Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo
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Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo
Thousands of people are starting their workweeks with smiles of invigoration as they log on to their computers to find their Monday Morning Memo just waiting to be devoured. Straight from the middle-of-the-night keystrokes of Roy H. Williams, the MMMemo is an insightful and provocative series of wel...
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Everyone Called Him “Ike”
Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, in 1890. He was the President of the United States when I was born in Dallas, Texas, 68 years later.<...
How Packaging Increases Sales
Exciting packaging improves conversion.
There are two important parts of packaging:
When package “A” and package “B” are the same price an...
Parrots, Peacocks & People
Each of us has a little bit of Peacock in us, and perhaps a little Parrot, too.
(I admit it about me. You should admit it about you.)
Long...
The Path that Brought You to Where You Are
There was a day when you found yourself in a strange situation and you did the best you could. Before you knew it, you were walking through it.
...
Attraction to the Iconic
Icons represent ideas that are bigger than themselves.
Myths are stories that represent ideas that are bigger than themselves.
Archetypes ...
Reject Orthodoxy in Advertising
Things that are rarely done are difficult for AI to imitate.
AI has confidence in things that are repeated online ad infinitum.*
Predictab...
The Reason History Repeats Itself
The advantage of being an old man is that you can remember the past. This gives you a different perspective on current events. But if that old man is...
What Writers Think
William Shakespeare wrote, “This life… is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more...
How Can I Write Ads that Speak to the Heart?
Parallel structure is a writing technique that uses similar grammatical constructions to express related ideas. Patterns of words, phrases, or clauses...
Megadog and Mustang
The car and the dog could not talk, of course, but speech is not required to show love.
Pearl and I found each other in the middle of nowhere, O...
The Red Grasshopper
El Chapulín Colorado – The Red Grasshopper – was a Spanish-speaking television star loved by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Th...
Outliers are Interesting, but They Rarely Matter
“Outliers are interesting, but they rarely matter,” is a troubling statement, and you may already be thinking of exceptions to it. But it remains true...
Clarity and Brevity are It
One the most talented writers of advertising in the world would be surprised to hear me call him that. Jonathan Edward Durham is a novelist. He recent...
1605 and the American Experiment
January 18, 1604: King James, a Protestant, announces that he will commission an English translation of the Bible.
January 16, 1605: Miguel de C...
Percentages Don’t Matter. Dollars Do.
I was whining to Clay Cary about the interest rate the bank was going to charge me to fund a real estate investment. I felt the percentage was way too...
How to Spend Less on Google
Pain whispers, shouts, and screams, “Pay attention. Be careful. Something is wrong.”
Jean Marzollo wrote a children’s poem in 1948 that romantic...
How Long is Your Time Horizon?
But will you recognize success when it happens?
What will be its indicators? How will you measure it?
Most importantly, how long are you w...
What is Creativity, Really?
They were the source of inspiration for artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. They were the goddesses of knowledge, embodyin...
What is Creativity, Really?
They were the source of inspiration for artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. They were the goddesses of knowledge, embodyin...
Which Kind of Customer-Centric are You?
To create happy customers, you need to be customer-centric.
Every company believes they are customer-centric. But while a great company keeps th...
Alternate Realities & Brands with Personalities
A brand with a personality is an imaginary character in the minds of the customers of that brand. It is similar to the characters in syndicated televi...
Insights in the Night
“Around the swimming beagles, bright stars danced on rippling waters like a thousand little fishes of light scurrying in a sea of darkness.
Can...
Quotes from a French Cafe
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 tim...
Authority is Nothing but Fancy Clothes
“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 summertim...
This is Why We Remember Him
When Rab was sixteen, he published a book of poetry under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha, which means “Sun Lion.” Those poems were seized upon by literary a...
Is Your Planning Gestalt or Structural?
Dell understood the formulas, and followed the rules, of efficiency.
O’Neal understood the formulas and followed the rules of basketball.
...
Ambition and Happiness
“Life… Liberty… and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We published those words 229 years ago when we declared our independence from Britain. That docum...
The Creation & Extraction of Value
I wrote those words after contemplating the short-sightedness of so-called, “performance marketing,” on March 11, 2010.
“Performance marketing”...
Incisive and Insightful
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,...
Magical Thinking: Bad or Good?
Jason Segel plays a psychologist in the Apple + TV show, “Shrinking.” He is talking to a patient with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
He looks at...
The Magician of Social Media Success
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 fla...
7 Quiet Secrets of Sales Activation
“Features and benefits” were once the most loudly shouted secrets of customer acquisition in Business to Consumer advertising (B2C). I even wrote a ch...
The Second Most Profitable Form of Writing
Philip Dusenberry once said, “I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course,...
His Name was Joseph
Twenty-four thousand men were crowded into Knockaloe Interment Camp in 1914 because they had been found guilty of being in the wrong place, at the wro...
Moments that Change Everything
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...
Media Measurement Mistakes, ch. 2
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.
FAC...
Media Measurement Mistakes: Chapter 1
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, a...
The Cruelty of 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 eas...
Hope and a Future
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 phone...
Hollywood’s Broken Angel
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...