I recently asked a group of 14 men to share a snapshot from their photo albums of random memory, a vivid image, unfaded, a moment inexplicable, captured forever by a long-ago click of that camera in the brain. Here’s what they handed me on scraps of paper: “Trish’s laugh as she walked out of the […]
Elizabeth was a young Quaker girl who fell happily in love and got married in 1929. “Morgan Vining, my husband, swept my little boat out of the shallows into the sunlit depths of life’s stream and we had almost five years together before, in a single moment, he was gone.” Car wrecks happen quickly. Elizabeth […]
Real estate is a business involving mountains of money. It’s also a business in crisis. Put these together and it means ka-ching if you know how to make the phone ring for realtors. You ought not be surprised that I know how to make phones ring. What should surprise you is that I’m willing to […]
It’s like you’ve asked him to defend his religion; the business owner who believes in growing his businesses through exceptional service delivered by extraordinary people gets testy when you ask him to name a business that has successfully employed this strategy. It’s like trying to convince a believer there is no God. I’ve encountered dozens […]
Our American men dropped the baton in the 4×100 meter relay. It was embarrassing. Unthinkable. A few minutes later our American women did precisely the same thing. The commentators were brutal, but accurate: “You have to look at the new leadership at USA Track and Field and wonder if it’s been a vacuum of leadership. […]
Advertising salespeople are highly paid because rejection hurts. They told me to rub Zig Ziglar on it, but the sting and the ache stayed with me. I was 20 years old. The smiley seminar speaker said, “Look in the mirror each morning and repeat these affirmations.” Sorry, I’ve already got a religion and it makes […]
You walk into a room, empty but for a table carved from crystal. Girdling the table are 11 other persons whose occupations are similar to yours. You place ten thousand dollars on the table, your gift to the group. Each of the other 11 does the same. But this is a magic table. You don’t […]
Commercially speaking, where are things happening in your town? Move to where the action is. Follow Best Buy, Home Depot, Starbucks and the other Big Boys who have already done the research. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. Media costs are escalating and the public is hiding from ads. These are just two of […]
You’re attracted to art 1. when it stands for something you believe in, 2. when it shows you a reflection of your own core values, or3. gives you a glimpse of your inner face. You're drawn to a brand for precisely the same reasons. A cultural icon is a contemporary archetype, mass-appeal public art, the […]
Mom’s off-white Formica table with wobbly metal legs had a charred circle on top where I once set a pan that was way too hot. Mom couldn’t afford a tablecloth to cover it, but whenever she suspected a person might have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving dinner, she’d always invite them to our house and […]
Traditional wisdom says, “Advertise in the newspaper. Everyone reads the newspaper. There are lots of radio stations but only one newspaper.” The problem with traditional wisdom is that it’s usually more tradition than wisdom. Take a look at the chart at the top of this page and you’ll see that the total, combined ad revenues […]
I’ve known Richie Starkey since I was five. He turns 68 today. Richie said the only thing he wanted for his birthday was for you to pause today at noon, wherever you are in the world, make a peace sign with your fingers and say with a smile, “Peace and Love.” Will you do it? […]
If I told you our experiment was constructed specifically to test radio versus newspaper, I’d be lying. Like most discoveries, we stumbled on this one by accident. Here’s how it happened: Lifestyle Centers of America is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to lead you and me to a healthier, happier life through better nutrition, […]
The thinnest human hair is half a million angstroms thick. Typing paper is a million angstroms. Yet the layer of quicksilver that turns plate glass into a mirror is only 700 angstroms thick. It would take 714 such layers to equal the thickness of a hair, yet it’s this impossibly thin layer that reflects a […]
“The fundamental shortcoming of most mission statements is that everyone expects them to be highfalutin and all-encompassing. The result is a long, boring, commonplace and pointless joke. Companies are all writing the same mediocre stuff.” – Guy Kawasaki Most organizations try to define themselves by telling us what they believe in, what they stand for. […]
My friend Kary Mullis once said, “Claims made by scientists… can be separated from the scientists who make them. It isn’t important to know who Isaac Newton was. He discovered that force is equal to mass times acceleration. He was an antisocial, crazy bastard who wanted to burn down his parents’ house. But force is […]
The Medium is Not the Message Marshall McLuhan’s famous line, “The medium is the message,” is at best a Japanese koan (ko-ahn.) You know, “What is the sound of one hand clapping,” and all that? I’m sure I’ll get a thousand ranting emails about this, but I’ve always felt koans to be a silly attempt […]
