Why Most Ads Put Us to Sleep How often are you conscious of the fact that Earth, only Earth, is buried beneath an ocean of air? We, the fleas that dance on the skin of Mother Earth, live in this dry ocean. We use it to hold our airplanes off the ground. We blow out […]
Blogs And Reality TV The Changing Face of America Do you remember when America watched awards shows? If you were somehow unplugged and didn't receive the newsflash, the combined strength of Paul McCartney, Madonna, U2, Mariah Carey, Coldplay, Faith Hill and Jay-Z wasn't enough to swing the hammer and ring the bell during this year's […]
Treasure Hunt This week I didn't feel like writing about advertising or business or leadership or anything else an ambitious soul might find useful. So if you're in a vibrating hurry with far too much to do, right here would be the place to stop reading. The DELETE button is sitting there, twitching, anxious for […]
Stronger Ads = More Complaints It's no secret that stronger ads generate faster growth. But with each higher level of awareness comes an increase in complaints: “I'm sick of hearing your ads.”TRANSLATION: “It makes me mad that I can't ignore you.” “Your ads don't sound professional. They're not polished and smooth.”TRANSLATION: “It makes me mad […]
The American Dream America is a democracy and we believe in free enterprise. Let's look at that for a moment: Democracy is majority rule. Groupthink. “United we stand, divided we fall.” But the key to business – free enterprise – is to have an absolute dictator. In America's system of free enterprise, the person whose […]
The Future of Ad Writing America has been flattered by advertising (“Because you deserve it”), misled by ads (“Lowest prices anywhere”), hyped by ads (“While supplies last”), and lied to repeatedly (“Guaranteed!”). The result of all this misinformation is a growing numbness to ad-speak. We're becoming deaf and blind to it. With effortless ease we […]
The Critical 0.05 Percent It takes 1,800 electrons to equal the mass of a single proton. Protons and their cousins – neutrons – make up 99.95 percent of the mass in the universe. Yet it's the electrical charges of the seemingly insignificant 0.05 percent – those tiny orbiting electrons – that hold our universe together. […]
Inside the Outside It hit me. “I've become an eavesdropper, listening to the conversations of strangers.” It's 5:00AM and I'm sitting at the bar of an all-night café on the wrong side of town eating a three-dollar breakfast, listening to the smelly, funny stories of downtrodden people who know each other well. Their sparkling banter […]
Competitive Environment The bottom-rung loser in one town can move to another town and often become the king of his category. All it takes is weak competitors. I've seen it happen a dozen times. Whether you dominate your marketplace won't be determined solely by the strength of your advertising. It will be determined partly by […]
Lonely Outsider I was in the shower when my cell phone started ringing. Pennie answered it for me. It was my partner Jeff Eisenberg. Dripping, I took the phone. “Yo. Jefferson.” “I'm sending you an article from The Economist. It's something I've heard you talk about a hundred times.” “What is it?” “You know who […]
Four Kinds of Ads Great ads can be either product-specific or store-specific. Bad ads are generally category-specific. And then there are franchise ads. Franchise ads build the master brand. The hope of every franchisee is that the ads provided by the franchisor will generate enough brand magnetism to pull customers into their store. Due to […]
Hi Def Imagination People tell me they want to learn to think outside the box. No problemo. The secret is to stay out of the box to begin with. You crawl into the box when you think about your problem and wrap its known obstacles around you. So quit. Focus instead on an interesting saying, […]
Are You Merely Determined? Determination is emotional, a moment of intense focus with clenched jaw and the visualization of a mission accomplished. The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate,He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate;And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it […]
What Are You Offering? Businesses don't fail due to reaching the wrong people. Businesses fail when they say the wrong things. And they say the wrong things when they believe what the public tells them. Conduct a survey. Ask the public to describe in detail the kind of place they'd like to shop. Then build […]
Do You Need A Miracle? Finances. Relationships. Health… the tall monsters we face in life's dark ocean when we awaken underwater, alone in the night, not knowing what to do. Ever been there? People respond to deep crisis in different ways. There are: 1. Handwringers who talk about the problem to anyone who will listen. […]
