Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

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

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

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

‍“Where should I spend my ad budget?”

The answer? Not where you think.

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

Episode Highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ryan Chute: Right, right. Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Torbay: Absolutely. All of those things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now they've written it off unfairly.

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

Chris Torbay: Sometimes…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Torbay: And they get thirsty as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mick Torbay: Why you matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Torbay: The Differentiator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us on our socials @advertisinginamerica. Wanna spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

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

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

So, how do you get there?

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

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

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

Checklist for a Rockstar Profile:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google wants to know: Do people like you?

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

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

Pro Tip:

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

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

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

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

Proximity:

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

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

Relevance:

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

Prominence:

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

5. Post Like a Pro (and Stay Consistent)

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

What to post?

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

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

6. Build Local Links Like a Neighborhood Hero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s your next 3 moves:

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

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

It’s everything.

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

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

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

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

Why it matters:

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

What to do:

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

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

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

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

They’re about what I didn’t.

It’s what I chose to bury.

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

And here’s what’s wild…

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

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

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

“Does she… or doesn’t she?”

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

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

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

And that’s the mistake so many make today.

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

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

They want to arrive there on their own.

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

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

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

And yes… she absolutely did.

What's in a Name? More Than You Think, Kid.

Sure, you can succeed with a mediocre name. Orville Redenbacher did. But why fight uphill when a great name can grease the tracks?

In this episode of Advertising in America, your favourite trio of sharp-tongued strategists—Ryan, Mick, and Chris—take a no-holds-barred stroll through the world of business naming. We’re talking real names, fake names, dumb names, genius names—and the difference between a brand that sings and one that stinks.

Episode Highlights:

• Why most "strategic" names are really just pretty garbage
• The subtle art of saying something without trying too hard to say everything
• What kind of name boxes you in… and what kind sets you free
• And the danger of letting your committee—or your ego—pick the winner

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If your ads sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher, it’s time to grab a seat, take some notes, and learn how to say something that sticks.

🎧 Hit play. Then stop teaching, start enticing, and for the love of Madison Avenue—talk to the heart, not the hard drive.

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On today's episode of Advertising in America, we ask What's in a name? Does your business name matter, or will any old handle do the trick? 

We all know some examples. Jiffy Lube, In-N-Out Burger, Dollar Tree, Thrifty Car Rental. Great names, right? Careful. If you do that, you aren't done. You have to lean into that. Federal Express wanted to convey that they could take a package from anywhere in the country to anywhere else in America and do it very quickly. Genius DoorDash, dropping food off at your house, even has alliteration going for it. It worked. People still think that you can succeed without a good name.

Orville Redenbacher proved that, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to try to find a name that adds to the value of your brand.

Ryan Chute: On today's episode of Advertising in America, we ask what's in a name? Does your business name matter, or will any old handle do the trick? Let's go to DJ McMaster, T and C.

Mick Torbay: Okay, so I'm part of a Facebook group called Dad's Married to Doctors. We're all fathers. Our wives are all physicians. It's a remarkably diverse group, but one thing we have in common, there are no fuck offs in this group because doctors don't marry fuck offs.

There are a lot of entrepreneurial types in the DMDs, and every year or so, one of them will say, “I'm starting a whatever business, and I need a name. Post your best suggestions. Go.”

Now, the last time this happened, one of the guys asked me, “Why don't you ever respond to these? You do this sort of thing, don't you?” And I replied, “Yes, yes, I do. And that's why I don't respond.” Because there's more to a naming assignment than just brainstorming and picking your fave. Picking a business name this way is like asking your buddies to help design your building. This is no place for amateurs. Think of what a simple name did. For some iconic brands, Federal Express wanted to convey that they could take a package from anywhere in the country to anywhere else in America, and do it very quickly. Genius, DoorDash dropping food off at your house, even has alliteration going for it. Haagen-Dazs is an ice cream company from New Jersey. They wanted people to think they were. I don't know, Scandinavian, it worked. People still think that Ticketmaster, PayPal, OpenTable, Netflix, the name delivers so much.

Now, for every example I give, I'm sure you can name just as many that have no inherent value. Google, Ford, eBay, all successful companies, despite a name that brings frankly nothing to the table, but I'd argue most of those are holdovers from when people simply named the company after themselves, like Boeing, or were so freaking good at what they did that it didn't matter what it was called, like Apple.

So yeah, you can succeed without a good name. Orville Redden Baer proved that, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to try to find a name that adds to the value of your brand. Just with the people at this table. We turned Allied Garage Door of Southwest Florida into Mo Better Garage. The Canadian Jewelry Group became the National Diamond Store, and a new in-ear headphone was named Sound Curves. You can almost picture how beautiful they are, can't you? 

Did having a strategic name help these companies? Well, I think so. Bottom line, a strategic name for your business or brand is a possible asset, and if you're a startup or for whatever reason, you need to change your identity. I think you should go to some trouble to get one and do it properly. Don't ask your friends on Instagram, and just because people have succeeded without having one, doesn't mean you shouldn't bother to try. 

Ryan Chute: How hard is it to make a bad name work? Am I right? Chris, what are your thoughts in the power of a name? 

Chris Torbay: Lots of companies think choosing a name is an opportunity to tick a strategy box and move on. They have five or six things they'd like to say about their company, usually completely unremarkable. Table stakes, things like fast, cheap, friendly, convenient, and if the name says one of them, “Hey, job done. Customers totally believe that. And now we can move on to talk about all those other things now.”

And that can be true, but it can also be a curse. We all know some examples. Jiffy Lube, In-N-Out Burger, Dollar Tree, Thrifty Car Rental. Great names, right? Careful if you do that, you aren't done. You have to lean into that. You can't just move on to other things, you'd like people to know about your brand because you need to own this one first.

Everyone else says their brand is fast or cheap, too, but you're the one who named yourself that, so you have to go all in, and it will be harder, in fact, to move on to a quality message. For example, if your name boasts that everything you sell is a dollar. If your name is Jiffy Lube, you need to organize your business so that you are always Jiffier than any of your competitors. And since they all say that, they can knock out a quick oil change too, now you have to double say it because you named yourself that. Is it strategic? Sure. Is it a boat anchor? Sure could be because how many companies have tried that and then found themselves with a strategy that unfortunately evolved.