Back When We Killed for Tennis Shoes MAY 14, 1990 – The cover of Sports Illustrated showed a pistol being shoved into the back of a high school kid. Those were the days when an alarming trend swept this land of purple mountains, majesties, above the fruited plains. Kids were killing for tennis shoes. Remember? […]
Visuospatial Sketchpad (the movie screen in your mind) Time travel is fun. Want to learn to do it? Follow me. The year is 1608. England buzzes with William Shakespeare. Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear are performed to rave reviews while 44 year-old William grieves the death of his mother. A team of 47 translators works […]
Sholem Aleichem (SHO lem a LAY kem) When Samuel Langhorne Clemens began to write, he adopted the pen name Mark Twain, a common shout among riverboat pilots on the Mississippi river. When Sholem Rabinovich began to write, he adopted the pen name Sholem Aleichem, a common Yiddish greeting whose most accurate translation would be, “Peace […]
Horizontal Thinking American education teaches a subject vertically, narrow and deep. And the deeper one plunges into the subject, the narrower it gets. Specialization. 1a. Liberal Arts1b. Literature1c. Spanish Literature1d. Spanish Literature of 1492-16811e. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)1f. Don Quixote de La Mancha by Cervantes (1605)1g. Symbolism in Don Quixote And then you write your […]
Customer Profiles I’ve never seen a business fail due to reaching the wrong people. But if you listen to advertising sales reps, “reaching the right people” will solve all your problems. And guess who has exactly the right people for you? The conversation usually goes something like this: the sales rep says, “Tell me, who […]
How to Make Business GoodWhen Times are Bad Archetypal Patterns, Part 3 Here's the Pattern: When times are tough and customers are scarce, business owners buckle down and try to become even better at the things they do well. They do this because they trust the Guide pattern, “This has always worked in the past.” […]
Archetypal Patterns Part One. Reconciling the Challenge pattern to the Guide pattern Half your brain sees a hierarchy. Deductive reasoning is a product of this. Vertical. Sequential. Objective. Scientific. Hard facts. Details.“Be for what is.” The other half sees connectedness. Intuition is a direct result. Horizontal. Chaotic. Subjective. Relevant. Relationships. Big picture.“Recognize the pattern.” Intuition […]
The Future of Radio Ten years ago, Eric Rhoads asked me to appear on the cover of Radio Ink in a suit of armor. Since Eric is one of my closest friends and a major supporter of Wizard Academy, I agreed to do it for him. Since 1998, my Wizard of Ads column has appeared […]
Ancient Greeks and Turning Fifty Socrates was right, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Most of us have moments when we ask, “Am I happy? Is this what I want to do? Am I making a difference? Would I be missed if I were gone?” Introspection is like medicine. It’s beneficial in small doses […]
Contemplation Twenty-five years ago, my friend Richard Exley read me some words I've never forgotten.Here they are: If I had my life to live over, I’d try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been on this trip. I would be crazier. […]
Teddy Roosevelt's Daughter “What will he write of us, Cissy, this young man who has taken it upon himself to tell our stories?” “I’m not a mind reader, Alice.” “He never met us. He didn’t know us. He has seen us only through the lens of books he little more than scanned.” “He will write […]
Buried Treasure 2008 is shaping up to be an unhappy year for most product and service categories. If your year-to-date numbers are trending ahead of 2007, I salute you. Today’s Monday Morning Memo is for the remaining 96 percent of American business owners. Here’s what I want you to do: 1. Write in a vertical […]
Where is Your Blind Spot? Answer: If you knew, it wouldn't be a blind spot. Accelerate the performance of your business in 2008. Find your blind spot and fix it. There are 7 common blind spots with 4 common causes. The most common blind spots have to do with… 1. customer profiling. What traits do […]
2008: Year of the Beagle Courage… Curiosity… Intuition. In the biggest news since Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a beagle has taken top honors at Westminster for the first time in history. Arooo! Aroo-Aroooooo! In the happy little village where I spend a lot of time, beagles are the symbol of curiosity and intuition, […]
7 Step Secret of Success How to Get Where You Want to Go 1. See your destination in your mind. “When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”– White Rabbit 2. Start walking. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu (604 BC – […]
Once Upon a Time I was freshly married to Pennie and barely old enough to see over the dash of a car but I wanted to show her the magical places of my childhood, so we saved up enough money for 3 tanks of gas and made the 200-mile drive from Broken Arrow to Ardmore, […]
