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The Monday Morning Memo

Quotes from a French Cafe

May 19, 2025

Pennie and I had a difficult week a long way from home. It began with a piece of gravel that cracked her windshield. Looking back, we should have just lived with it. But we didn’t know that at the time. We dropped her car off at the appointed time on the appointed day. When Pennie […]

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Authority is Nothing but Fancy Clothes

May 12, 2025

“If people were paid according to how hard they work, the richest people on earth would be the ones digging ditches with a shovel in the hot summertime.” That’s what my mother told me when I was a boy. When she saw the puzzled look on my face, she continued. “People who make a lot […]

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This is Why We Remember Him

May 5, 2025

His name was Rab. He died in Bengal, the land of tigers, in 1941. On his way out the door, he said, “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.” When Rab was sixteen, he published a book of poetry under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha, which means “Sun Lion.” Those poems were […]

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Is Your Planning Gestalt or Structural?

April 28, 2025

Michael Dell and Shaquille O’Neal planned their work and worked their plans. Dell understood the formulas, and followed the rules, of efficiency. O’Neal understood the formulas and followed the rules of basketball. Each of them faithfully followed a Structural plan. Michael Dell invented nothing, improvised nothing, and innovated only once. But that single innovation made […]

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Ambition and Happiness

April 21, 2025

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” “Life… Liberty… and the pursuit of Happiness.” We published those words 249 years ago when we declared our independence from […]

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The Creation & Extraction of Value

April 14, 2025

“If we train our children only to harvest, who will plant the seed?” I wrote those words after contemplating the short-sightedness of so-called, “performance marketing,” on March 11, 2010. “Performance marketing” is the new name for direct response advertising. It works best when it extracts the value from a well-known brand. Its objective is to […]

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Incisive and Insightful

April 7, 2025

I was watching a few of Evan Puschak’s “Nerdwriter” videos when I heard my own inner voice composing a thank you note to him. In the quiet of my mind, I told Evan that I have always found his analysis of literature, movies, music, photographs, and paintings to be incisive and insightful. Incisive Insightful Those two […]

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Magical Thinking: Bad or Good?

March 31, 2025

Magical Thinking is often misunderstood. Jason Segel plays a psychologist in the Apple + TV show, “Shrinking.” He is talking to a patient with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He looks at her. “This again?” She is holding her breath. He says, “You looked at the clock and now you have to hold your breath until the minute […]

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The Magician of Social Media Success

March 24, 2025

Brian Brushwood knows how to gain and hold attention in social media. Reaching for that brass ring causes most people to lean too far off their plastic horse on the social media merry-go-round. SPLAT! They land flat on their faces with only a few hundred views. Brian has built a YouTube channel to 1.7 million […]

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7 Quiet Secrets of Sales Activation

March 17, 2025

“Features and benefits” were once the most loudly shouted secrets of customer acquisition in Business to Consumer advertising (B2C). I even wrote a chapter in my first book – The Wizard of Ads – on the use of “which means” as a word-bridge between: 1. naming a feature of your product and 2. naming the […]

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The Second Most Profitable Form of Writing

March 10, 2025

Philip Dusenberry once said, “I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.” I can testify that Dusenberry is correct. The best ad writers make more money than the most highly paid lawyers and heart surgeons. Great advertising makes an enormous difference […]

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His Name was Joseph

March 3, 2025

Twenty-four thousand men were crowded into Knockaloe Internment Camp in 1914 because they had been found guilty of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong last name. Tightly confined behind barbed wire, those men grew increasingly weak, feeble, stiff and awkward until a man named Joseph was shoved through their […]

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Moments that Change Everything

February 24, 2025

The biggest decisions I ever made didn’t seem big at the time. I’ll bet the same is true for you. Pivotal changes in direction seem obvious to us 10 years later, but during that tiny moment when we alter our course a little, it feels like a very small thing. Here are 4 small, pivotal […]