What Women Want I did a bad, bad thing. Last week's memo ended too abruptly. “Yes, selling to men can be very easy. But how does one sell to women? Ah. That is a different question. – Roy H. Williams” The phrase, “sell to women?” was hyperlinked to additional information. Judging from the record number […]
It’s Not Good for Man to be Alone. “The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start.” – Carl Jung, Two Essays in Analytical Psychology “What can a man say about woman, his own opposite? Woman always stands just where the man’s shadow falls, […]
How to Buy Word of Mouth The price of making a powerful statement is cheap compared to the cost of ads that don't work. So make a statement that counts. This is the best advice I can give you. I'm not talking about making a grand and sweeping claim, such as, “Lowest prices anywhere. We […]
Can You Come Out and Play? We're building a school of the communication arts. Do you want to come along? Oh, the questions we'll answer together! The interesting things we'll find! We've built a chapel where we can think big thoughts. And a grand auditorium where we can exchange ideas. The things we'll talk about! […]
Does My Local Business Need a Website? How many months has it been since you went looking for information in the yellow pages? How many minutes has it been since you asked your favorite search engine? I think you just answered the question about whether or not your local business needs a website. Without a […]
Margaret, Mabel and JimmyReal Things are Often Bigger than the News Mabel is a widow deep in poverty with two hungry children of her own. Washing other people’s laundry ten hours a day, Mabel earns barely enough money to keep them fed. To keep a roof over their heads, she works for a real estate […]
Are You Willing to be Weird? No one wants to be average. But everyone wants to be normal. What's up with that? You can't imitate your way to excellence. It can be achieved only by breaking away from the pack, abandoning the status quo. But breaking away from the pack is also the way to […]
Fact Based or Values Based? Relentless repetition was once enough to drive your message home. But it isn't quite that simple anymore. The impact of your message in this over-communicated hour depends largely on the structural basis of your statements. A statement is either fact-based or values-based. A fact-based statement must be true or false. […]
For Sale: Free Time Do you want more free time? Then you must buy it. Free time is never free. There are only four ways you can buy free time: 1. Work fewer hours. Learn to say no. You'll have more free time immediately.Cost: Lost opportunities, reduced income. 2. Develop systems, methods and procedures that […]
Imagine No Delusions We Baby Boomers had beautiful dreams back in the '60s and '70s, but we didn't do much about them. It was enough back in those days just to “Visualize World Peace” and sing wistfully about a brighter tomorrow. Remember John Lennon's song, Imagine? Imagine no possessions.I wonder if you can.No need for […]
What Kind of Cat are You? It was a term once used to describe exceptional jazz musicians. African-Americans spelled it “hepcat,” while their white counterparts heard “cat” and assumed “hep” to be a modifier. Hence, “hep cat.” In 1942 Bob Clampett created the first color Looney Tunes cartoon, The Hep Cat, featuring an unnamed feline […]
Art as a Tool of Marketing Media fragmentation and the evolution of social values are forcing advertisers to spend more and more money to reach fewer and fewer people. Two weeks ago I mentioned the possibility of using non-traditional media (NTM) as a supplement to your advertising. One of the most effective forms of NTM […]
I Did Not Die Today An Introduction to Chaotic Ad Writing I am, for the moment, alive and well as an ad writer. But I feel I'm being stalked by iPods, cell phones, instant messaging, and increasingly fragmented media choices. And they're all gunning for my life. Over-communication rides rampant across the mindscape of America, […]
A New Kind of Teamwork The Changing Face of Media Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry, George and Elaine are waiting for a table in a Chinese restaurant? The plot revolves around the fact that George is desperate to make a phone call but the other guy won't get off the pay phone. […]
Chasing the Carrot on a Stick COURTESY NOTE: This is one of those days when I write about something other than business. Have you ever been in a K-Mart during a “flashing blue light special?” The sad circus begins when an employee rolls out a chrome cart with a rotating blue light on a pole […]
