The Gift of 500 Years It was Christmas Eve, 1513. In just two more years, 78 year-old architect Giovanni Giocondo would be dead, having filled Europe with magnificent buildings and bridges that continue to stand unweathered in the year 2005. During that night he wrote a note to his friend, Allagia Aldobrandeschi. The note, like […]
Before You Begin Writing Those Ads… Which do you think would work better, the brilliant execution of a flawed strategy, or the flawed execution of a brilliant one? In business, it's the flawed execution of a brilliant strategy that usually wins the day. Most advertising professionals are unwilling to question a client's strategy because they're […]
Thoughts to Think In the New Year “You've heard that before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes? This is true. It's called living.” I'd love to take credit for that line, but I lifted it from an obscure novel by Terry Pratchett. It's one of the 716 random quotes that magically appear, […]
Success Through Discontent Success is conceived in the womb of the mind the moment you look around and say, “I don't belong here. These are not my people.” And it is born when you cogently express – to yourself and to the world – who you really are. So who are you, really, and how […]
At The Heart of Romance From Claude Monet's impressionistic portrait of his wife and son, to Sue Monk Kidd's tender book, The Secret Life of Bees, to the nosecones of bombers and the biceps of bikers, to the garish and awkward Miss America pageant, we continue to project the feminine ideal onto whatever canvas we […]
MIT Study Proves Us Right! I've been telling you (March 25, 2002) and telling you (Feb. 10, 2003) that:1. transactional customers are bargain hunters, and2. brands are built on relational customers, and3. the split between transactional and relational shoppers in most product categories is roughly 50/50, and4. the key to successful advertising and profitable face-to-face […]
Steppe Beyond Time The steppe is a belt of grassland extending 5,000 miles from European Hungary through Ukraine across Central Asia to reach its end in Chinese Manchuria. Mountain ranges divide the steppe into distinct segments but horsemen cross such barriers with ease, so steppe riders have wandered the grass belt since before the days […]
Courageous and Smart Keep Your Eye on Rushkoff and Pitts Leonard Pitts tackles ticklish topics with reckless audacity and elegant grace. Three years ago I said to Princess Pennie, “This guy is one of America's greatest living writers. Sooner or later he's going to become a very big name.” That was on July 12, 2001. […]
Marketing Without Media Hear no Advertising. See no Advertising. Speak no Advertising. I think we've had our fill of ads. And by “we,” I mean the entire population of the twenty-first century. That's a dangerous and controversial statement coming from a man known as The Wizard of Ads, wouldn't you say? My staff and I […]
Hit Machine They had more #1 records than the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley combined. And you've probably never heard of them. The Funk Brothers were 13 ragamuffin musicians who laid down the signature keyboard blitzes, guitar riffs, bass lines and drum licks on virtually every Motown hit from 1959 […]
Buckle Up for 2005 Wow. I just spent 37 minutes previewing a Sunpop video soon to be released by Wizard Academy Press. Selling Customers Their Way features my partner Jeffrey Eisenberg with psychologist Dr. Richard D. Grant in an amazing discussion about high-level, face-to-face selling. Awesome stuff. But alas, that DVD is not yet available […]
Marketing in 2005 and Beyond The Age of The Baby Boomer ended in 2003. The torch has been handed to a new generation with new ideas and values. Sure, we Boomers still hold the power at the top, but the prevailing worldview that drives our nation is completely other than the one we grew up […]
Deconstructing a Great Ad Transactional and Relational are the two styles of selling and the two modes of buying. Customers in Transactional mode are concerned only with today’s transaction. They enjoy the process of shopping, comparing, and negotiating. Their only fear is paying more than they had to pay. Relational customers don’t relish the […]
New Definition: Deconstruction Gosh. I've been using the word “deconstruction” incorrectly and words are important to me. Sunday, Oct 10, 2004 – A New York Times story reporting the death of Jacques Derrida is headlined, “Celebrated Philosopher Created Deconstructionism.” Since deconstruction is a word I often use to describe my method of research, I was […]
Keep the Cheese Have you ever been in a place and wanted out of it? A place in your life I mean? A time when you decided, “You can keep the cheese, just let me out of the trap?” Being out of the trap is good. In 1977 David Allen Coe wrote a song about […]
The New Selling Ask a roomful of people to give you all the words they associate with “salesman” and they will immediately say, “pushy, manipulative, slick, self-serving, phony,” and a list of other things no mother wants her child to be. Ask that same roomful of people to list all the attributes of the perfect […]