7-Eleven was a great name for a convenience store back when the average store was only open during traditional business hours. When every convenience store is open 24 hours, seven to eleven doesn't say much. This is where we end up with names like Kitchen Stuff Plus or Board Games & More. You wanted to be strategic, but then you found yourself trapped.

McDonald's hamburgers rarely uses their full name, and Kentucky Fried Chicken found themselves not wanting to be tied just to Kentucky. Good lord, please don't equate us with fried, and we'd like to sell you much more than chicken. So now they’re KFCA, great name, is like a great logo. It doesn't do the job for you.

But when you create the brand, it contributes to the story, or it has the capacity to wear that story proudly. And even an awkward name can do that. One of the most successful home services brands in America is Goettl, G-O-E-T-T-L. It'll keep you cool, but it's hard to spell. Combine that with a story of a young man who had to push through challenges to build the successful business he has today, and the whole thing works just fine.

Bigly wiggly. There's a supermarket I haven't forgotten about since Morgan Freeman's character in Driving Miss Daisy shouted, “I'm gonna drive you to the Piggly Wiggly”. Is it a great name? No. Yes, no. Yes. 

The name you choose is just part of the story. It can be a boat anchor if you get it wrong, but it is rarely a rocket ship to success on its own.

Ryan Chute: Do you remember when KFC tried so hard to be kitchen-fresh chicken for a weird minute? In the early 2000s?  

Chris Torbay: I don’t. They tried to do it, get rid of Kentucky and get rid of it, keeping chicken, and then they decided they probably wanted to sell fries.

Ryan Chute: Before we start naming names. Here's a shameless plug for our services.

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So this is normally when Ryan throws to himself, kind of a commercial within a show about commercials, and that's fine. We could let him do that. But really, what you want to hear is me yelling at you. That's the reason you tune into the show. Sure. The conversations are fun and the insights are thought-provoking, but what you really want is cursing, and that's where I come in.

I mean, I don't want to get all shit or get off the pot on you, but at the moment, Ryan's doing this whole. “I'll give you 45 minutes of my time to help you narrow down your challenges and find a solution thing”. You think that asshole will give me 45 minutes to shoot the shit, but here's what he does. This maniac will go over everything, your sales process, your offers, your loyalty club, and yes, your marketing, and then you don't have to do a fucking thing.

You can take all that insight and roll if you like what you hear and want a deeper dive, dive away, my friend. Ryan ends up not working with about 90% of the people he meets, but the ones he does end up working with, they start here. So think about that. He's got a whole web thingy where you can book an appointment.

It's at wizardofads.services, stupid address. You want to believe it. And I'd say that to his face. wizardofads.services. And now let's get back to the stuff I really want to curse about. Shit.

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Ryan Chute: As we do start to understand the identity, there is that weird disconnect sometimes that we see. How many times have we gone in behind a naming company, who suggests that they're the guys that should be naming your company, when in fact they're just producing empty cartridges that you're supposed to fill with some cute and clever story?

Nothing strategic. It doesn't make any sense to me. You really do need to understand the mission and the values, the intentions of the owner, the competitive landscape that you're in, your target audience and how that matters. Is it a local play, a regional play? Is it a national play? Where do you go to get to the thing that you're trying to achieve? And I think that's lost a lot of time in naming of companies. 

Chris Torbay: Well, sometimes I think it's the effort of trying too hard. It's funny because I believe in all of those things, and I believe in approaching its strategy. And as Mick says, it's not just blind brainstorming, it's kind of focused brainstorming with the strategy behind it.

But getting to a result. If it looks too much like you have reached a strategic result, then almost by definition, it's not right like it; it kind of emotionally has to be right. But if it's, in a sense, if it's too brilliant, then it gives itself away as trying too hard. And I think this is equally true with names and logos, which is, I love it when logo designers come in and say, “Well, it's a two stripes with a dot above. Now the two stripes represent North America and South America, our two largest treating regions. And the dot represents the intellectual center of the what”. It's like, come on, man, it's two stripes in a dot. And they are brilliant, looking like two stripes in a dot. And it makes me feel good about your company. So, stop being overly strategic about that and let's go with it. 

Nike has a swoosh. Coca-Cola has a wave, like there's lots of less thought-out things, and I think that's true with logos and names. They need to be able to wear the message or the larger story, but it is not their full job.

And if you think of Amazon, so Amazon's a great name and it wears the whole, the wears the entire story. When somebody tells you, “Yes, and see Amazon, Amazon is the world's largest ecosystem. So you see, that's why it's a great strategic name for the thing”. You go, “Oh, that is clever.”

But I didn't need to know that. It's not like it came bottom up from the name. It's that. Once I know that and it works and the name needs to be such that it works. And when somebody says, and you see how the smiley arrow thing actually goes from A to Z? Cool. But again, I didn't have to get that from the thing. It's nice when it comes in later. So it is this weird middle ground where it's not that I expect it to do the work, and that it is so obviously doing the work, because that is showing your underpants. 

Mick Torbay: Well, I also don't believe that it was nearly that strategic when Amazon was just a bookstore, because it was just a bookstore because it wasn't the world's biggest ecosystem. It was never supposed to be the world's biggest ecosystem. It was just an excellent way to buy books. And so I think a lot of the time when something becomes tremendously successful, we can sort of look at it and say, "Oh, well, naturally that succeeded”. It's like it is like, I think what I think what we're doing is we're throwing a dart at a board and then we're drawing a target around it.

Chris Torbay: Yeah. It's like going back through Shakespeare, saying, “You see that this line, see? See what it actually means. Okay..”

Mick Torbay: Yeah. In hindsight, it is the world's biggest ecosystem. Before, it was just a word that everybody knew. It didn't stand for any other brand, and everybody knew how to spell it, which was really important when you're having an online business.

Ryan Chute: Yeah, and it was very important for an online business and making it easy for the person to be able to get from A to Z, pardon the pun. And ultimately. It took an incredible amount of advertising dollars, an incredible amount of energy and effort to make Amazon matter, right? The name itself creates this friction of making it easy with terribly spelled names or clever spelled names, where the I's and Y's have been switched or some other kind of goofy thing where they leave out particular letters or add an extra vowel in all of these things, just create an environment where it makes it that much harder for the customer to get to the thing that you're trying to get. 