Science Proves the Wizard Right Again Okay, let's be clear about this: I'm proud of myself today. So proud, in fact, that you might want to skip reading this memo because all I'm going to do is strut. It could become sickening. Seriously. Frankly, I can't believe you're still reading after a warning like that. […]
Getting What You Want One of these days I'm going to calculate the odds of pulling away from a drive-thru window and actually finding what was ordered in the bag. For 3 years I've been calculating the odds of getting extra lemon for your tea when you add the phrase “lots of lemon, please” in […]
Perceptual Reality Earth's population reached 1 billion persons in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in '59, 4 billion in '74 and 5 billion in late '86. And on October 12th, 1999, Earth's population surpassed 6 billion. The number of passengers on Spaceship Earth has doubled (from 3 billion – 1959, to 6 billion […]
Marketplace Realities Is There a Limit to How High You Can Climb? Last week a client achieved 42 percent of his market potential. Never before had I seen a business break the 40 percent barrier. It was kind of like seeing someone run a four-minute mile. I knew it was possible in theory, but I […]
Will He Read The Art of War? If you want to glimpse the inner forces that drive an organization, you need only observe their methods and listen to their words. Especially when they're not paying attention. Words and methods reveal motives. Listen to a person carefully and you will hear the beating of their heart. […]
Our Hurtling World Marketing was easy in the old days. You had ABC, NBC and CBS, a local newspaper and half a dozen radio stations. That was it. There was no Fox, no WB, no cable channels, no FM radio and no such thing as a cell phone. You had to find a phone booth […]
A World Without Oil Sometimes I go to funny places in my mind. Do you ever go exploring? Lately I've been imagining a world without oil. No oil for cars, no oil for 18-wheelers, no oil for jets. Not even any oil for construction equipment or ambulances. Same world, but smack out of oil. Can […]
Unhappy People Have you ever noticed how unhappy people always want to share their unhappiness with you? It may come in the form of a whine, a complaint, a rant, or sanctimonious “constructive criticism,” but come it most certainly will. The thing to remember when an unhappy person begins spraying unhappiness is this: It's not […]
Are You Putting Lipstick on a Pig? When business is slow, the wise business owner wonders what might be wrong with his business. The average business owner thinks only that something is wrong with his advertising. As I said last week, I believe it was advertising salespeople who taught business owners to think this way, […]
Targeting Through Ad Copy For years, advertisers have attempted to target “the right customer” through carefully selected media vehicles. Mailing lists aimed at specific demographic, geographic and psychographic profiles have fallen short so often that a 3 percent conversion rate is considered a big success. Carefully selected TV shows and radio formats have failed to […]
Helping to Rebuild an Economy If natural resources determined the wealth of nations, Brazil would be the richest country on earth and Japan would be the poorest. But resources have little to do with building a healthy economy. Prosperity happens when the swimming pool installer sells four pools in one month instead of the usual […]
When Numbers Go Bad A longer than average Monday Memo, but worth it. Are you one who believes the reliability of research is assured when the sample size is adequate and the respondents are properly qualified? If so, “research” will likely lead you to some tragic conclusions if it hasn't done so already. The problem […]
Power of Weakness Features and benefits, features and benefits, features and benefits. We've polished our pitches to such a degree that we've dimmed our abilities to persuade. The customer is only half listening because the inner self is asking, “What are they not telling me?” Those who have heard my 90-minute presentation about the ongoing […]
The Power of Purpose “…And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?'” – from the 1st book of Kings, chapter 19When […]
Counter Branding When your business category is dominated by a single brand and all the other brands put together don't equal them, it's time to create a counter-brand. Counter-branding – business judo – is rare and dangerous. But when you're overwhelmingly dominated, what have you got to lose? Prior to the creation of their “Uncola” […]
Power of the Buzz Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg have a New Book People have said for decades, “Word-of-mouth is the best kind of advertising. That's the best kind: word-of-mouth.” You hear this so often when you sell advertising that my friend Bob Lepine used to joke about opening The Word of Mouth Advertising Agency. He […]