Two Worlds A couple of weeks ago I wrote to you about differing perceptions of time, Chaotic, Linear, and Cyclical, and closed by saying, “There is a fourth perception of time that's shared by all of us; the time of the mind, imaginary time, moving forward and backward in memory. But this I will leave […]
Scent Memory A lot of people have been telling me lately that they remember hearing or reading somewhere “that our sense of smell is the easiest of our senses to recall.” This is most likely due to the new TV ad for Red Zone deodorant that begins with the words, “Scent is the strongest sense […]
Our Perceptions of Time How do you see time? Do you see it as:1. Chaotic – things happen randomly; history has no path?2. Linear – history has a path and it is straight and fixed?3. Cyclical – that which has been will be again, because history's path keeps circling? 1. Those who see time as […]
In a Box in the Closet… Thelma Toole believed in the talent of her son, though no one else could see it. And as mothers are wont to do, she pestered important people to take a look at 'the marvelous thing' her darling baby boy had written. She was systematically ignored, brushed off, and swept […]
Doing Well vs. Doing Good Donald Trump has been doing well all his life. But Agnes Bojaxhiu spent her life doing good. Born in Skopje, Macedonia in 1910, Agnes was 21 when she began teaching school in a bad part of town. Looking outside her door each day, Agnes saw such pain and despair that […]
A Window to the Future When I presented my latest research to a theater full of businesspeople and advertising professionals in Stockholm, Sweden, a number of them immediately bought plane tickets to cross the Atlantic for the full Wizard Academy experience. (To meet a few of these people in a short video, click here.) A […]
The Great Ad Myth Ads are like houses. You can do a good job constructing a badly designed house, but when you're through, you've still got a badly designed house. It doesn't matter how good you are with a hammer and a saw when the blueprints themselves are faulty. Likewise, it doesn't matter how good […]
When Will My Ads Start Working? The length of the “ramping up period” an ad campaign will require before you begin to see results is determined by the following factors, listed in descending order of their importance: Product Purchase Cycle Share of Voice Impact Quotient of message Media delivery vehicle Product Purchase Cycle: How often […]
Happiness is… Let's begin by defining what happiness is not. Pleasure, fleeting pleasure, is not happiness. Likewise, momentary joy isn't happiness either. For “happy,” Webster gives us three meanings: notably fitting, effective, or well adapted. favored by luck or fortune. enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment. I believe definitions two and three stem directly […]
When a Customer Asks "How Much?" Generally speaking, it's best to establish the value of a thing before you name its price. But when a customer asks, “How much?” they want to hear a number. To precede that number with a probing question or a qualifying statement is always a mistake. Honor your customer and […]
Socioquake Pennie and I were eating breakfast in Sydney, Australia, with our partnersCraig and Angela Arthur (photo above) when Ange began singing, “We're happy little Vegemites, as bright as bright can be. We all enjoy our Vegemite for breakfast, lunch and tea. Our Mummies say we're growing stronger every single week, because we love our […]
Da Vinci Code Revisited The success of The Da Vinci Code has triggered new interest in the sacred feminine. No, I'm not endorsing Dan Brown's tiresome view of the sacred feminine being preserved through earth-rituals involving the deification of Gaia, Mother Earth, Mother Nature, paganism, Wicca, druidism, etc. The true concept of the sacred feminine, […]
Magnetic Power of the Mental Image I recently wrote a Monday Morning Memo called Just a Regular Guy about how Chuck Wepner's fight against Muhammad Ali provided the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone to peck out the screenplay of Rocky, a low-budget film that, against all odds, won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture in […]
Just Over the Horizon The horizon is an imaginary line that recedes as you approach it. Happiness is like that for some people. Are you one of them? Do you think of happiness as being out there for you “someday, maybe, as soon as…?” As a young man, I decided not to buy into the […]
Just a Regular Guy As a boxer, Chuck Wepner earned the nickname “The Bayonne Bleeder” because of the punishment he took even while winning. Tom Donelson of Inside Boxing writes of him, “Wepner was what one would call 'a catcher', a fighter who often used his head to block the other guy's punches – not […]
The Feel of Real In her 1991 book, The Popcorn Report, Faith Popcorn wrote of a trend called Fantasy Adventure: “What is Fantasy Adventure exactly? It's vicarious escape through consumerism, catharsis through consumption. It's a momentary, wild-and-crazy retreat from the world into an exotic flavor, a 'foreign' experience, some product-assisted derring-do of the imagination.” Soon […]