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Media Measurement Mistakes, ch. 2

February 17, 2025

If you believe that people today have a short attention span, you are mistaken. FACT: We live in an over-communicated society. This is why we have learned how to quickly filter out messages that do not interest us. FACT: We will happily spend several hours binge-watching shows that appeal to us. Where’s your theory about […]

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Media Measurement Mistakes: Chapter 1

February 10, 2025

Buying advertising is a lot like buying diamonds. Allow me to explain. Anyone who talks to a jeweler will be told that diamonds are graded according to the 4 C’s: Color, Clarity, Carat weight, and Cut. Customers ask the jeweler, “Which of the 4 Cs is most important?” This seems like a perfectly reasonable question, […]

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The Cruelty of Hope

February 3, 2025

I recently sent you two memos about our need for positive hope. “Hollywood’s Broken Angel” was the true story of a woman who desperately needed a friend to encourage her. “Hope and a Future” explained how easy it is to recharge the emotional batteries of a friend whose light has dimmed. Positive hope crackles with […]

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Hope and a Future

January 27, 2025

Fifty years ago, I was a teenager with an unreliable automobile. But that’s never a problem for an Oklahoma boy who has knowledge, tools, and daylight. My knowledge and tools were always with me, but the daylight disappeared at the worst possible time, no matter how badly I needed it. Cell phones had not yet […]

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Hollywood’s Broken Angel

January 20, 2025

Her name was Lillian Millicent Entwistle, “Peg” to her friends. She was born in 1908. At the age of 19, Peg married Robert Keith, 10 years older than she. Then she discovered that he had been married before and had a 6 year-old son. The couple was soon divorced. “I’ll move to a new place […]

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What are Thoughts Made Of?

January 13, 2025

I asked Google, “What are thoughts made of?” Google said, “According to current scientific understanding, thoughts are essentially made up of electrical signals generated by the firing of neurons in the brain, which communicate with each other through chemical messengers called neurotransmitters; essentially, a thought is a complex pattern of neural activity within the brain, triggered […]

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Consider if you will…

January 6, 2025

The Wizard Academy tower sits on a plateau 900 feet above the city of Austin. The view from the stardeck is stunning. When you attend our free public seminar on the afternoon of March 17, you will be in Tuscan Hall just 500 feet from the tower. If you have some extra time on campus, perhaps Dave […]

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Personification Puts the Power in PowerSelling

December 30, 2024

Your heart tells you who you are. Your heart contains all your beliefs. PowerSelling radiates outward from the pulsating fact that people don’t bond with companies; people bond with people; personalities that share their beliefs. Your company needs a personality if you want your customers to feel a connection to it. Does your company have […]

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What it Means to Go Full Kardashian

December 23, 2024

Curiosity is a beagle running through the forest with its nose to the ground. Curiosity is the cure for boredom. There is no cure for curiosity. Curious, I asked, “How did the Kardashians become famous?” I wish I hadn’t. “Through different ventures, several members of the family have assets of over $1 billion. Kim Kardashian became a […]

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And the Winner is…

December 16, 2024

Last week’s Monday Morning Memo included a photograph of a diamond pendant and the promise of a $1,000 cash prize to whoever could use AI to write the 60-second radio ad that would sell the largest number of that pendant for Valentine’s Day. I was given that photo by a jewelry client. In a moment […]

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To Be Fully Human

December 9, 2024

The General Social Survey has been conducted every second year since 1972 and the most recent one contained both good and bad news about us.  GOOD NEWS: Our bonds with our families and friends are as strong as ever. BAD NEWS: The bridges we once extended to strangers have collapsed. Jesus talks about a socially […]

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How Will You Be Remembered?