Belly of the Whale Standing inside Chapel Dulcinea recently, I looked up to see the great ribs beneath the roof beams above me and thought, “Jonah in the belly of the whale.” Do you remember the story? It's only four short chapters, a 5-minute read. The next morning, Princess Pennie went back to Dulcinea with […]
Advertising, Like Reduction Sauce A Monday Morning Memo from The Wizard of Ads Hi Roy, Thanks for the mention in the MMM today. It never ceases to amaze me the buzz something like that creates. Reading it also reminds me of the other conversation that took place at the same time, when you and Dave […]
Canadian Diamond Pavilion funded by the staff of Spence Diamonds of Canada Future Project. Will Open in Late 2006. Situated just down the walking trail from Chapel Dulcinea,the Canadian Diamond Pavilion will be a placewhere wedding receptions can be held at no charge. Designed by architect Marley Porter, the base of the pavilionwill be a […]
Adventure begins with dedication to a cause “What giants?” said Sancho Panza. “Those you see there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.” “Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. “What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes […]
Advertising, Like Paint "The thing that has been will be again." And other 8 Word Answers. People who try to stay “on the cutting edge” tend to see everything as new. But the thing that has been will be again. And that which currently is, has been, long before our time. If this observation seems […]
Where Have Your Fingers Been Walking Lately? A few years ago, your customer could compare you only to your competitor down the street. But information gathering and comparison shopping have since become effortless, thanks to the internet. Tens of millions of us are gathering and comparing info 24/7 in the comfort and seclusion of our […]
The New Marketplace NOTICE: This memo ends with a link to an ad writing course description. So don't be surprised. The last line in most TV or radio ads is usually a “call to action,” right? Especially if the ad was produced locally: “Hurry. These prices won't last long.”“Act Now. Offer expires soon.”“You must be […]
Jonah New Revised Standard Version [Jonah 1] 1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence […]
Mountain Without Summit I wrote three memos to you this week, but decided not to send the first two. The first one, We Are Sancho Panza, is the dancing safari into symbolic thought that I promised you in last week's memo. It begins, “Who can explain our four-century attraction to Don Quixote? The book is […]
Wedding Chapel Dulcinea Who is Dulcinea? (Dul – sin – AY – uh) She is Tom Sawyer's Becky Thatcher. She is The Little Red-Haired Girl of Charlie Brown. She is the sacred muse of Alonso Quixano who in 1605 stepped into some rusty armor to become the immortal Don Quixote de la Mancha. In Cervantes' […]
Pattern Recognition “And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.” In this strange passage from Little Gidding, poet T.S. Eliot links the mental image of a rose to the […]
Confidence Where to Get It and How To Keep It Getting confidence and keeping confidence – emotional muscle – is like getting and keeping any other muscle; it just requires daily exercise. But where does confidence come from? Is it merely a feeling – the product of an optimistic attitude gained through positive thinking rituals […]
Running with the Beagle in my Brain A Politically Incorrect Search for Adventure This year marks the 400-year anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, so I seized the opportunity to spend some hours in the study of 1605. (Arooo! Aroo-Aroooo!) And as all such beagle runs will do, this one led to a delightful […]
Your Life is a Journey But where is it taking you? You had friends and laughter, adventure and romance. Remember the halcyon days of your youth? But then the friends went away, the laughter faded, the adventure ended and the romance was over. It was time to go to work. Do you ever feel like […]
Climbing the Hill Too High Niche marketing was born the day a clear-eyed realist chose to dominate a subcategory when the master category seemed too high a hill to climb. “Instead of trying to become a major retailer of home furniture, I'll become the king of affordable dinettes. Instead of making a run at used […]
Voices of Dissent I was writing an upbeat and instructional memo to send you today called Confidence: Where to Get It and How to Keep It. But it's going to have to wait. This other thing just wouldn't turn me loose until I wrote it down and sent it to you. Have you ever had […]
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 […]
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