Clarity is the New Creativity In the language of academics: The central executive of working memory is the new battleground for marketers. Writers are successfully surprising Broca, thereby gaining the momentary attention of the public, but an absence of salience remains. In the language of newscasters:Are your ads gaining the attention of the public but […]
Hello and Goodbyefrom John and Jane Doe January 28, 2008 John and Jane Doe4321 Happily Thereafter Ave.Everytown, USA To the Companies Who Want Our Money, Yesterday’s selling techniques aren’t working so good. Have you noticed? We’re betting that your traffic has been trending downward for the past few months. Are we right? (If we’re wrong, […]
2008: Year of Transition In January of 2004 I launched a public presentation: Society’s 40-year Pendulum. Audiences from Stockholm to Sydney to Vancouver to Myrtle Beach will recall my statement, “2003 was the first year in a 6-year transition from the Idealist perspective to the Civic.” 2008 will be the sixth and final year of […]
The Glass Ceiling Every business that tries to rise to its full height will bump its head on a glass ceiling they didn’t realize was there. That glass ceiling is created by the business owner’s core beliefs about the customer. Traditionally, 5 out of 10 customers will be in transactional shopping mode. The other 5 […]
2008 Business Forecast from high atop Wizard's Tower America split into 3 camps last year.Those camps came sharply into focus at Christmas. 1. The Hunker-Down crowd cut back their purchases, uneasy about dwindling dollars and rising debt. Traffic in non-discount retail stores was sluggish as a result. 2. The Full-Speed-Ahead crowd did business as usual. […]
Gravity of the Edge Whether it exists in the public consciousness or only in my mind, I can't be sure, but there’s an anxiousness about 2008 that gives me pause. We seem to be pushing our way to the edge. Presidency, economy, war. What will happen? I take a breath and close my eyes and […]
Actions Speak Louder Than I’m a big believer in the power of words. But when words aren’t backed by corresponding actions, talk is cheap. Have you ever felt a disconnection between what a company promised you in their ads and what they actually delivered? I carry a list of companies in my head called the […]
Time and Chance. Concorde was a child of the 60s. Flying 11 miles above the earth at twice the speed of sound, this jet was literally faster than a rifle bullet. London to New York in 2 hours and 53 minutes. The Concorde isn’t flown anymore. During a routine take-off in July, 2000, Concorde blew […]
Danger Signals: Sounds of Circling the Drain These are the noises companies makeas they’re going down the tubes: 1. “Our only problem is traffic.”Slow traffic is a symptom, not a disease. Look for its cause. WHY is traffic slow? Is it because the public doesn’t know about you, or is it because they do? Is […]
Thrive in a Recession. How to. Some people say a recession is coming. Others say it’s already here. Experts say the best way to start a recession is to predict one’s on the way. So hey, I’m not predicting a recession, okay? REMEMBER! If a recession sneaks up on us in 2008, do NOT blame […]
Wrong Turn Taken on the Straight and Narrow by Roy H. Williams In the Land of the Way Things Ought to BeI’m handsome and wealthy and strong and free.But in the Land of the Way Things Really AreI’m struggling and awkward, a bit bizarre. I threw a party, invited my friendsFrom the Land of the […]
American Indian Eloquence reprinted from Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads (2001) America’s Thanksgiving holiday originated when the Pilgrims gave thanks to God for sending them an Indian friend named Squanto. This much you already knew. What you didn’t know is that long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, this same Squanto […]
A Tour of Tigers TIGER ONE: Are you trying to Grow a business, Build a career, Overcome an obstacle? “Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.” – Joan Wallach Scott Ferocity is a wondrous tool. STOP. Read no further1. if you are proud of […]
Ronald, Bill and You I thought Bill Clinton was a good president for the same reason I thought Ronald Reagan was good; both were excellent head cheerleaders. Their politics, personalities and characters were different, but each had a similar ability to keep things from spinning out of control. Every organization has a head cheerleader.Their business […]
Tomorrow Has Come. When The Cluetrain Manifesto was published in 1999, it smacked of silly futurism, like Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone and Dick Tracey’s TV-wristwatch. Both of which are now possible. Likewise, the societal shift predicted by The Cluetrain is already happening. Can you feel it? Here’s a look at a few of the 95 Theses […]
Is Yours a Brand or a Bland? Procedural Memory is the key to your brand being automatically remembered.Accomplish this through Relevance x Repetition. Symbolic Thought is how to make a brand meaningful.Access this by linking the unknown to the known. Particle Conflict is the way to make a brand interesting.Achieve this by adding an element […]