December 2, 2024

John Steinbeck wrote a letter to Carlton Sheffield about a conversation he’d had with his wife, Elaine. “Once I said to her, ‘I don’t want the barbarity of funeral for myself.’ And she said, ‘Don’t be silly. A funeral isn’t for the dead. You’ll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival, maybe. […]

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Crystal Days Cannot Be Shattered

November 25, 2024

  The future is unknowable. The past is unrecoverable. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. Don’t live your life in an imaginary tomorrow. Find joy while it is still today. If you are depressed, you are living in the past. Escaping the past is easy. The hard part is choosing to […]

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The 12 Answers of Great Ad Writers

November 18, 2024

My observation during the past 40+ years as an ad writer has been that television and radio professionals spend so much time trying to sell television and radio ads, they have no time to learn how to make those ads work. When you know how to make ads work, and can prove it, television and […]

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Be You. And Make the Best of It.

November 11, 2024

  Billy Sunday was born in 1862, the second year of America’s Civil War. He died in 1935, during the Great Depression. Billy was a wildly flamboyant and controversial preacher, but he made an interesting observation: “More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.” We’ll talk more about purpose in just a […]

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Antonio, Benito, and Neil

November 4, 2024

One hundred and two years ago, Benito organized a March on Rome with the intention of forcing the king of Italy to yield the government to him. It worked, and Benito was appointed prime minister. Thirty-two-year-old Antonio had a problem with that, and spoke out against Benito. Benito got tired of Antonio’s criticism and had him thrown […]

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Process Follows Outcome

October 28, 2024

As you round the corner and see your destination, the inconveniences of travel evaporate from your mind. Poof. You are here now, and everything is new again. Your children will carry the joy of this place wherever they go. The adventures we have for them are unimaginable. Leave them with us. We promise they won’t […]

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Listen to Your Friends

October 21, 2024

Calvin is looking up into a star-filled sky when he says to his tiger friend Hobbes, “If people looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.” My friends are Calvin. I […]

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When You Lie Down on Sand

October 14, 2024

Rock-hard sandstone used to be just plain old sand, the kind you see at the beach. If you lie down on beach sand, you will leave your imprint on it. But if you lie down on sandstone, it will leave its imprint on you. Every person who starts a business hopes to leave their mark […]

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Is America Portable?

October 7, 2024

Same image as last week, as I told you, but this week it has a whole different meaning. – Indy Beagle I don’t claim to speak for anyone but myself, and maybe it’s a generational thing, but America, to my way of thinking, is less of a place and more of a belief system; a […]

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How to Create Sustainable Sales Activation

September 30, 2024

PART THREE of SEVEN SECRETS OF SALES ACTIVATION The objective of a Customer Bonding campaign is to make your name the one that people think of first and feel the best about. When you have not successfully bonded with your customer, any attempt at sales activation is simply an experiment in direct marketing. This can […]

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Seven Secrets of Sales Activation

September 23, 2024

Two thousand years ago, Confucius was as old to the people of China as Christopher Columbus is to us today. Five hundred and thirty-two years before the wise men followed their star to Bethlehem, Confucius wrote, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by contemplation, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and […]

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My Advice if You’re a Leader

September 16, 2024

Leadership = Energy + Direction Direction = Vision + Courage Therefore, leaders are people of Energy, Vision, and Courage. If you are a person of energy, vision, and courage: (1.) I have noticed that people like you often become surrounded by wanderers who are looking for a leader. It is hard to make money when […]

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Riding Rockets & Shooting Stars

September 9, 2024

Riding this rocket toward my 67th birthday, memories of my life flicker in the twilight of my mind like shooting stars in the night. My gaze lingers on a long-ago day when I began writing ads for a jeweler. I saw the cover of a book that said, “Follow Your Passion. The Money Will Follow,” […]

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First Principles of Advertising

September 2, 2024

You are inside your business, looking out. The customer is outside your business, looking in. Your inside-out perspective makes you blind in one eye. Confirmation bias makes you blind in the other eye. You cannot see yourself the way your customer sees you. You imagine how they see you based on your mission statement, your […]