Chris Torbay: Yeah. And, I would ask customers, here's a survey question. “How many times have you ever chosen a brand because of their name?”

Right. And I believe in choosing a good name. I've done those assignments and I've changed, but I think when I develop a name, I also develop a name. It's like, what? What capacity does it give me? Not, what does it accomplish? You know, we, because we've done a couple of recent ones and, and we've created a name where I can see the campaign that comes outta that. And I can see how the campaign that comes outta that or works with that allows us to tell this story about this brand that we want to tell. So yes, it comes from, the inspiration does come from the brand, but the name doesn't tell the story. The logo doesn't tell the story. We still tell the story, and you look for, and that's why I think there are so many intrinsically bad names out there that are still very successful. And how many times have we done this with a, with a company that is intrinsically poorly named and you go, “What the heck am I gonna do with its dumb ass name?” And you go, “Well, you know?” Right. And that's the creative challenge. That's the thing that you say a lot, which is, you know, if you want to get a creative guy inspired, put him in a box and get him to find a creative solution out of it. Sometimes a bad name, you think is a bad name until you think of the most interesting, creative way to work with it, and then suddenly it's an asset.

Now you, but, but it, but it's the creative person. It's the communications person who makes it an asset.

Ryan Chute: Well, that leads us into the kind of second point out of five here, where we talk about choosing the naming category and Igor talks about a few different categories of names: evocative names, invented names, descriptive names, experiential names, and functional names.

All of these things serve a different purpose to get to an end result. They're all strategic, some better than others, and some are, are going to come with more creative juice to evoke our intentions as a business and to live in the space that we're trying to live in, be it locally, regionally, nationally or internationally.

So evocative names trigger that emotion. The ideas related to the brand's purpose. You know, it's evocative. Monster.com is an evocative name. It's standing out above all invented names are a little bit trickier, things like Google? 

Mick Torbay: Yeah. Or Kijiji. 

Ryan Chute: Or Kijiji, right.

Mick Torbay: What's a Kijiji? I dunno. 

Ryan Chute: Well, it's a, it's sure someone's gonna say it's something, it's an African something or other. 

Mick Torbay: And I'm sure someone's gonna remind us now that a Google is actually a one with a hundred zeros after it. Fine. Right. But you know what? Nobody knows that. And nobody knows that it's misspelled, and it only doesn't actually apply.

Chris Torbay: And to that end, though, it is so fine. It tells a little bit of the strategic story, but it tells, you know, that, that. You know, infinitely huge. Okay. That contributes to what Google wants to say, which is, “We will give you a million options, or a Google of options”. Right. But that's not nearly the whole story.

Ryan Chute: And that meaning gets lost so often. I remember times when you were talking about your large agency days, and people were, you know, saying the swoosh and the dots all meant some crazy thing. And it's like it got so deep and so metaphorical. You know that? 

Mick Torbay: Or it's to justify an hour-long meeting about the logo.

Chris Torbay: Well, let's justify that some logo companies. You know, gone away for a charge for an entire month, and it's charging a hundred grand for this. And so they come back and it's like an art gallery where they say that, you know, where it's a banana taped against the wall, but they say, well, the tape represents the imprisonment that we all feel intellectually.

And, you know, that blurb, which tries to make the thing more profound than it actually is. Well, can't you just say it's a really cool shape? I think people are really gonna remember it. It's gonna be very distinctive from everybody else. Because that's actually a huge win. You, you had the win. It's the right, it's the bullshit you tried to attach to it that lost me.

Ryan Chute: So, I mean, there is a balance in that subtlety. Descriptive names are like General Motors. They explain what the company does. They're there to just kind of put it out on the table. 

And experiential names like Gogo- related to an experience or a feeling. Gogo is a Wifi for airplanes, so it's. Trip on a Go-Go. I guess you know when you're on the go-go make me up before you, before you, before you connect to Wifi, see what you, I see what you did there.

And functional names, you know, ho hotels.com, you know, directly describe that product or service, it's highly descriptive. We also get lost in that when we see companies that are named quality or absolute, or any of these things, where they're trying to be definitive and holistic, it's nearly impossible. To own that idea and attach it to what you represent? 

Chris Torbay: Well, or you could do it, but as I say, then it's a restriction. If you wanna call you in Canada there was this, this big move for, 2-for-1 pizzas. A company owned calls themselves 2-for-1 Pizza. You pay for one pizza, they give you a second one for free. Cool. But like now, you can't be the most delicious pizza in town because the thing you've named yourself is that you get a free one. And so it is not that's cool. Now, if we also say We're delicious, boy, we're gonna win all of it. 

Mick Torbay: Also, you sure as hell, better be selling two pizzas for the price of where the competitor sells one, because in all those situations where people say, “Oh, we're two for one pizza”. No, you're twice as expensive pizza, and we give you two of them, you know, we're, we're not gonna fall for that.

Ryan Chute: Buy one pizza for full price and get the second one for full price as well. 

Mick Torbay: Well, and also when you're naming things, we have to bear in mind human nature, and human nature is always going to shorten things. This is a mistake that a lot of people make. They think that you can have a long, descriptive, complicated name and think that people are actually gonna say that, we all shorten it.

I mean, Federal Express isn't that long, and we still say shorten it, and we shortened it. Exactly. So bear that in mind. I mean, it's one of the reasons why Allied Garage Door of Southwest Florida. We changed to Mo Better Garage because it's significantly shorter, and now people can at least remember that.

If they shortened Allied Garage doors of Southwest Florida, what they're gonna do is they're gonna short it, shorten it to Allied, and they can't own the idea of Allied.

Chris Torbay: Well, because there's probably an Allied Trucking, there's, there's an Allied Taxi. 

Mick Torbay: There’s probably a hundred Allied. And so they're never gonna own that idea. But what they could own is Mo Better Garage. And they at least have a fighting chance of people remembering their brand compared to another one. 