“I’m a surfer,” she said as she extended her hand. It almost broke my heart. Her husband had moved her into a tiny fixer-upper on the tear-stained cheek of an Oklahoma town. With a young child dangling from each of her arms and a third one on the way, she needed us to see her […]
Do You Lean Toward Niche Marketing? Think too deeply about customer profiling and you’ll soon fall into niche marketing. And the problem with niches is they’re not created equal. Have you chosen a niche too small? Reis and Trout inadvertently popularized niches in their extraordinary 1981 book, Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind. That book […]
Can You Make It Talk? People are more interesting than non people. Mingle a bit of wood, paint and cloth, then drench the pile in sparkling imagination and a new person leaps onto the stage. Few techniques in communication are as powerful – or as often overlooked – as personification: ascribing human characteristics to inanimate […]
Seeing Yourself Real Paper Roses Have No Fragrance Most of us are out of balance and suffering for it. We’re either too pragmatic or too romantic. The pragmatist never stops to smell the roses. “What’s the use? Just get the job done, move onward and upward. Winners never quit and quitters never win.” The romantic […]
An Extremely Very Good Book At first glance it would appear that Vince Poscente and I stand for exactly opposite things. Vince is all about speed. His mantra seems to be, “You don’t have to choose; you can have it all. And you don’t have to wait, you can have it now.” Yes, at first […]
The Monster Under My Bed I learned last week why I’m no good at making small talk. The realization blew my mind. Pennie and I were sitting in the sun room looking at our computers when she asked, “Did you get the email from Janet?” “Yes.” “Should I answer it or will you?” “You, please. […]
Making the Big Money A check arrives in my office and a one-day meeting is scheduled. The business owner arrives on the appointed day. This is going to be tough. It always is. To earn my money, I must take the client through 5 steps that are easy to understand but hard to do. This […]
“When Death snatches your friend you walk into the darkness a little, calling his name, waiting to hear his voice in answer. It is a lonely and quiet time.” – Roy H. Williams, October 29, 2011, 5 days after the death of Woody Justice 2007: I’m sitting in the grand ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental […]
A Conversation Between Friends Are You Willing to Look Inside Yourself, Friend? Do you ever ask yourself hard-to-answer questions like, “What am I trying to make happen?” “How will I measure success?” “What is holding me back?” Rarely do we question our own objectives. Even more rarely do we question our emotions. People whose feelings […]
Ready. Angle. Frame. Advertising begins only after you win the attention of your target, a difficult thing to do in this overcommunicated world. May I suggest you do it like the Great Ones? When you’re ready to tell your story, choose an angle of approach. Then frame the scene. Decide what to include, what to […]
Do Good Ideas Always Work? The mind is full of clever ideas. But few of them will actually work. My friend John Young says, “A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. A wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake […]
What Courage Can Do With Six Dollars Brad Lawrence has been a client of my firm for 12 years. During that time, he’s grown his business beyond all expectations. Mostly because he’s got guts. Recently, Brad was looking at a sort of charm bracelet for his jewelry store. He could buy the base bracelets for […]
non sequitur When I was in high school, it was considered a big deal if you could control a steel ball under a piece of glass with a couple of buttons that flipped little flippers. The steel ball would bounce from side to side and bells would ring and lights would light up. I could […]
Why Most Ads Don't Work I’ve said many times, “Most ads aren’t written to persuade, they’re written not to offend.” This goes back to chapter one, “Nine Secret Words” in my first book, The Wizard of Ads. Do you remember the nine secret words? “The Risk of Insult is the Price of Clarity.” Clarity. Ah, […]
M=12 12 I wish I could remember who gave me the book by Howard Rheingold: They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases. (Sigh.) If you ever give me a book, please write me a note in the front of it so I don’t sit scratching my head […]
Wisdom of Women I had the great good fortune to be raised by a single mother who was in extremely difficult circumstances: she had no education, no money, and received no monthly child support checks. And these were the June Cleaver/Leave It To Beaver years when it was socially unacceptable to be a “divorcée.” I […]
Accelerated Branding Why do some brands connect when others don’t? Where should you begin when building a brand from scratch? How does an old brand become new again? It's just like in the movies. Have you ever bonded with a character in a television series or a movie? That character’s attitude, values, quirks and characteristics […]
How to Make Your Ads Sparkle Ninety-nine percent of all ads fail to sparkle for the same reason that most diamonds are dull: They’re overweight. A perfectly edited ad will shoot points of light across the darkness like a perfectly cut diamond. But rare is the diamond that's cut for maximum brilliance, even though it's […]