The New Branding Most branding campaigns are costumes worn by advertisers to the Media Masquerade Ball. They were the hot ticket during the pretentious Baby Boomer years when blue ribbons were awarded to those with best costumes, but look around and you'll see that we're moving into an era of transparency. The only thing offensive […]
Media's Missing Mass Back in the days when every teenage boy dreamed of outrunning a police cruiser, the wisdom handed down from aging speedsters was, “Remember son, you can't outrun them radios.” The fact that policemen were constantly connected by 2-way radios was mind-boggling to us. When we wanted to contact someone, we had to […]
The Future of Advertising An Open Letter to Advertisers from The Wizard of Ads Google tells me it was the often-quoted Greek orator, Anonymous, who first said, “The only thing constant is change.” Though I agree that change is ever with us, it cannot be said that it's truly “constant,” for such a word would […]
The Value of Misfits Next week I'm going to write about The Future of Advertising, I promise. (I'm aware that many of you endure my odd wanderings into the Forest of Contemplation only because you know that I will sooner or later return to deliver a valuable insight into advertising – the subject for which […]
Family Values vs. Business Values Since most arguments result from a lack of definition of terms, let me define for you what I mean by “family values versus business values”: Unconditional acceptance and equality are family values. Performance-based acceptance and chain-of-command are business values. Build a business on family values and you'll have extremely happy […]
Stagolee Shot Billy and Bojangles Danced The song “Stagolee” has been wailed by Fats Domino, Wilson Pickett and the great James Brown. Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Huey Lewis and the Grateful Dead have all taken turns as well. Strangely, the story is true. It happened in 1895 in the red-light district of St. Louis when […]
Shoestring Marketing for the One Man Band A wonderful tribe of strange visionaries who threw caution to the wind, flinging themselves into an economic unknown, created our American economy. I speak of the brave individuals who started their own businesses on a shoestring and a prayer. Although their ideas were often untested and they rarely […]
Roy's Bizarre Theory of Books When one of my business partners,Michele Miller, mentioned that she'd just read a good book about writing called Bird by Bird, I quietly found the title at amazon.com and clicked the button that would rocket a copy toward me. The book arrived just as I sat down to write this […]
Languages of the Eye In chapter 6 of Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads I quote professor Neil Postman as saying, “What we think of as 'reasoning' is determined by the character of our language. To reason in Japanese is not the same thing as to reason in English or Italian or German. To […]
Prisoner of Shadows Do you have plans and dreams “but now is not a good time” to get started on them? Are your hands and feet bound by memories of yesterday and fears of tomorrow? Have you been living as a prisoner of shadows? NEWS FLASH: There never will be a good time. Procrastination is […]
Surface, Motive, Essence Everything in life can be evaluated in 3 ways: 1. by Surface2. by Motive3. by Essence Surface tells us what a thing is. Or it lets us know what has happened. We see Surface with perfect clarity. But does it tell the whole truth? Why a thing is – or why an […]
Name Recognition isn't Branding “Getting your name out” isn't worth much when there's no mental image attached to your name. Unaided recall and top-of-mind awareness are excellent ways to measure name recognition, but they don't tell you anything about the strength of a brand. York, Lennox, Rheem, RUUD, Carrier, Bryant, Trane, Armstrong, Friedrich and Fedders […]
Business Model No. 4: Path Dominance Inventory Management, Proprietary Product, and Custom are the first 3 business models. The last, number 4, is Path Dominance. Like water, Path Dominance silently follows the path of least resistance, going to where there is no competition and then winning by default. Path Dominance allows its proponents to sell […]
Business Models No. 2 and 3 When I wrote to you recently about the business model I call “Inventory Management,” I mentioned that it was just 1 of the 4 universally successful business models. Having now received 527 emails asking about the other 3 business models, I've decided to illuminate 2 of them for you […]
We Are Sancho Panza A Happy Message from the Gospel of Don Who can explain our four-century attraction to Don Quixote? The book is hard reading and dull, full of inconsistencies, and confusing. A little like the Bible. And yet Don Quixote is the second most widely-read book on earth; second only to, yes, the […]
Gift of a Jew 1933: America is drowning in the depths of the Great Depression when Max Gaines loses his job as a novelties salesman and is forced to move into his mother's house with his wife and two small children. As he lays his battered suitcase on his boyhood bed, the radio informs Max […]