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Why Your Business Needs 3 Strategies

August 26, 2024

Every company has an inside, an outside, and an engine. This is why successful companies have a Mother, a Trumpet, and a CEO. The CEO chooses a destination and builds a machine to take us there. The Mother looks inward to the people in the company. The Trumpet makes beautiful noises for the public to […]

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Why Backstories Matter

August 19, 2024

The best screenwriters in Hollywood use the principles of David Freeman, as do Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning novelists and all the most effective ad writers, even if they have never heard of the man. I know David well, as he has taught a number of classes at Wizard Academy. His always-and-forever question is this: “What […]

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Cult? Did You Say Cult?

August 12, 2024

Every person on earth belongs to several cults. Calm down. I’m not talking about what you think I’m talking about. I’ll start at the beginning. Cult: any group of people who share a devotion to an idea, activity, or identity. Cults become toxic and dangerous only when the devotion of the group is (1.) to […]

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Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, and Me

August 5, 2024

Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, and Me I never write click-bait headlines, but I wrote this one just to prove I can. Brad shines from Shawnee, Ron comes from Duncan, and I bailed from Broken Arrow. We’re all Okla-Homeboys. Now that my click-bait headline has done its job and convinced you to keep reading all the […]

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Jeffrey and Joe

July 29, 2024

These are stories of a bright day, a dark night, and a monster. The story of the bright day happened last year just before Christmas. You may recall that I told you about finding an undiscovered 400-year-old copy of the 1605 edition of Don Quixote at a used furniture auction in a village in New […]

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This is Why Everyone is so Anxious

July 22, 2024

Twenty-nine years ago, Carl Sagan wrote a book called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995). One of the observations Carl shared in that book is particularly troubling: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re […]

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Answers to Your Questions

July 15, 2024

Lots of people have been asking me the same 3 questions. QUESTION ONE: “Who were your mentors?” Mentor is a word I never use. It smells of apprenticeship, that wafting, submissive aroma that arises from a servant who adores his master. By this definition, I have never had a mentor, but I do have many heroes […]

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Laughter. Sorrow. Anger. Wonder.

July 8, 2024

Aim their laughter like a cannon that booms out over the water. Aim their sorrow like a rainbow that follows a storm. Aim their anger like a lightning bolt that kills a man standing under a tree. Be careful not to stand under trees. People would rather be angry that bored. This is why we […]

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Messengers Make Me Melancholy

July 1, 2024

 

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In Praise of Procrastination

June 24, 2024

There is a time to get started, and there is a time to wait. When you have thought carefully about it, take action. But when you haven’t thought about it, wait. The important is rarely urgent, and the urgent is rarely important. Do not become a slave to the merely urgent. Perception is to see […]

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The Dark Night of Your Soul

June 17, 2024

When you are having an adventure, you wish you were safe at home. But when you are safe at home, you wish you were having an adventure. Every adventure is marked by setbacks, disappointments, and difficulties. Without trouble, there can be no adventure. Our love of movies, video games, and sporting events proves our craving […]

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The Wizard of Ads® versus ChatGPT

June 10, 2024

My friends know that I have not used – and do not plan to use – ChatGPT, although I do endorse it for people who do not love to write. I love to write. Undissuaded, my friends urge that I should at least allow ChatGPT to gather and compile data for me to edit. I […]

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True Things I Cannot Prove

June 3, 2024

“If the founder of an organization does not empower the next generation of leadership to carry the enterprise forward while he is still viable as a leader, the organization he founded will cease to exist within 10 years after his death.” I have no recall of how I learned that information, but I have known […]

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Jerry’s 53% Idea

May 27, 2024

A successful mechanic shop brings in about $500,000 a year. But whether or not the shop owner makes any profit on that $500,000 isn’t determined by how good they are at repairing cars, but by how good they are at running a business. And even those shop owners who are good at running a business […]