How to Succeed as a Consultant Step 1: Become extremely good at something. Anything.“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.” – from the book of Proverbs, chapter 22 Step 2: Push beyond the boundaries of what’s known.Investigate the unknown. Speculate. Theorize. […]
How Art Touches the Heart How is it that you and I interpret art the same way? We agree that the musical score to Star Wars feels adventurous and triumphant. But what within the music tells us so? And there’s something about slow music in a minor key that seems sad. Don’t you agree? Firelight […]
Are Your Ads Getting Enough Complaints? Part Three in a Three Part Series When an ad campaign is producing big results, there will usually be complaints from the public. When an ad campaign is getting poor results, the public rarely complains. What makes people hate an ad? 1. It’s hard to ignore.Any ad that makes […]
10 Ways Retail is Changing Part Two in a Three Part Series 1. Hidden Profit Centers are the new MarkupLow-cost providers such as Sam’s Club and Best Buy are selling “in-store exchange” policies at the cash register to supplement the manufacturer’s warranties they don’t honor. In other words, you can’t take a faulty purchase back […]
How Retail is Changing Part One in a Three Part Series The old assumption in advertising was that the customer didn't know, and wouldn't know unless you told them. This is no longer a valid assumption. Today's customer enjoys access to information far beyond what any of us saw coming. You're aware of how quickly […]
The Media Is Not the Message “I'm in the furniture business. Which media should I use?” “I'd like to target people who are afraid of the dentist. Can you recommend a good mailing list company?” “My uncle uses television ads to attract new customers and they work really well for him. Television ads have made […]
What's Holding Your Business Back? If I were to ask you what's limiting your growth, you'd likely tell me, “Traffic. If we had more traffic, we'd make more sales. What we need is more traffic.” But traffic is rarely the problem. It's simply the byproduct of a problem you haven't been able to see. These […]
The Women In Our Lives I owe my optimism to my mother, a single parent whose ironclad confidence kept my sister and I from ever suspecting how poor we really were. We felt like Mom could do anything. She made us feel like everything was going to be okay. And amazingly, it was. I owe […]
What Makes Jack a Dull Boy? Filippo Beccari is an Italian dance teacher a long way from home. Hoping to enrich the lives of 62 orphans, he visits the orphans daily and encourages them to move to the music as he hums or plays. The year is 1773. Three years later Paul Revere rides through […]
Drifting, Surfing, Drowning and Sailing In Puddles, Swamps, Wells and Oceans About 10 months ago Mike Metzger flew from Clapham Institute in Annapolis to spend a day with us in Austin. “You meet 4 kinds of people on the ocean of life,” Mike said. “Those who drift just go with the flow. The wind and […]
When Knowledge Isn't Enough Looking to make a change? Remember: transformation happens experientially, not intellectually. We often receive instruction and agree, “I see what you're saying,” but seldom do we actually do the thing we learned. We just agree with it in our minds. This is a problem. Daniel J. Boorstin said, “The greatest obstacle […]
Money and Art A Wizard Academy Field Trip She judged us one-by-one as we entered the building. Chin held high, she looked down the ridgeline of her nose like she was sighting along the barrel of a gun. A quiet sniff let us know she did not approve. I hope to God she doesn't know […]
Do Your Words Make Music? Let's Look at Magnetic Meter Modern schools teach Journalism and Creative Writing. Study Journalism and you'll write ads that are informative. Study Creative Writing and you'll write ads that entertain. But neither is likely to persuade. Only one school of writing always1. introduces a new perspective,2. causes readers to feel […]
The Faded Color of Empty Words Advertising isn't working like it did a few years ago. You've noticed this, right? Most advertisers are convinced that technology is to blame. TV advertisers will tell you that TiVo and her sister Digital Video Recorders are blocking their television ads. But according to a recent report released by […]
10 Unusual Ways to Advertise Are you a one-person company with a lunch-money ad budget? Good News: Time and money are interchangeable. You can always save one by spending more of the other. When money is tight, spend time.(If you don't have any money AND you don't have any time, then you're spending your time […]
Will You Embarrass Yourself? Are you anxious to look foolish in front of others? Will you happily submit yourself to ridicule? Are you willing to do a thing badly until you've learned to do it well? Probably not, unless you're the one in five hundred who has what it takes to succeed. “Only those who […]