It Ain't Always the Ads that Do It We Americans enjoy intensely romantic dates and wonderfully lavish weddings, don't we? It's the American way – hot and breathless, dripping with anticipation. And we have the world's highest divorce rate. This, too, seems to be the American way. We value the chasing more than the having, […]
Convergence: Alan, Herbert, and Harry 1887: Alan Alexander is a 5 year-old boy in England and Herbert Wells is his teacher. Harry Colebourn will be born this year, not many miles away. Although Alan and Harry will both live to become old and gray, the two will never meet. 1893: Herbert Wells is extremely proud […]
Duality “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.” – Stanislaw Lec We've said it in a thousand different ways for a thousand different years. Isaac Newton said it famously: “For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.” In the movie Unbreakable, Samuel L. Jackson said it theatrically: “Now that […]
Shock and Awe Do you remember watching what appeared to be Fourth of July fireworks as newscasters kept repeating, “This is the shock and awe part of the invasion. This is shock and awe?” Do you remember how the Iraqis seemed to be neither shocked nor awed? Watching as they drove their cars calmly through […]
The Look of 2004 It appears that 2004 will be the year that the new Wizard Academy campus will be built. Princess Pennie and I are currently choosing between 3 pieces of property – each with a spectacular view – and the smallest is 21 acres. Construction will begin as soon as we purchase the […]
The Confusion of Nemo Chapman Nemo Chapman was a teenager devoted to the South De Kalb County YMCA, “a guy down on one knee helping out a little kid, or with kids just hanging around his neck, following him everywhere he went.” When Nemo was presented with the award for Outstanding Camp Counselor, the kids […]
The Death of Hype Fourteen weeks ago I wrote you a memo that said, “The bad news is that it's going to get harder and harder to make ads work. The good news is that advertisers are going to have to become a lot more honest. The generation that will soon control the world is […]
Art Marketing Don't be confused by the title; we're not talking about “the Art of Marketing” today. We're talking about the marketing of art. Last week I wrote to you about ritual, one of the languages in Symbolic thought. Shape, color, surface and emblem are languages in Symbolic thought as well, as is the language […]
The Language of Ritual According to cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Ricardo Gattass, the 4 kinds of thought are Verbal, Abstract, Analytical and Symbolic. I believe Ritual to be one of the most powerful languages of Symbolic thought. Like myself, you probably grew up rejecting conformity with every ounce of your being. It's the mark of every […]
What's Your Story? Do you remember the pivotal moment when your foot first felt the path you walk? My moment came when Charlie Myers grasped my hand, slapped a ten-dollar bill into it and said, “I think it's a great idea and I want to help. Do it.” Then someone called his name from the […]
1963 All Over Again December, 2003: We're about to finish 1963 for the second time. Forty years is how long a true “generation” stays in power, during which time social change will be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. But in the waning years of each generation, “alpha voices” ring out as prophets in the wilderness, providing […]
Soul Searching “Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.” – David Farland “When a stupid […]
Princess Pennie anxiously studied the program as I looked over her shoulder. “Maybe a page fell out,” I said, “maybe our names were on a page that fell out.” “No,” she answered slowly, “it's alphabetical. This is the page our names would've been on.” I reached down once more to feel the little gold buckle […]
Your Seat in the Stadium of Life Regardless of how many people suggest that you start thinking “outside the box,” it cannot in truth be done. As long as you are living within your skin, you will always be in a box. Your box is your perspective, your worldview, your schema – the sum of […]
Swimming in an Ocean of Robots “Every man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.“– Mark Twain “The dissenter is every human at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.“– Archibald MacLeish “In every generation there has to be some fool who […]
Japanese Sunshine As Japan rose from the rubble of a devastating world war, Masaru Ibuka and his partner opened a repair shop among the broken fragments that once were Tokyo. They called their shop “Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo” and said its purpose would be “To do what others have not done.” In the years to come, […]
The Making of a Brand Rugged, strong and self-assured, John Wayne embodied the values that American males held dear in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. In his footsteps followed Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry,) Bruce Willis (Die Hard,) and now Keanu Reeves (The Matrix.) But America didn't love John Wayne. We didn't know John Wayne. We […]