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Men in Their Prime

May 20, 2024

The Growing Up Years: Ages Birth to 20 When a man is in his teenage years, people with good intentions will ask, “What are your plans for the future?” Fewer than 10% of us have a real plan at that age, but we make one up so that we don’t disappoint those who believe in […]

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Advice to My Teenage Grandsons

May 13, 2024

To Hollister and Gideon, You have arrived at that age when everyone you meet will ask you about your plans for the future. I am older, happier, and probably more successful than those people, so ignore them. Listen to me. Knowledge is important, but experience is what really matters. School can give you knowledge, but […]

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Of Course You Can

May 6, 2024

“Telling the truth more powerfully than is completely accurate” is to think and speak of a future event as though it has already happened. Some people call this “manifesting,” but I am uncomfortable with that word because it conjures the image of a person literally speaking things into existence, an ability that I believe is […]

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Reno is West of L.A.

April 29, 2024

Two-letter postal abbreviations don’t have periods after the letters, so when I titled today’s Monday Morning Memo, “Reno is West of L.A.” I was not using L.A. as the postal abbreviation for Louisiana. Carson City – the capitol of Nevada – is likewise west of Los Angeles, as are 5 other state capitols. Juneau, Honolulu, […]

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Creativity in Advertising is Overrated

April 22, 2024

You see a lot of crap during 40 years as an ad writer. You see big, steaming piles of predictable ads written by amateurs who assume the audience is required to listen. You see frozen piles of heartless ads that speak to ideas rather than to people. You see the scattered shrapnel of ads written […]

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Write Tight

April 15, 2024

As you increase your words, you decrease their impact. Communicate your thoughts in short sentences. Those thoughts will be remembered, and you will, too. Shorter hits harder. I read a book by a man who is a deep thinker, a great strategist, and a good writer. His strengths are that he can identify, organize, and […]

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Pirates and Kings

April 8, 2024

Kings and pirates both wear swords, but for different reasons. A king wears his sword as a symbol of the army he commands. A pirate wears his sword so that it will be at hand when he needs it. Pirates have a high tolerance for risk because they have nothing to lose. Kings have a […]

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The Voices of the 9 Declarative Sentences

April 1, 2024

Every time you make a declarative statement, you choose one of only 9 sentence structures. You have been doing this unconsciously for as long as you have been able to speak and write. Today I am going to teach you how to do it consciously. Ten minutes from now, you will be able to speak […]

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How to Keep Your Balance During an Earthquake

March 25, 2024

The tectonic plates of America are shifting beneath our feet. Can you feel the tremors? I’m not talking about the foundations of our continent. I’m talking about the foundations our nation. Our continent is rock, soil, and water; mountains and prairies and oceans white with foam. Our nation is a people; a family that we […]

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How to Grow a Business 4x in 36 months

March 18, 2024

My reputation is built largely on the fact that I cheat. I openly admit my cheating, but no one cares, because the way that I cheat is not unethical, immoral, or illegal. I realized in 2017 that Warren Buffet and I do exactly the same thing. Here is how he describes it: “Ted Williams wrote […]

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Magicians, Poets & Creators of Comics

March 11, 2024

In the Monday Morning Memo for Oct. 10, 2022, I wrote, “Do you want to be one of the world’s great ad writers? Don’t read ads. Read the poems, short stories and novels written by the winners of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes in Literature.” My friend Tom Grimes – the waterboy of Amarillo – […]

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How to Become Invisible

March 4, 2024

There are two ways to become invisible, and both are easily accomplished. To become invisible to yourself: get lost inside your own head. When you ignore other people, it never occurs to you that they can see you. This is how you become invisible in your mind. To become invisible to others: say what people expected you […]

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Are You Swinging for Information or Transformation?

