
Familiar phrases like “I’m on my way.”

Radio became the foundation, embedding the brand into long-term memory through repetition and emotional resonance. Social media expanded that connection. Television added a visual layer to a brand that customers already trusted.

The result was a home services brand that felt familiar before the first service call ever happened.

Home Services Marketing Results: Growth, Expansion, and Market Leadership

Today, Call Dad is experiencing sustained, measurable growth:

• 67% year-over-year revenue growth
• 8 active markets
• Approximately 210 employees
• Nearly $38 million in annual revenue
• Expansion into plumbing and electrical services underway
• Projected trajectory toward a $250 million home services operation

These results weren’t driven by discounts or lead gimmicks.

They were driven by brand clarity, emotional connection, and consistent storytelling.

“I’ve gotten handwritten letters about how our service filled the expectations people had for their father.” — Matt Pozda, Chief Executive Officer, Call Dad

The Takeaway: How to Build a Memorable Essential Services Brand

Customers don’t want another HVAC company.
They want reassurance.

They want to know someone’s on the way.
They want to feel taken care of.
They want to trust without feeling sold to.

Call Dad works because it didn’t try to sound professional.
It tried to sound personal.

That’s the power of a brand built on values instead of vanity, where the business doesn’t just tell a story, but becomes one people remember.

Sometimes, the fastest way to grow is to feel familiar.

And sometimes, the smartest marketing strategy is simply being human.

All you gotta do?

Call Dad.

👉 Start the Conversation

"Stories make up the fabric of human communication, the things that make people feel, live in stories. There's never been information that has delivered transformation." — Ryan Chute, Wizard of Ads for Essential Services

Campaign Snapshot

Industry: Home Services / HVAC and Plumbing

Location: Carolinas

Growth: $38M, projected to become a $250 million operation

Strategy Focus: Naming, Brand-building, Visual Identity, Radio, Television, Emotional Storytelling 

‍

🎙️ Intrusive Auditory Brand Building: Radio storytelling was engineered for long-term memory, embedding Call Dad into listeners’ minds through repetition, familiarity, and emotional resonance, and not short-term promotions.

🤝 Emotional Positioning Over Features: The brand wasn’t built around HVAC services, pricing, or systems. It was built around reassurance, care, and the promise of being taken care of when something goes wrong.

🧔 Founder-Led Brand Persona: Matt Pozda became the voice of the brand, allowing customers to connect with a real human instead of a corporate identity, accelerating trust, connection, and credibility.

📻 Message-First, Visual-Second Strategy: The brand was intentionally built in the imagination first through the message, creating deep familiarity before expanding into social and television, amplifying effectiveness across every channel.

The direct mail innovation was a significant leap that transformed human communication throughout history. While we have made remarkable strides since, like the development of smartphones and online messaging, direct mail still remains relevant.

Today, direct mail marketing is experiencing a renaissance among businesses. Countless business owners are revisiting direct mail postcards for their lead gen endeavors.

Why?

Because there are direct mail advantages that modern-day emails and other marketing means never could achieve. Despite the relatively high direct mail cost, the pay-off can be tremendous, and the benefits unrivaled.

Of course, the content of the mail plays a considerable part in its success. That's why if you're looking into direct mail marketing, you need the right words to make your letters worth reading. In this article, Wizard of Ads™ shares the 10 magical words to use in direct mail. 

‍Where Did Direct Mail First Appear?

Before looking at the magical direct mail marketing words, you should use, let's first have a brief history lesson. What can we learn from the first direct mail ever made?

According to Central Mailing U.K., the earliest record of direct mail came from 1,000 B.C.

On a piece of papyrus, an Egyptian landowner wrote an advertising message to offer gold to people who could return his runaway slave. Experts recovered the letter in Thebes, which has been preserved and displayed in the British museum.

Indeed, Egyptians were just some of the ones innovative enough to figure out the advertising potential of the papyrus before. Even Babylonian merchants advertised "on-print" at the time. However, they utilized stone tablets to list their products when visiting foreign towns.

In fact, catalog mailing and direct mail predate the formation of the United States (sorry, J. Peterman). Direct mail skyrocketed in popularity from papyrus and stone tablets when inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. Pair that with another innovator, William Caxton, who printed pamphlets in Westminster Abbey in 1480. 