Ryan Chute: Which would fall into the evocative world. This is we're taking something and going, what are the things that are going to stand you 600 feet above the competition?  It can't be that you're different anymore. It has to be distinct. And that subtle shift is that everyone is different, like everyone else. Like, there is no different-indifferent anymore. We have to shift gears and point in a different direction. But we were also very strategic in Mo Better Garage to not call it Mo Better Garage Doors. Why? Because if they wanna sell any other kind of door, or epoxy flooring, or lifts, or storage, storage cabinet storage. Exactly. They have the freedom to do that now, and in the future, we ought to look at it from a standpoint of, is this going to be a local brand or a national brand? 

So you start to shift these mindsets to what is the game that we're playing, what is the big vision and how we're gonna fit this all in. So you're absolutely right, now, where that goes to the next step is how we can focus in on the emotional components of it. If we don't have an emotional connection, it's way harder for your name to do the lifting that it needs to do. 

Chris Torbay: Well, and again, you can't unfairly give that to the name. Philip Morris, famously,  a decade ago, changed their holding company name to Altria, because it sounds kind of like altruism as opposed to cancer sticks, which is what Philip Morris sold is- is in people's minds, 

Mick Torbay: Allegedly, we don't want to get sued. 

Chris Torbay: And so, they thought, “Well, if we call ourselves Altria, then people will feel better about our company cigarette”. It's like, no, you gotta make people feel something about your company on your own. You cannot expect that a name change is going to do that. And there are a number of examples of corporations that sort of try that. 

The reason people buy Acura is not because the name sort of sounds like accuracy. It's because the product lived up to being a slightly premium version of a Honda. And so people do find the value in paying extra for the Acura line than they pay for the Honda line. But you can't get away with doing it just with an evocative name and thinking, “Well, now we've got that solved”.

Ryan Chute: Yeah. Evocative with that's empty or void of authenticity, we know that when it feels disingenuous that it's pulling the wrong emotional string. And we are looking for that emotional, and we want positive resonance outta that emotional string that pulls, and just any old word ain't gonna do.

And using the generic go-to words that you would see on any good core values list aren't gonna cut it either. 

Mick Torbay: Well, no, in fact, if you pick a word that is generally used in your category,  you never have a problem when it comes to search, which matters. Which is why a company called Best Barbershop is a problem, because you will not be the only answer to that question.

Chris Torbay: When somebody Google's best barber shop in town. 

Mick Torbay: So you might say, “Oh, that's brilliant because when people want the best barbershop, they're gonna get us?”

It's like, “No, Google knows better than to just only give them one answer.” If you called yourself Kangaroo Barbershop. Then you have a better shot of being the only one when people are putting in your name. 

Ryan Chute: Well, and that's a trap that came from Yellow Pages, where A1 and AAA and all those things were the cheat code for a minute. And then in Google, the cheat code was what the search terms? What are the best search terms for searching for the best barbershop?

That worked for a minute, Google uses natural language processing. It's 2025. We have to be more sophisticated in our approach now because not only are we creating a challenge. Now, but is there an opportunity within that? Sometimes, sometimes there's ways that you can pull on that, but it's very often limiting. It's not going to have the legs and the depth that you're hoping that it's gonna have.

Mick Torbay: You also need to bear in mind that changing the name is almost always, at first, a liability. I mean, changing a name requires changing minds, and we really don't like changing minds in advertising. That sounds counterintuitive because when you're trying to persuade people to make a decision, but we actually don't want to change minds. We wanna find out where the minds are and then attach our brand to what the consumer's already thinking. 

If people are thinking of you as one thing, and then we want them to think of you as another thing, that's really, really fricking hard, right? So when you're thinking about changing your name, bear in mind that you should only do that if you have to.

Ryan Chute: I agree. And I would say if you currently don't represent anything in anyone's mind, if you've never advertised or if you've advertised so little that the only people who would know it's not a household thing, right? 

Mick Torbay: Yeah. Then you're not changing people's things. We're merely starting from scratch. We're starting from scratch. But I can give you an example of a client who needed to do this. It's a client of ours, a plumbing company in Dayton, Ohio, and they were called All Drain. And All Drain is an excellent name for a plumbing company. But the first thing I ask them in our very first meeting is, “Are you ever going to offer more than just plumbing services?”

Because very often in these spaces, they will expand the number of trades underneath their umbrella. They say, “Well, we're thinking about getting into HV in a couple of years, but don't worry about that.” It's like, “Oh no, we're gonna worry about that because we're about to completely change your advertising. And I don't want to completely change your advertising twice. So if you're ever going to get into HVAC, we need to bear that in mind now, change your name to something that can take you through the next 20 years. And change it now so that it'll work.”

So we gave them a new name that had nothing to do, didn't say drains in it. Had a new name, was a strategic name, worked for Dayton, Ohio, was not physically restricted to the one trade that they're in now. So that's a good, that's a good reason to do it. 

Ryan Chute: Neil Patel is in charge of Neil Patel, a SEO marketing agency, a hundred-million-dollar SEO agency, and he said the data is clearly supportive of a brand taking 10 years to build the full momentum that it needs when you start branding. And not the lightweight stuff that a handful of people, including your customers, will see. We're talking about the mass level of branding that happens when the majority of people. Have some sort of impression about you. The better your brand, the more they feel about your brand. Some people have name recognition. We had a client down in, in Florida where they had name recognition. I promise you, they were spending a King's ransom in marketing. We reduced their budget by a third, increased their total impact points or impression points by four times and leveraged the heck outta the name. And that company doubled in size. 

Well, that's a big deal when you start to think about name recognition versus brand recognition. The whole point, which starts with a name, is how do we make people feel something about that name, not just know it. 

Mick Torbay: I would also caution people who are in a situation where they have to change their name or they're considering changing their name, for god's sake, keep the committee outta the room. Because my rants about the committee are legendary. You can find those online, but the risk is with the committee on a naming assignment. Is that they're going to look at any name and say, yes, it ticks these boxes, but what is it saying about these boxes over here? It's not there to tick all the freaking boxes.

Apple ticks no boxes. Yes. So, it's fine. And it's fine. Absolutely fine. But I mean, you know, talking about trigger warnings, I mean, Kitchen Stuff Plus absolutely makes me go bananas, because someone at kitchen stuff said, “Yeah, but we're also selling things for the dining room. So we should call ourselves Kitchen Atuff Plus,” okay, so you just took your the name of your company, you made it slightly more cumbersome, slightly less easy to remember and gave me no new data with which to make a decision.