February 26, 2024

[The wizard has been writing twice a month for Radio Ink magazine for more than a quarter century. The column you are about to read will be distributed to every radio station in North America – more than 10,000 of them  – when it is published in a few weeks. – Indy Beagle] Traditional wisdom […]

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The Flickering, Fleeting Scenes of a Lifetime

February 19, 2024

There is a mysterious camera in your brain that will click and capture a poignant scene from time to time. You know what I’m talking about: random moments that you can vividly recall, but you’re not sure why. My awareness of that camera has been heightened and brightened in recent days as I feel a […]

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How to Lift a Company to New Heights

February 12, 2024

Every company has Untold Story assets that are hiding in plain sight, and every company has Limiting Factors that are holding them back. This is how you lift a company to new heights: 1. Uncover the Untold Stories. 2. Devise a plan to overcome the Limiting Factors. Untold Stories and Limiting Factors are not always […]

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The Wisdom of Barbara Kingsolver

February 5, 2024

How to Shear a Sheep by Barbara Kingsolver Walk to the barn before dawn. Take off your clothes. Cast everything on the ground: your nylon jacket, wool socks and all. Throw away the cutting tools, the shears that bite like teeth at the skin when hooves flail and your elbow comes up hard under a […]

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A Pebble Tossed into a Pond

January 29, 2024

The dew lies softly on the green grass and the sunrise is golden in the early morning sky. I come upon an unspoiled mirror of water. A smooth pebble leaves my fingertips. Yes! I land my pebble perfectly in the bullseye! I watch a concentric circle of ripples reach the edge of the pool and […]

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Why Your Beliefs Are Correct

January 22, 2024

You look at life from a unique point of view. I do, too. Each of us is trapped in our own perceptual reality. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” You and I may look at the same thing but see it differently. And that little girl over there, yes, that one, sees things […]

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Porcupi and Rhinoceri

January 15, 2024

A weak ad attempts to make too many points, and none of them very powerfully. A weak ad is a bloated little porcupine. A great ad drives a single point through one side of your house and out the other with all the momentum of a freight train. A powerful ad is a charging rhinoceros. […]

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How to Succeed Without Planning

January 8, 2024

Efficiency experts say you must plan your work and work your plan. And you must have written goals and a budget and a schedule. A detailed plan is the key to success when you are doing something small, but you cannot have a detailed plan when you are doing something big and new and untried. […]

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It Began as a Tiny Thing

January 1, 2024

A germ is a tiny thing, but it can divide and become two germs, then four. Four becomes eight and after only 28 more cycles you find yourself handcuffed in the sad darkness of more than one billion germs. One billion, seventy-three million, seven hundred and forty-one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four germs, to be […]

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What, Then, is a Woman?

December 25, 2023

“The thing about the systematic reduction of a woman down to her parts is that she doesn’t always know it’s happening while it’s going on. Just one day she wakes up and realizes that all she was, was a face, a line of cleavage, two legs, a couple of hands, the swivel of her pelvis, […]

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A Fly-Fishing Fanatic in America’s 13 Colonies

December 18, 2023

I don’t know if he was was an American Patriot or a British Loyalist. All I know is that he owned a 1726 edition of “The Gentleman Angler,” a leather bound book on fly fishing. That book was 50 years old when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. Speaking of Jefferson, that same fly-fisherman […]

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Irwin, Bob, Frank, Placido, and Aretha

December 11, 2023

Irwin Michnick, the Brooklyn-born son of a Jewish furrier from Ukraine, was a jazz musician who wrote radio commercials and advertising jingles for companies like L & M cigarettes and Ken-L Ration dog food. Bob Levenson was a copywriter at Doyle Dane Bernbach who needed a tune to go with the words, “Everybody doesn’t like […]

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The Two Times We Read Don Quixote

December 4, 2023

Back in 2012, Ze Frank recorded a video I’ve contemplated for 11 years. “What was it about?” The hero and the clown. “What made it so interesting that you’ve contemplated it for so long?” The hero and the clown are the same person. “You’re going to need to explain that to me.” Here’s the transcript. […]