But here's what you have to keep in mind:

Whatever material was used — papyrus, stone tablets, or print — these are merely channels, not the message. Any form of advertising will work as long as the news comes across, despite the channel utilized.

"The media is not the message. The message is the message."

— Roy H. Williams

Your message still heavily outweighs the media you select. That said, whether you use direct mail or not, you need the right words to print on the page. Otherwise, the marketing or advertising strategy will fail to hit the mark.

‍Wizard of Ads for Essential Services has helped countless residential home service businesses become successful in their advertising endeavors. We can do the same for you. We're the guys to hire if you're looking for advertising experts to craft your perfect direct mail campaign.

All it takes is booking a free call.

With all that's said, here are the magical words to give your direct mail marketing campaign a dose of abracadabra.

The Magical Words in the Kingdom of Direct Mails

Whichever way you use direct mail, it's an effective communication tool. However, there are magic words you can use to spruce up your direct mail marketing endeavors. I call them magical because they dramatically increase the enthusiasm, excitement, and anticipation of reading the content of your letter.

Let's look at the 10 most powerful words in direct mail.

Freebie/No Extra Charge 

Do you remember how exhilarating it is to see a big "FREE" plastered on food samples at the grocery store? Or how excited do you feel when you hear about a new product that's available for free?

People have a natural affinity for free things. That is precisely why writing "freebie," "free," or "no extra charge" in your direct mail elicits the same buzz among readers.

Freebies and no extra charge are two of the most powerful words/phrases in direct mail marketing. They tap into the innate desire for people to get something for free. These words can instantly pique the interest of potential customers and encourage them to open up and read your mail.

A few direct mail examples that feature freebies or no-cost offers include coupons, discounts, special offers, or giveaways. Consider this example:

Say you have the offer to waive the HVAC diagnostic fee for your services. Capitalize on this in direct mail marketing by highlighting the FREE diagnostic fee first. Don’t add weasel words, conditions, or any other disclaimers. Just be free. 

More often than not, the free aspect will keep homeowners' eyes fixated on the document and considering taking the offer.

Including freebies builds positive associations with your brand and makes customers more likely to engage with your business. It shows you're not afraid to give your customers more if they choose your solutions over the Sea of Sameness.

New and Improved

At the core of every successful direct mail marketing campaign lies the power of the phrase "new and improved." New and improved implies top-quality, freshness, updated, or better. The smell of a car straight out of a dealership. I'm trying to say that anything new and improved gets attention, like a dog with a bone.

In today's business landscape, having the term new in your marketing is more important than ever. People are bombarded daily with marketing messages from countless brands vying for their attention and dollars. As such, you want to offer customers a never-before-heard value that cuts through the noise and stands 600 ft above the competition.

That's where new and improved comes in.

You can use new for three things:

• Adding a completely new (and improved) product among your offerings
• Offering a new and improved world-class service to people that is improved over the previous service 
• Highlighting an existing solution with a new and improved promotion

Whichever it is, using the phrase "new and improved" in direct mail is highly effective in capturing customers' attention and building excitement. However, "new and improved" is a double-edged sword. New implies freshness and uniqueness, so the offer must be both new, and improved. Otherwise, you're putting your company's reputation at risk.

It's best to cook up a genuinely unique offer before branding your direct mail marketing with "new and improved."

Backed

Whether you're a small business just starting or a well-established brand, picking the right words is key to direct mail marketing success. Another magical word that brings wonders to businesses is "backed."

Other businesses may have used this in their messaging: expert-backed, backed with research, etc.

With this simple word, you are signaling your customers that your product or service has proven to work and deliver results. Like every other customer, people want assurance that they are making the right choice in choosing you. "Backed" is the word that conveys confidence and trustworthiness through your messaging.

Moreover, the term implies authority — a valuable quality people look for in businesses. All buyers respect authority, especially when you substantiate it with research and studies. Using backed gives credence to your arguments and credibility that you're speaking from a position of power.

But there's a caveat. 