Me and My Man Morris Do you know your company's percentage of unaided recall? In other words, what percentage of your prospective customers will think of you as a possible option when your business category is named? If less than 10 percent of your prospective customers will think of you as a possible option then […]
Eisuke's Little Girl Eisuke had a university degree in economics and another in mathematics, but his true love was his music. His wife, Isoko, was the granddaughter of Zenjiro Yasuda, the founder of the Yasuda Bank and one of the world's richest men. Zenjiro Yasuda had amassed a personal fortune of more than one billion […]
Remove Your Limiting Factor The majority of business owners say they believe in “customer service,” “service after the sale,” and “exceeding the customer's expectations.” But how many of them actually do it? Your company has a mission statement. But what are the odds that your customers could pick it out from among a dozen randomly-selected […]
Point of the Curve You've met people who stayed ahead of the curve. Perhaps you live at the curve's edge yourself – always the first to try a new thing and then the first to move on. You've also met people who drag along at the tail of the curve – always falling into step […]
Not Enough Customers? Low store traffic is only a symptom, not the disease. And if advertising could always cure the disease, then advertising would always increase traffic. But advertising doesn't always work. The traditional excuse is, “We must be reaching the wrong people.” But I've never met any wrong people, have you? Which brings us […]
Secret Hiding Place Inept at almost everything, Little Elias was ridiculed and scorned by his father virtually every day. His only place to hide was in the secret world of his mind – a place of imaginary friends too wonderful to describe. During the summer of 1918, 16 year-old Elias lied about his age to […]
New York City, 1886: As dock workers uncrated the Statue of Liberty, Richard Sears was busy launching the company that would create catalog shopping in America, John Pemberton was mixing his first batch of Coca-Cola, and Gottlieb Daimler was tightening the last bolt on the world's first automobile. But according to Manufacturer and Builder, the […]
“The bullet that caught me in the left arm had made me think. Supposing it had been my right arm and I carried my gun that side, I'd not have been able to use it. As soon as we got back to Canton I got me a second gun, another Smith and Wesson revolver, and […]
Ever wonder how some people can love an ad that you hate with a purple passion? Even the best ads miss the mark by a mile with at least half their target audience. Ads are like music; a distinctive style and message that repulses some listeners will attract others like bees to honey. These are […]
Voices of the Great Ones Click the image to hear other voices “World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and […]
“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long […]
You're at a conference table half a century ago with Zora Arkus-Duntov. He's looking for a name for Chevy's sexy new sports car. Someone says “How about Corvette Stingray?” Zora says, “I like it.” Any chance of that happening today? I think not. These days someone would likely suggest that someone be brought in like […]
Tom was sent to prison for rustling cattle, poaching, extortion, robbery and attempted murder. But Tom was sneaky enough to escape from prison. Not once, but twice. Such a rascal was he that when the government began pardoning whole cellblocks full of prisoners due to overcrowding, Tom was specifically excluded by name. At age 16, […]
The ratio of extraverts to introverts in our nation is 50.5 to 49.5 percent. So why do sales trainers assume that every customer is extraverted? Extraverts like to engage you verbally, believing that dialog produces superior thinking. Consequently, the best way to keep an extravert thinking about your product is to continue talking with them […]
The business world consists of little islands in oceans of economy. Cities and regions are the islands, where merchants are affected by every layoff and expansion of a major employer. Nations are the oceans, barely navigable tides of inexorable forces. Today we examine those oceans. According to the July 17 edition of The Economist, Europe […]
We remember John Steinbeck as the Nobel Prize winning novelist of Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and Tortilla Flat. But we know little else about him. His too-much fame has kept us from seeing him whole. Were you aware that Steinbeck was an early champion for equal rights? […]
The prophet wanders in from the desert crying, “I have seen. I have seen. We must change.” And as the people listen with mounting interest, leadership plots to kill him. This is the way it has always been: Julius Caesar. William Wallace. Malcolm X. Robert Kennedy. Visionaries often die of wounds to the back, their […]
Abraham Maslow called it “self-actualization.” A funny term, that. I never quite understood its meaning until I realized that to “actualize” a television set is simply to press the button that activates it and turns it on. Hence, to be a self-actualizing person is to know how to activate yourself, energize yourself, turn yourself on. […]