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Not Everything is Scalable

November 27, 2023

Ninety percent of motorcycle riders who attempt this corner at 100 mph crash and die, so 9% of riders who attempt it at 10 mph will also crash and die, right? The fact that you answered silently ‘No’ indicates that you instinctively understand the concept of an inflection point. Somewhere between zero and 100 mph […]

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The Purpose of Poetry

November 20, 2023

Poetry is not limited to poets. When you 1. say more 2. in fewer words, you are being poetic. Pithy, insightful statements are poetry. Frederik Pohl was not trying to explain why we increase our purchases of ice cream, alcohol, and entertainment when we are sad, but he summarizes it perfectly in just 20 words: […]

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The Function of Fiction

November 13, 2023

Fiction is an ancient virtual reality technology that specializes in simulating human problems. “Like a flight simulator, fiction projects us into intense simulations of problems that run parallel to those we face in reality. And like a flight simulator, the main virtue of fiction is that we have a rich experience and don’t die at […]

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The Power and Danger of Relational Marketing

November 6, 2023

Beautiful people know they are beautiful. Smart people know they are smart. Rich people know they are rich. You don’t need to tell them. If you speak about surface qualities, your words are superficial. If you speak about inner qualities, your words are deep. Flattery is an attempt at superficial bonding. It is the pickup […]

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Portals and How to Use Them

October 30, 2023

Portals are openings that lead from one place to another. The best screenwriters, novelists, poets, and ad writers use portals when they want their readers, listeners, and viewers to follow them to a new and different place. Portals can be visual, auditory, or literary. Visual Portals like windows, doors, and tunnels, are used by painters, […]

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The Third Vanderbilt

October 23, 2023

I bought an old oil painting. It’s not a large painting or an important one, but it came from the private collection of the founder of the Whitney Museum. I bought it because I’ve always admired Cornelius Vanderbilt and his great-grandson, Willie K. Vanderbilt II, and I consider the delightful Gertude Vanderbilt-Whitney, the great-grandaughter of […]

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How to Attract and Hold Attention: Death and Life for the Cognoscenti

October 16, 2023

It is easy to attract attention: Predictability is death. Spontaneity is life. Day and night, left and right, timid and bold, young and old, up and down, smile and frown. Start and end. Do it again. Negative and positive, effected and causative, passive and active, repulsive and attractive: Paired opposites are the essence of magnetism. […]

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The Underdog Phenomenon

October 9, 2023

Most of us cheer for the little dog that doesn’t have a chance. The underdog. We like them because they need us. Underdogs are those little dogs that rise above their circumstances and overcome their disadvantages. It is the underdog we see in our mind when we say, “It’s not the size of the dog […]

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Useful and Ornamental Wordplay

October 2, 2023

My novelist friend, Brad Whittington and I share a deep and abiding love for the colorful canvases of Robertson Davies, a Canadian writer who paints pictures in the mind. “Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge…. Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of […]

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Your Low Conversion Rate on Pay-Per-Click

September 25, 2023

When I was growing up, I could never change the opinion of my mother by saying, “But everyone else is doing it.” My mom had the courage and confidence to believe that Everyone Else’s mother was wrong. That’s a high level of courage and confidence. I’m hoping that you have it, too. When I speak […]

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The Video Game of Life

September 18, 2023

Too much to do, too little time. First you are interrupted; then the interruption is interrupted. Does that ever happen to you? Me, too. Surrounded by frantic, breathless, rapid distraction, we have become characters in the video game of Life. The problem is that we are becoming habituated to it. Sensory overload is becoming the […]

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Living in the Nick of Time

September 11, 2023

You cut a nick into a stick to mark a moment. Then, at the end of the time being measured, you make another nick. To do a thing at the last possible moment is to do it within that second nick, “in the nick of time.” Millions of us have been using this phrase since […]

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Are You Sure You Want to be Famous?