Yeah, because “plus” doesn't tell me shit. Any tell time you call yourself… 

Chris Torbay: All plus does is tell you that the first two words are sort of wrong. 

Mick Torbay: That's it. If know, if you call yourself more than just signs, I don't know what else you sell except for signs. So don't do that. At least call yourself Dave Signs and then move on from there.

Chris Torbay: And again, that there's a name that has the ability, maybe I can build a story around Dave, maybe. Maybe there's a backstory there. Maybe there's a quality story we could tell about, Dave, you've given me something with Dave. You haven't given me something with Plus. 

Ryan Chute: Yeah. That's it. That's exactly it. And we are right in the weeds of the fourth component that we consider around all these things, which is avoiding too descriptive, or limiting names, and avoiding difficult to spell or pronounce names, clichés or similar to competition names. All of these things are the common pitfalls that seem right because everyone's doing it. But the biggest pitfall is if everyone's doing it, you should probably do something different. 

Chris Torbay: And then that was a real trend in the last sort of decade or so. Partly because all the good URL words got scooped up. And so, you can't call yourself. You know, tires.com, because somebody big and rich owns that one. So you try spelling it with two i's or a y or you know, something like that. I mean, that one's gone in Britain. I'm too sure too. But, and so you get all these things where they drop the second last vowel, and you know, all this kind of stuff. And, I think we're sort of past that, which is first, we used up all the real words. Then we used up all the misspellings of the real words. 

Mick Torbay: Then, you know, we now we're left with Kajiji. 

Chris Torbay: Now we're left with either totally made-up words or words that on first glance, have absolutely nothing to do with our business, or we're making up crazy words like Mondelez.

Ryan Chute: Well, and I think it goes back to the very first point, which is to understand what the intentions are and what we're going to start wrapping that strategy around. And that puts us into this step number five, where we start to set ourselves up for that comprehensive narrative. You know, I think of a name of a business, kind of like the working title of a book. If you haven't read or written the book yet, then what in the world is that title? But yes, a good idea around what might it be, and how many times do people change the name of their. Book once they've actually written it and gone, oh, it's actually not about that. It's about this. 

Chris Torbay: Yeah. And that, to go back to the very beginning, that's why, you know, we believe in doing these naming assignments strategically. I mean, one of my last agency jobs was to work for a branding agency. And we would quite frequently do rebrandings because companies would evolve, and their original brand was tied to something that they really don't do anymore. They really do this new thing. And so we do a strategic look at it and so. It should definitely come from and you should definitely dig into what the business is and what its future is, and let's make sure we know that where that path is headed and pick something that's more appropriate to, anything in the cone of uncertainty that that path could be.

But again, given that, it doesn't have to tell that story. It has to be able to bear that story. It has to be able to be a component of that story. It has to be the bass player in that band. But it does not have to be the driving force.

Ryan Chute: It really comes back to alignment, right? In all of these things, if the bass players out of sync with the rest of the song, it sounds awful. You know, it's no different than a truck rapper or a logo. What should we be doing truck raps and logos for on a business that we don't even know what the right name is, let alone know what the right story is. That's all backwards. Now, have we had to tuck ourselves into working around those creative constraints? Of weak naming choices and weak branding choices that we elevate. Absolutely. 

Chris Torbay: Sometimes you can turn that into a win. You know, you can. And that's what my Piggly Wiggly thing, right? It’s a ridiculously bad name. It's so ridiculously bad that you can run with it. You can lean into it, right? You can, you can make it a thing, and you can suddenly be distinctive, and you know, how strategic can you be with it? Not sure. I mean, I haven't looked into all of their advertising, but it's sometimes something that at first is very disheartening, very discouraging from a creative perspective. And, your first thing is, “Could we change your name so that I can create something that I can work with?”

And when the answer's no, it's almost a better challenge. Okay, so how can I actually make that make sense, because it doesn't. And sometimes the story you have to tell is now, such an interesting story because the consumer didn't see it coming. It certainly made you have to do something other than quality service selection and plenty of free parking because you somehow gotta justify this crazy ass name.

Mick Torbay: But bear in mind that that's, that's nitroglycerin. I mean that in the right hands will save your life; in the wrong hands will blow up in your face. There are so many examples of companies that gave themselves incredibly restricted names, and then they just ignored it. 

I mean, there's a very famous, or not famous, but a very popular store in our city called Just White Shirts. And it just became a very popular men's wear store. And now they obviously don't sell just white shirts. It's like, “Guys, your name is killing you here.” 

Chris Torbay: And they're just looking the other way.

Mick Torbay: They're just ignoring it. They're just pretending it didn't happen. It's like, well, now what you need is a really good copywriter to dig you out of that hole. 

Chris Torbay: Sure. And now, do a tongue-in-cheek campaign about, “just white shirts, sorry, about the name,” you know, or do something. Run with it. 

Ryan Chute: And that's one of the things when handed a creative constraint like this is to sometimes lean into the campaign being about the name. 

Ryan Chute: You know, one of its ways around. 

Chris Torbay: That's what Goettl did. And, to rhyme hard to spell with it acknowledges that it's kind of a hamfisted name, and what are you gonna do? But it makes you people interested. Now you kind of want to, it's what are they? It's weird. 

Mick Torbay: It's like Orville Baer.

Chris Torbay: It is Orville Redden Baer. Brilliant name, you know. 

Mick Torbay: So I do have one piece of advice though for people who are considering changing their name, and they're perhaps bringing in a company to do a naming assignment, and this, and it's gonna sound like I'm being silly or facetious here, but I'm actually being very honest. 

If you've got someone doing a naming assignment, be very wary of placeholders. Do not use a placeholder. 

And so, because everybody uses placeholders, I'm gonna give you the placeholder that you have to use and the name of your company, the placeholder that you need to talk about while you're waiting for it is, stupid, stupid, crappy barbershop. Literally, call it stupid, crappy barbershop while you're waiting for someone to come up with the answer. 

And the reason is because you know that can’t really be it. 

If you start calling it “Ryan's Barbershop” as a placeholder while the people are coming up with the name, then in the month and a half while you're working on your business and doing your build out, and talking with renovation people, you're gonna start to fall in love with Ryan's Barbershop.

Chris Torbay: As bumpy as it might be, it gets less bumpy for you. 