The Sword in the Stone, Excalibur, was the symbol of everything Camelot stood for. It was the axis around which every decision revolved and it embodied all the values the people held dear. And no one could remove the sword from its place except Arthur, the true and rightful king. In business, a true and […]
Some of my best advertising strategies were never implemented because I foolishly designed them around “what I would do” if I owned my client's company. But I didn't own his company. He did. Do you want to build a reputation for creating extraordinary ad campaigns? Just follow this 2-step process: 1. Find a business owner […]
Dear Mr. Gibb, You indicated in your email that you are a journalist researching the features and benefits of a specific syndicated advertising program. Hopefully, my comments and observations will be useful to you. Or at the very least, entertaining. Let us examine the heart of the press release you forwarded to me: “[Syndicated campaign] […]
The Longest Monday Morning Memo Ever Sent and Perhaps the Least Useful But I Think You Might Like It Anyway. In The Wizard of Ads he was the hero of chapter 59, Silver Paint and a Weed-Eater. Secret Formulas revealed him as my cohort in a 2AM episode with the police entitled Specifics and Generalities. […]
“If fifty-million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” – Anatole France For decades we've been taught that “above the neck, there is no difference between a woman and a man.” Sadly, this is just another foolish thing that we've believed. In her new audiobook, The Natural Advantages of Women, Michele […]
Millions of people have ideas for books – plans to write books – hopes, dreams and aspirations about books, but very few of them are actually writing books. If you want to write, here is some sage advice from some of the world's great authors: “If there's a book you really want to read but […]
An email was recently passed along to me by one of my readers that said, “Some months ago you alluded to research being done that would reveal the fact that things 'you heard' were as or more effective than things you saw. In other words, the spoken word is retained more than science gives it […]
“Claims made by scientists, in contrast to claims made by movie critics or theologians, 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' […]
Feynman's Pendulum Well, I did it. I actually did it. I put the lime in the coconut and drank'em both together. I put the lime in the coconut; it made me feel better. Seriously, my Nigerian pal Akintunde Omitowoju came over for lunch on Sunday and we did it together. I had heard the Harry […]
Q: I'm a 52-week radio advertiser currently reaching 32% of my area's 18-34 population with a frequency of 2.9 each week, 52 weeks in a row. (I know you teach that weekly frequency should be at least 3.0, but I figured 2.9 was close enough.) Today I have a very specific question which no one […]
When a young man asked Margaret Thatcher if she had any advice that might help him rise to his full potential, she fixed him deep in her steady gaze and said, “Stay a little bit hungry and a little bit cold.” I believe she gave him wise advice. Have you ever visited a company whose […]
When a meal, a painting, a movie or an ad seems a little flat and boring, the likely culprit is insufficient divergence. Most creators, whether chefs, artists, cinematographers or ad writers, instinctively add what “feels right” throughout the creative process. And this is why average things are average. “Feels right,” you see, is just another […]
“I just don't have the time…” What would you create if you were given 250, 14-hour days to do it? Would you write a book or screenplay? Study a complex concept? Become fluent in a foreign language? Build a ship in a bottle? It's been estimated that the average man will spend, in his lifetime, […]
You want to know how to become a world-renowned expert? It's easy, really. All you have to do is: 1. Look around until you find something that interests you. 2. Think about it a lot. 3. Make some interesting observations. 4. Have a few new ideas and form a couple of theories. 5. Put your […]
You ran an inspired series of wonderful ads. And got nothing in return. What? Like so many Sir Galahads on the quest for the Holy Grail, businesspeople continue to search with near-religious ardor for “the perfect ad campaign.” And many, when they have found it, learn that it's not enough. One of the greatest myths […]
Q:I'd like to show my support of our men and women serving overseas and would appreciate suggestions on how to go about doing this in my ads. A: Step One – think of everything that you'd like to say to our brothers and sisters who are currently in danger, far from the warmth and safety […]
When a businessperson asks, “Here's where I am right now; so what's the next step?” they expect me to be able to answer them. But I've never been able to do it. Questions about “the next step” invariably make me ask, “Where are you trying to go?” Why do so few people realize that the […]
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