Be For What Is My friend and fellow Worthless Bastard Brett Feinstein occasionally quotes his business partner, Jamie, as saying, “Be for what is.” I think I understand what Jamie is saying. There are basically two ways of seeing:1. the way things ought to be.2. the way things are. Do you find yourself moaning about […]
Language of Shadow and Silence Silence is a language of context. White space is silence in print ads.Visual saturation is its opposite. Shadow is another language of context. Silence is seen and shadows are heard in the dim-light quiet of the printed word: We had come home. We had discussed whether to go out for […]
Thought Particles On Broadway You're deeply unhappy with the way things are, but you're not quite sure what to change or who to blame. Depression is the name we give to unfocused anger. Grief is the name we give to Anger + Sorrow.Cruelty is the name given to Anger + Joy.And Envy is Anger + […]
Peter Pan and Superman Glance at the headline above and you think, “Imaginary characters.” Add angels to that list and the category will blur to “Characters who do good” if you're a believer in angels, but will remain unchanged if you consider them to be imaginary. Change it to read “Peter Pan, Superman, Angels and […]
Symbolic Thought: the Secret to Selling As we learned in last week's memo, a person can't imagine a personal future without assembling it from stored memories of their past. This means your customer will better understand the new and different when you relate it to the old and familiar. To do this, you must employ […]
How to Create a Different Future We do not remember days. We remember moments. The secret to creating a different future is to remember a different past. Literally. What do you remember about your past? Do you remember the pain? The frustration? The injustice? Unless you want to live these things again, you need to […]
Method or Madness? Sorting my email, I came upon a survey sent to me by an acquaintance: I'm about to change the name of my company from The Success Clinic to something else, and I need your help to find the best name. Which of these do you like best? ____ Academy of Success and […]
A Memory of Life I still don't know his last name. Gille arrived from Michigan in a small jar with his photograph on the lid. His friend had sent an email to Chapel Dulcinea asking if we'd be willing to launch some of Gille's ashes into the breeze that always blows there. We replied we'd […]
I Am Sleep When Too Bigwedges into a head too small,When Too Hardcrowds into a life too soft,When Too Muchhas happened to make sense of it all,I am Sleep. Let me do my work. – Roy H. Williams Have you ever been confronted with an idea Too Big, a circumstance Too Hard, or a series […]
Souls of Cities I've created ads for local businesses from coast to coast for nearly a quarter century and I've studied the population of every place for which I've written ads; more than 100 towns in all. And I've presented seminars in an additional 92. That's a lot of travel. And I've noticed that cities […]
Why We Buy Happiness rarely triggers commerce. Unhappiness often does. Purchases are triggered by dissatisfaction with the way things are. We purchase when we have a need, a desire, an itch to scratch. We want to change our condition, our surroundings, our state of mind. We buy because we are dissatisfied. And this dissatisfaction is […]
Revealing the Vivid Unexpected Part One: The Secret of Saying Too Little Suffice it to say that last week's memo had precisely the effect I had anticipated. We'll speak no more about it. I will not dissect my own writing like a formaldehyde frog in the dim light of your monitor. But I will, for […]
Standing at your bedside, I don’t know if you’re dead or only sleeping. Soon our friends will lay pennies on your eyes to pay Charon for your passage. A silly ritual, our friends will do it anyway. But you were dead long before you died. Something caused life to shrivel in you, bloodless and […]
Your Customer and You Your prospective customer has questions about you. Where's the first place they're likely to look for answers? Sadly, your wonderful “Big enough to serve you, small enough to know you” public image probably isn't going to be enough to walk that customer out to their car and drive them to your […]
Because It Needed to Exist “Savannah's squares may be public, but they feel private. Their massive, gnarled oaks – dripping with Spanish moss – create an insular mood, not to mention a deep shade… So lazy and calming are these ancient parcels that they act as a narcotic. The temptation is to lose yourself in […]
Irrational Commitment or, Why Did Wizard Academy Build a Free Wedding Chapel? Irrational commitment is a powerful thing. It is the stuff of heroes. Legends live because of it. And like anything powerful, it can be turned toward darkness. But let us look toward the light. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) made a fascinating observation during the […]
What's with the Name Wizard Academy? Are You Guys a Cult, or What? Sigh… We get asked that question a lot. No, we don't have anything to do with witches, warlocks, séances, Harry Potter or Halloween. We're simply a school of the communication arts. Our mission is to improve the creative thinking and communication skills […]
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