Like the term "new and improved," you can't just go around using the "backed" without concrete proof. If so, pragmatic and educated buyers will see through your deception and discredit you. That may lead to negative word-of-mouth, which ultimately tarnishes your reputation.

No Obligation

The term "no obligation" is not quite as powerful as "free" but still possesses direct mail advantages.

Unlike the other magical words listed, "no obligation" speaks of your company's character. It displays that you are not after your customer's money but want them to genuinely see the value in your solutions. Allow me to explain.

For instance, imagine you have a new air-conditioning unit that allows customers to use it free for 30 days. They have no obligation regarding the installation fees and disassembly. If customers like the unit, they pay for it; otherwise, you'll remove the system with no questions asked.

The "no obligation" attached to the offer tells customers that you trust their judgment. Offering no obligation reassures buyers that you won't pressure them into buying something they don't want or need. More importantly, it builds confidence among your potential customers because you believe in the quality of your solutions. You are willing to offer them without any strings attached.

Successfully incorporating this phrase into direct mail marketing campaigns entails a hyper-focus on providing customers with high-quality products or services. You must also communicate clearly about what you are offering. This establishes trust among potential customers from the start and encourages them to take advantage of your no-obligation offers.

See Inside

One of the unspoken direct mail advantages over other channels is its element of physicality. After all, opening and reading direct mail postcards is more exciting than clicking emails. You can be as crafty as you want in presenting your direct mail, like adding an element of surprise. The term "see inside" perfectly pairs with any tantalizing presentation.

The phrase "see inside" conveys a sense of exclusivity and encourages customers to look more closely at your offer. It's a subtle testament that underneath your "see inside" invitation lies a value that customers will want to read. Using it can help attract more attention from potential customers and create excitement to “discover” your offer.

To effectively leverage the power of this phrase, you need to consider two things:

• Your opening statement
• Your complete offer

Like email headlines, your opening statements should be catchy enough to pique readers' interest to look inside. Tailor your opening statement to your customers' pleasure points, pain points, and underlying felt needs to make it effective. Doing so exhibits your awareness of your customer's situation, which makes you an authoritative leader in their eyes. More importantly, it increases their anticipation to know your solution.

Finally, your complete offer must satisfy the craving they're looking for. Otherwise, all those excitement and anticipation will have been for nothing. That's why it's important to focus on creating high-quality products or services that are truly valuable. Because when your complete offer falls short of satisfying them, customers will cease to trust you.

Announcing

It's no secret that people can be a little selfish, and it's not only in terms of physical appearance. As Denzel Washington once said, “people like to be first to know the latest craze or to hear the most significant buzz.”

Using announcement words in your direct mail, like "announcing" or "at last," satisfies their desire to be first. It shows that you entrusted them with complete information regarding your business. As a result, they feel good about themselves and your brand. Moreover, these terms also convey excitement and anticipation.

You can leverage your announcement by creating a sense of urgency to encourage recipients to take immediate action. This increases the likelihood of engaging with your brand and being the first few to get a hold of your offer.

<Customer Name> 

Your goal in direct mail marketing is to be personal with your customers. Nothing beats being personal than writing the name of your target customer in your letter. Your customer's name is one of the most influential works in establishing a meaningful connection with them.

You immediately catch their attention by including other personalized details and addressing recipients directly. More importantly, you build credibility as a service provider that understands your audience's preferences and interests, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Just don't make the mistake of mixing up addresses, or you lose that personal quality and may even insult the recipient.

Simple

Direct mail marketing relies heavily on the power of words and with good reason. The right combination of words can capture attention, build credibility, and engage recipients. But knowing which words work and which don't require a bit of psychology. For example, the term "simple" is always a fan favorite among recipients.

Why?

Because the human brain is hard-wired to avoid complicated things, we tend to dislike anything complex and too much for our brains to comprehend. On top of using simple language and clear messaging, mentioning the word "simple" gives off this easy-to-digest effect.

Customers feel repulsive of solutions that challenge their intellect. Whereas customers from all walks of life love simple, easy-to-use, and straightforward explanations.

Other terms that give the same flair as "simple" include:

• Clean
• Easy
• Smooth
• Direct
• Efficient

What can we say? Humans love simplicity.