September 4, 2023

A friend rotated my brain toward the subject of fame. He aimed my eyes in a new direction when he said, “Do you remember that thing you sent me 10 or 15 years ago?” I gave him the same blank look that you would have given him. He continued, “It was that thing Leonard Pitts […]

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The Price of Intimacy

August 28, 2023

The comedian Mark Russell said you can judge a generation by its magazines. Life magazine was first published in 1883. It was followed by People in 1974, which was followed by Us, which was followed by Self. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803, just a few weeks before the Louisiana Purchase was announced to the […]

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How Does Advertising Work?

August 21, 2023

I have a friend who is a famous online marketer. Last week he sent me an observation I found interesting. It occurred to me that you might find it interesting as well. “Now that targeting is pretty much dead on Facebook and Instagram, I have a theory that the rules of reach and frequency that […]

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Is Your Ladder Too Short?

August 14, 2023

I meet with dozens of people each year who tell me how they grew their companies to an impressive size, but then the growth slowed down. And then it stopped. They can see a lot more business out there; they just can’t figure out how to get it. I used to call this, “hitting the […]

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Advice From an Old Man

August 7, 2023

I often share memories of wise old men who gave me good advice. I have a grandchild turning 17 today, so I will play the part of the old man. The person I am advising is you. Always deliver the negative truth while the sale hangs in the balance. If you smile and make the […]

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What it Means to be Average

July 31, 2023

The first half of what I’m about to tell you, I have told you before. But you will understand why I chose to repeat it when you read the second half. – RHW The average person has 5 senses. We can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. We also have the ability to interpret magical […]

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Chatterton and Rowley

July 24, 2023

Everything I’m about to share with you happened in England and France during the lifetime of Thomas Jefferson, while America still had its “new baby” smell. The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave us “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in 1798, while Napoleon sailed to Egypt to fight the Battle of the Pyramids and famously discover the […]

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Don’t Worry. Be Happy.

July 17, 2023

You cannot suffer the past or future because they do not exist. What you are suffering is your memory and your imagination. Friend, you are not a good worrier, so you might as well quit. Most of the things you worry about never come to pass. And the majority of those things that do come […]

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What, then, is Love?

July 10, 2023

When a thought knocks politely on the door of my mind, I open the door and entertain the thought. But when an unseen thought shines into my mind through a skylight, I am always startled by the mystery of how words-not-my-own came to echo in my empty skull. “What, then, is Love?” Those four words, […]

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Our Hunger for Relationship

July 3, 2023

We have a need to belong. We want to be seen and heard. We want to be missed when we are not around. We want to have genuine connection. This is the basis of relational ad writing. Never heard of it? That is because most ads are transactional, not relational. In a transactional ad, an […]

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Reap the Whirlwind

June 26, 2023

It would appear that journalists can no longer see clearly or talk plainly. They hand you something twisted and bent and assure you that it is straight. Propaganda hangs thick in the air around us and we are weary of it. It has gotten so bad that each of the people I could count on […]

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Random Quote:

“War, as viewed from ground level, is about food, latrines and horror: ‘Bullets hurt, corpses stink, men under fire are often so frightened that they wet their trousers.’ As if footnote to that, he (Orwell) recalls one night at the Front when he and another had crawled out into No Man’s Land — a 300-yard wide beet field with little cover — to snipe at the enemy, and been caught by the dawn:

‘We were still trying to nerve ourselves to make a dash for it when there was an uproar and a blowing of whistles in the Fascist trench. Some of our aeroplanes were coming over. At this moment, a man presumably carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran…. It is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely to hit a running man at a hundred yards, and also that I was thinking chiefly about getting back to our trench while the Fascists had their attention fixed on the aeroplanes. Still, I did not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had come here to shoot at ‘Fascists’; but a man who is holding up his trousers isn’t a ‘Fascist’, he is visibly a fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t feel like shooting at him.'”

- from George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, his treatise on the Spanish Civil War

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