Mick Torbay: That is human nature to just, whatever you pick, you'll just kind of start to like it because you're just gonna say it over and over again. And then you're gonna be fighting with a new great idea that your naming company has come up with. And then the thing that you kind of fell in love with all on your own. So you, there will be a placeholder use, “stupid, crappy, whatever”, so that you do not fall in love with it. 

Chris Torbay: Yes. This is how I got into the actors' union. I demoed so many of my own commercials and then went to a casting session to get somebody else to read them.

And the client had been listening to my demo for a month, and by the time we gave them the new cast, it's like, “I don't know, I kinda like Chris's version.” 

Mick Torbay: Chris is not a real actor. 

Chris Torbay: Yeah. Uh, but I still got the gig. It yes, absolutely happens. 

Ryan Chute: That's fantastic. What does your name say about you?

Could you see it on a national TV ad? Does it represent your intentions, your solution, your purpose, and what you're trying to achieve with the business itself, locally, regionally, or nationally? 

Names are really, really important, and they should be true to you and true to what you're trying to achieve. When we get back. We'll wrap this up with a few ideas on how we can best name your business. 

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‍Remember that saying, only half your marketing is working. You just don't know which half. Let's help you with that. Book it free strategy session with wizard Ryan Chute today at wizardofads.services. Yes, that's a URL wizardofads.services. Now let's get back to the show. 

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Ryan Chute: There are four things we'd like you to take away from today. The first is to embrace boldness. Names like Call Ada and Mo Better Garage succeed because they break the mould of their categories. 

Two, is to prioritize simplicity and clarity. The name should be easy to spell, pronounce, and remember.

Next is to tell a story. A great name is a foundation for a compelling brand narrative. And lastly is to own the lion's share of the mind. Unique names create competitive advantages and avoid legal conflicts. Until next time, this has been Advertising in America. 

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

Join us on our socials @advertisinginamerica. Wanna spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

With the rise of digital media and a greater focus on uninspired factual ads, people rarely observe false advertising. Every consumer today is all about the truth. After all, a good bit of Google research can tell much about the truth in advertising. As such, sensible consumers can smell false ads that aim to deceive them from a mile away.

We can never contend the importance of truth in advertising. That's not up for debate.

However, the truth is not necessarily believable, interesting, or relevant simply because they are true. You must always wrap the truth in advertising under a compelling narrative. The strength of fact-based ads depends on how stimulating and persuasive you craft your advertisements. 

Come to think of it. Why do advertisers use testimonials? Even when some of them are not entirely true, testimonials can sway the hearts of listeners. Which, in some way, adds more heft compared to bombarding consumers with dry statistics and data.

To uphold your truth in advertising, you must work with storytelling professionals who can effectively convey your story. This requires someone with fundamental knowledge of narratives and antenarratives. Lucky for you, we're the experts at it, and we'll give you a comprehensive guide in this article.

If you're interested to learn more about it, keep reading.

The Three Different People

Dean Rotbart, author and host of Monday Morning Radio, described people as having three personas:

• The first is the person you see whenever you look in the mirror. According to him, this is the person you believe yourself to be.
• The second persona is the person others perceive when they look at you. This is the person that others believe you to be.
• The third person is the real, genuine and unadulterated you. It is the rough average of what you see personally and what others see in you.

Here's the caveat: all of these things represent the truth.

What you believe yourself to be is your version of reality. Similarly, others see you as the person they believe you to be. However, given the nuances and differences in perceptual reality, neither persona captures the entire truth.

Now, how is this information relevant?

Here's the catch: everyone is deceived by their delusions. But there's a way to twist people's perceptual reality in your favor. The secret? Stories— the interesting ones.

“Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.” —Allan Gurganus

The truth happens to everyone, but only storytellers can transform truth into stories. Whatever rhythm, style, prose or narration storytellers use becomes attached to the truth. In the same way, the truth in advertising takes its conversion strength from the narrative behind it.

All businesses possess a set of truths that form the foundation of their business. This same truth reflects in their story— the brand image, public communication and advertising. However, even staggering statistics and incredible facts lose their value when paired with poor storytelling. In other words, the truth and how you deliver them influence their overall impact.

If you want your ads to supercharge your truth in advertising, give it a good story. Or better yet, trust us to write those compelling truth-driven narratives for you. Book a call to learn more about how we can help tell your truth— in the most compelling way possible.

Antenarrative vs. Narrative

Talking about the three personas sets a precedent for fully understanding storytelling and the truth in advertising.

Everyone has heard of the term "narrative" before. It is typically used to refer to a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end. We often see narratives in movies, books, and other forms of media. A storyteller creates them in retrospect, arranging the scenes artfully and integrating them into an appropriate setting.

On the other hand, antenarratives may be a new concept to many readers and business owners. Antenarratives are people's unedited, incoherent, logic-lacking, chaotic and disconnected lived experiences. They are the unadulterated puzzle pieces that serve as building blocks before a story can happen. In other words, they are the way things happen.

A skillful arrangement of antenarratives, paired with perfect execution, results in a story that sparkles with fairy dust. Conversely, if the storyteller organizes predictably, the story will reek of a dog's breakfast. Punchlines are funny because they are strategically placed antenarratives that break a story's monotony and chronology.

"Antenarrative happens to everyone. But stories only happen to people who can tell them." —Roy H. Williams

Quentin Tarantino is one of the best storytellers and movie directors. His movies are composed of scattered bits and pieces of open-ended antenarratives that stand alone. However, he always finds a way to sew each scene together to create one cohesive piece. As such, it's impossible to predict the conclusion of his films, and they leave audiences wowing at the end.

The main keyword behind the strength of a narrative is retrospect. Specifically, a retrospective few of all antenarratives happened during those lived experiences. Through a retrospective view, people can recall past events and eliminate irrelevant antenarratives that do not support the story.

Like people, businesses go through their own lived experiences. The sum of all these antenarratives creates the truth of the brand. As a result, they reflect on a company's core values, guiding principles, company culture and even advertising.

However, not all antenarratives become part of that truth. When it comes to truth in advertising, you want to keep the best antenarratives that make your company look good. You won't create ads that deliberately incriminate your business, making audiences second-guess working with your company.