Hassle-free

Adding to the previous point, "hassle-free" is another powerful term in direct mail marketing. For one, it conveys a sense of ease and convenience — something customers always look for in products and services. Additionally, by emphasizing this key benefit, you instantly ease the mind of your target audience.

At its core, "hassle-free" removes barriers and makes things as painless as possible. Moreover, a hassle-free experience improves the buying journey, convincing buyers to choose your solution over others. Whether it's a streamlined purchase process or easy access to customer support, brands that offer hassle-free experiences outperform their competitors. Just be sure to deliver on your promise. 

Limited Supply

The two key drivers of consumer behavior are scarcity and urgency. When you use "limited supply," you create a sense of urgency and highlight scarcity in your offer. This encourages potential customers to act quickly before the opportunity passes them by. Here's the thing: this strategy works.

Think about it.

How often have you forced yourself to buy when seeing a limited-time offer announcement in your favorite store? Exactly. A psychological trigger gets people to spend their money but only IF your offer is worth buying. Plus, this phrase communicates to your audience that there is a risk associated with waiting too long.

There's just one problem: using urgency may work once or twice, but it loses its appeal over time. As such, using a "limited-time offer" in your direct mail campaigns works by putting pressure on potential customers to make decisions fast. Unless it is actually true, and really believable, most people will think your just a flim-flam artist, however. So be warned. While inventories deplete, time keeps marching on. Sell the thing that is most believable and compelling to act. No one likes feeling pressure, let alone fake pressure. 

5 Most Common Types of Direct Mail

Knowing the right words is one thing, but understanding what media you could use for direct mail campaigns is another. Here are the five most common types of direct mail that businesses use:

1. Postcards

Postcards are a popular choice for many businesses regarding their direct mail campaigns. Whether you're looking to promote new solutions or announce a special offer, postcards are a personalized way. With their simple yet eye-catching designs, postcards are an effective way to get your message across quickly and effectively.

2. Sales Letters

Letters are the traditional forms of direct mail, but they are the go-to options to look sophisticated and professional. You can use sales letters to announce important business updates or offer customers new and improved solutions. You can still make sales letters highly personalized and creative despite their formality.

3. Mailing Lists

While not a form of direct mail, the success of direct mail campaign lies in the accuracy of your mailing list. Make sure to keep names and personal details up-to-date to ensure the success of your marketing and advertising.

4. Catalogs

Catalogs are the best documents to showcase your array of products and services. The success of catalogs relies on the creativity of your presentation. Aim to enthrall audiences during the viewing experience and then lure them to your exclusive offers.

5. Self-mailers

Brochures and leaflets fall into self-mailers category because they don't require extensive packaging. As such, self-mailers are great options for introducing new products, services or offers to customers. Add in some colors and fancy designs, and you have an appealing document that leaves customers fixated on your mail.

While direct mail marketing seems old-school in today's business landscape, it is not simple. In order to make the most of direct mail campaigns, you must accomplish three things:

• Create a killer campaign strategy that ensures a high ROI
• Utilize the magical words that get people hooked
• Find the suitable media to deliver your message

That is not easy, but it's possible with the right people to help you out. Wizard of Ads for Essential Services can help you craft the perfect direct mail campaign strategy that gets results. Interested? Book a call with Wizard Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads to learn more.

Everyone is looking for the "killer ad".

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

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

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Essential Services

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember the Mac versus PC campaign.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Torbay: That's interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Torbay: If you're a good writer,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Torbay: Safe car.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MARKETING & CAMPAIGN REFERENCES:

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

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

They might wonder…

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

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

What Is Advertising Philosophy?

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

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

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

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

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

Why Isn’t Traditional Advertising Good Anymore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ready to start? Contact us today!

The 7 Types of Advertising Media

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

Direct Mail Advertising

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

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

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

Social Media Advertising

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

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

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

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

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

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

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

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

Mobile Advertising

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

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

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

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

Print Advertising

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

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

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

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

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

Broadcast Advertising

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

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

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

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

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

Other Media

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

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

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

The Secrets in the Philosophy of Advertising

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

Assert Your Presence Where You’re Wanted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Provide Value Before Purchases

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

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

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

Do your current marketing strategies include these two secrets?

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

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

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

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