Pulitzer Winning Books and their Narratives and Antenarratives

Narratives are polished and varnished versions of antenarratives. Think of a research paper that's undergone many revisions before being the perfect rendition, ready for publication. However, some finely crafted fiction yet rough-hewn antenarratives make it to the big leagues.

Below, we'll look at two Pulitzer-awarded books that perfectly represent the use of narratives and antenarratives.

The Old Man and the Sea

"The Old Man and the Sea" is a classic novel by Ernest Hemingway. It features the epic struggle between about an aging fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For 84 days, the Cuban fisherman called Santiago sets out to sea only to return empty-handed. Conspicuously unlucky, even his most trusted apprentice, Manolin, left his boat for others.

However, the intensity of the narrative began rising on the 85th day. Santiago went beyond the island's coast, trying his luck against the aggressive gulf stream. Finally, his bait catches a big fish that he knew was a marlin. The man tries to hook the fish back but struggles and the fish begins pulling the boat instead.

The majority of the narrative revolved around this push-pull dynamic. But during these moments, we explored countless antennaratives beyond Santiago's lived experiences.

For instance, Hemingway detailed Santiago's physical suffering and exhaustion. We also had the chance to enter Santiago's perceptual reality and existential thoughts. Finally killing the marlin, we are greeted with Santiago's battle against mako sharks and losing fish's meat to the predators.

The story takes an odd turn when an exhausted, empty-handed Santiago returns and goes into a deep sleep. During this, tourists and fishermen gathered to adore the carcass of the biggest fish they'd ever seen. Finally, the story closes with Manolin bringing Santiago coffee and talking about baseball.

Did you notice the roller coaster ride of antenarratives throughout the story? Despite these seemingly bizarre and disconnected details, Hemingway managed to piece them together into a perfect narrative. This complete narrative is now Santiago's story, and with Hemingway's perfect delivery, it also became everyone's truth.

The truth in advertising follows the same principle. How people view your brand's truth depends on how you effectively piece your antenarratives together. Some antenarratives will never make it in the final cut of your advertisements, and that's okay.

Why?

Because ad writers never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

Let's look at another antenarrative-powered publication.

Founding Brothers

"Founding Brothers" is the brainchild of award-winning author Joseph Ellis wherein he explored the people that built America. In his landmark history work, he explored how deeply flawed individuals confronted the challenges to set the nation's course.

Ask anyone outside the US, and they'll describe America as the land of the free. Others may even add that success and wealth are achievable through hard work and determination. Despite the country still being rife with inequality and bureaucracy, to some degree, foreign people's perceptions have some merit.

However, that was never always the case.

The United States of America was more a fragile hope than a reality in the 18th century. While we view the founding fathers as great people, as we should, they are not free from flaws. History books tell the tale of their bravery in breaking free from Britain's grasp. But books will only delve into important antenarratives like their clashing personalities, troubles among the ranks and character flaws.

Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams and Madison were never perfect. And these shortcomings would have cost this landmass to remain an extension of England. But despite these challenges, America rose from the ashes of a shattered dream. "Founding Brothers" brings reveals the vital issues and personalities of America's Founding Fathers.

Here's the thing: they never thought after three centuries, people would refer to them as the Founding Fathers. 

These antenarratives are omitted from history books and class lectures because they give America a bad name. The course of time could have gone differently considering their demeanors, dispositions and differences.

What matters is they signed the Declaration of Independence, right? That seems to be the problem.

"But you and I live under the curse of post facto knowledge." —Roy H. Williams

Antenarratives are the building blocks that form the truth— the story. However, our post facto or after-the-fact knowledge urges us to challenge the very foundations of the story— the antenarratives. That's why businesses integrate as many facts, statistics, data and truth in advertising. But that's where problems occur.

Post facto knowledge is always troublesome, especially when crafting ads, and Roy H. Williams has a comprehensive explanation as to why:

• Facts are not necessarily believable just because they are true.
• Facts are not necessarily interesting just because they are true.
• Facts are not necessarily relevant just because they are true.

You can't just throw in antenarratives and expect people to chew them up like a well seasoned, medium-rare steak. Wrapping those facts in a compelling narrative upsurge the impact and relevance of your ads.

Let me repeat what I said earlier: never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

Ad Writers and the Truth Within Stories

Even the most popular brands use crafty narratives to convey their truth in advertising. Let's look at the antenarratives of some famous brands:

Harley Davidson's "American by Birth. Rebel by Choice" slogan

Japanese manufacturers have always taken the lead in motorcycle and car technologies for many years. Harley Davidson's marketing slogan is built around the central idea of giving American customers a sense of freedom. It is a freeing statement that breaks motorcycle enthusiasts from the shackles of superior Japanese engineering.

Harley-Davidson is an American brand, hence, American by Birth. Harley has also been associated with a rebellious spirit and a strong sense of independence throughout its history. Whether riding their iconic motorcycles or rocking the brand's famous logo, people always embody this bold, unyielding attitude. 

Their target is people who value the prestige of owning one of Harley's badass gas-guzzling bikes. Millennials who firmly stand against vehicles for their environmental impact will never understand the art of riding Harleys. That's why Harley riders are rebels by choice.

Willie G. Davidson once said, "motorcycles have always been dramatic. They are not for everybody and never will be. This is a product that people can take to an extreme as a means of self-expression."

Capturing this essence in marketing messages has allowed Harley to remain one of the most recognizable brands in America.

Volkswagen's "Think Small" advertising campaign

Volkswagen was not too popular post the second world war. After Hitler's fiasco, redeeming Germany from shame and economic downfall was far from easy. At the time, the United States became the world's consumer superpower. The car industry was also growing in their favor, where muscle cars and sedans began booming.

Fifteen years after world war II, Volkswagen found itself in a bubble. They developed a two-door, odd-looking, rear-engine mini economy car called the Beetle. It was unique, but the looks didn't match consumer preferences at the time. Not to mention, VW manufactured the Beetle in a plant that the Nazis built in Wolfsburg, Germany.

However, Volkswagen's Think Small ad campaign turned Beetle into a global sensation.

How? Simple. Volkswagen conveyed the truth in advertising, but only the truth that mattered.

Allow me to retort.

Their Think Small campaign centered on a series of antenarratives that explained the advantages of owning a Beetle. Paired with great graphic design, Ad Age ranked the ad series as the best ad campaign of the 20th century. Here are some examples:

• They wrote "Think small" on a page featuring a plain white background and a small image of the Volkswagen Beetle.
• "And if you run out of gas, it's easy to push."
• "It makes your house look bigger."
• "We do ours. You do yours." They showcased a factory-produced Beetle on the right pane and a colorfully painted Beetle on the left. This ad ushered in a new wave of marketing called the "creative revolution."
• "They said it couldn't be done. It couldn't." In this campaign, we see the legendary basketball center Wilt Chamberlain beside the small Beetle. Volkswagen said the Beetle is not for the 7'1" but can fit up to 6'7" people with generous headspace.

In their ad campaign, Volkswagen shared many facts, a.k.a. antenarratives,, which brought the Beetle its well-deserved glory. However, they omitted some antenarratives that would have cost them their game. Some people would feel sore knowing it was manufactured in a Nazi-built plant in Germany. So they did the right thing, omitting a fact and highlighting other facts that make their brand look good.

Don't mistake me. It's not about deception, false advertising or lying to your target audience about defects or product flaws. That is plain wrong. After all, Harley-Davidson and Volkswagen never lied in their ads.

You're simply focusing on the antenarratives that perfect the narrative of your advertisements. In other words, you're telling a TRUE story that best serves your clients while also serving your business.

That is how you use truth in advertising.

Again, never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

At Wizard of Ads™, we're all about conveying the truths that matter. If you want people to know your brand's truth, we can do it for you in the most compelling way possible.

Book a call with Ryan Chute, and let's reveal your truth in advertising.

A Small Business Survival Guide

The front page of Google search. Ah, Digital Nirvana. Remember those good old days? Only two roads got you there.

The first road was SEO.

It was hard and slow. You got there through your own merit as recognized by Google. Create great content that a lot of people seemed to want, and Google would help the world find you – eventually.

It was all about patience and consistency.

The second road was PPC.

It was fast and expensive.

Didn’t want to wait for Google to recognize your authority? Fine. You could just use bribes. In fairness, Google didn’t call it a “bribe”; they called it “Pay Per Click.”

As anyone who’s shelled out for PPC knows, it costs more and more to show up less and less on Google’s front page. Just like a bribe.

That was then. This is now.

Today, even when you do make Google’s front page, fewer and fewer people ever see you.

Why?

Because AI is reshaping how buyers search and find you.

• ChatGPT has gutted the SEO game.
• Claude has clobbered Search Engine specialists.
• Grok has gummed up the keyword works.

Every day, more and more people use AI to search for answers instead of Google.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss ¹

So how do you – Mister or Missus Small Business Owner – respond to this switch from Google to AI? How do you adapt your digital marketing game so you can win?

Well, the bad news is obvious.

AI doesn’t offer PPC – yet. (But you can bet that’s coming.) You can’t pay any amount of money to show up in an AI search.

It’s kind of ironic. A whole generation of people devoted decades to learning how to please Google’s search algorithm instead of learning how to please customers. Yet in just a few months’ time, the entire career category known as “SEO Specialist” has been rendered obsolete.

(OK, perhaps I exaggerate. But not much.)

Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright ²

On the other hand, the good news is actually old news.

Back in olden times, back before they got addicted to the crack pipe of PPC money, Google valued relevant, helpful, unique content.

Guess what kind of content Artificial Intelligence values today?

That’s right – relevant, helpful, and – above all – unique content.

Turn and Face the Strange ³

Don’t be deceived. Your website still needs great, original content. None of this boilerplate stuff, please. Boilerplate makes you even more invisible, and more obnoxious.

Most websites only answer the questions that all the other businesses in their industry answer. Don’t be that business.

When you do what everyone else does, you get lost in the noise.

Set yourself apart. Make it your mission to answer every single question that prospective customers ask.

Not just the questions you can answer “for free.” Answer the questions that save buyers time, money and aggravation. Answer the questions that reveal those special insider “industry secrets.” Above all, answer the questions everyone else is afraid to answer publicly.

By far, the best source of guidance on how to create useful, authoritative content is Marcus Sheridan’s terrific little book, They Ask, You Answer. (I wish he was a Wizard of Ads partner, but he isn’t. Oh well. His book is still great.)

A New Religion That’ll Bring Ya to Your Knees ⁴

Here’s an amazing little technique that can work wonders for your website. We liken it to Salome’s infamous Dance of the Seven Veils. I asked Grok to explain the origin of that term.

The Dance of the Seven Veils is the name of a famous dance performed by a woman named Salome. In the story, Salome dances for King Herod, while she wears seven thin, see-through veils. As she dances, she takes off one veil at a time, moving gracefully to music. Each veil dropping builds suspense and keeps everyone watching, wondering what’s next. It’s not just a random dance; it’s tied to a big moment in the story where Salome asks for something shocking after she finishes—the head of John the Baptist. The dance is about the power of mystery and drama to influence behavior.

Like Salome dropping one veil after another, each question you answer increases engagement from your audience and builds your credibility. This is what strengthens your website’s authority with AI.

Make it a point of pride to answer every question your customers and prospects ask. Craft your answers like Salome and her veils – each answer you give should link to the next questions.

DISCLAIMER: There is no guarantee that AI will drive people to your website. For the present though, most AI responses do reference the websites used for their answers.

Time Will Show You the Way ⁵

So, is SEO defunct? Is PPC dead? Should you just quit this digital marketing stuff?

Absolutely not.

Yes, digital marketing has changed. And PPC still matters, just not in the way it used to. The content of your website still matters.

It’s still all about patience and consistency.

Your digital marketing specialist can be an invaluable part of your team, but only if he knows which digital analytics matter, and which ones don’t. (HINT: the analytics that matter have changed as well.)

In this new age of Artificial Intelligence, is it really worth the time, patience and effort necessary to add great content to your website?

Absolutely.

Combine your AI-savvy digital presence with an equally potent offline mass media campaign, and you can build a powerhouse business honored by AI, feared by your competition and beloved by your customers.

¹ Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who, 1971
² Three Little Birds – Bob Marley, 1977³ Changes – David Bowie, 1971⁴ Black Velvet – Alannah Myles, 1989⁵ Echoes of Love – The Doobie Brothers, 1977

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