Showmanship is symbolism, the essence of pageantry and tradition: the sweep of an extended arm with an upraised palm in an expansive gesture; a deep bow with the added flourish of both arms extended to the sides, again with palms turned upward; dramatic emphasis expressed by hopping in place on the balls of your feet […]
I have a client who has a lot of marketing savvy. A few weeks ago he sent me a list of seven copy points and asked if this was our radio strategy. I spent a lot of time crafting a carefully considered response, so I thought I might share it with you. Perhaps it will […]
The genius of the human race lies in our ability to attach complex meanings to sounds. But not all of these sounds are words. There is a second, wordless language of pitch, key, tempo, contour, interval and rhythm: music is an auditory fractal, a 3-dimensional map of a chaotic system. (Chaos, in science, is not […]
Angle – the direction from which a writer, speaker, photographer or illustrator approaches their chosen subject. Some angles are more interesting than others. Brandable Chunks – memorable phrases that become associated with a brand. Innovation Model – a proven template that allows you to generate a superior result. Business Topology – a technique used for […]
The left side of your brain wants perfect symmetry, but in the words of Francis Bacon 400 years ago, There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” In chaos theory, this “strangeness in the proportion” is called the strange attractor and it triggers a level of organization so vast the human mind […]
I’ve met people who say absolute truth does not exist, that all truth is subjective and exists like beauty in the eye of the beholder. I believe those people are sadly misguided. Absolute truth absolutely exists. If you don’t believe me, just ask me again because I am absolutely certain. But we’re not talking about […]
In 1738, Alexander Pope gave a dog to Frederick, Prince of Wales. Engraved on the dog’s collar were these words: “I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?” Alexander Pope hitched his wagon to Prince Frederick, a rising star. If you’ve seen the Masterpiece Theater television series, Wolf Hall, you’ll […]
Say what people expect you to say. Do what people expect you to do. They will be bored, I promise you. Predictability is the essence of cliché. Surprise is the foundation of delight. Without an element of surprise, there can be no delight. But irrelevant surprise is randomness, the essence of confusion. To gain and […]
Throughout the presidency of her husband, Martha Washington hosted a weekly reception each Friday evening for anyone who would like to attend. At these gatherings, men and women from the local community would mingle with Members of Congress and visiting dignitaries at the presidential mansion where they would enjoy refreshments and talk. Martha didn’t do […]
When Glenn Gould retired from playing the great concert halls of the world, he climbed aboard a Canadian train and rode it north to the end of the line. During this journey, Glenn recorded the conversations of his fellow passengers and mixed them into a strangely compelling audio presentation called The Idea of North (1967). […]
You’re twelve. Everyone treats you like a kid, but you and I know better, right? You’ve known the difference between boys and girls for a lot longer than anyone suspects. But girls aren’t the mystery you suppose them to be. They’re far more mysterious than that. You’re going to spend the rest of your life trying […]
This is an ad you’ll be hearing soon for the world’s fastest-growing franchise for in-home elder care: When Peter Pan first appeared in 1904, children didn’t understand the significance of the crocodile that swallowed an alarm clock. But as those children grew older, they realized that time is the ticking crocodile that chases us all. […]
Sometimes I think we go through our lives trying to impress an invisible audience called “everyone.” “What will everyone think?” Invisible would be bad enough, but I think “everyone” might also be imaginary. Emil Cioran was probably right when he said, “If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the […]
The hardest decisions in life occur when we must choose between two good things: Honesty or Loyalty? Justice or Mercy? Frugality or Generosity? These often come into conflict, do they not? If one could remove the vitriol from political debates, these are the six beautiful sisters we would see in a magnificent tug-of-war: Honesty, Justice […]
You’ve been told, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” But it’s a misquote. What Wolfgang Köhler said more than a hundred years ago – in 1910 to be exact – is that “the whole is different from the sum of its parts.” Kohler was famously irritated for the next 57 years by […]
If you can’t tell funny stories about embarrassing mistakes you’ve made, you’re not taking enough chances. Are you letting the fear of failure turn you into a narrow guardian of the status quo? Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. I met a woman when I was a boy – I promise […]
What are you trying to make happen? Is your goal actionable, or is it ambiguous and vague? Do you have an empirical method for measuring daily progress? Empirical: adjective, based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation rather than theory or pure logic. I’ll admit that I’m on a bit of a rant today and […]
The ground moved beneath our feet. There. It did it again. That first tremor was the growing reality of gender equality. The second was the shrinking of mass media. These trends aren’t connected, but they’re both significant. Gender equality is changing the nature of romance. Don’t believe me? Watch any romantic movie from 20 years […]
If success were the result of a formula, we would achieve it more consistently. Every business has its little formulas for success. These formulas, however, are always incomplete because they were reverse-engineered by connecting the dots after success had been achieved: the second thing (success) followed the first thing (cable TV ads, or raising your […]
“Happiness is a choice.” Unhappy people get angry when I say “Happiness is a choice” because most of them have happily assigned their unhappiness to their circumstances, or their past, or an evil someone somewhere. It irritates them when I suggest they can simply choose to be happy. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it can definitely be done. […]
To accomplish the miraculous you must attempt the ridiculous. Before you attempt the ridiculous you must announce it to the world. If you don’t have the courage to announce it, you must at least whisper it in the dark. Because it must be spoken. You’ve got to hear yourself say it. And then you’ve got to take action. […]
Roughly 10 percent of the American population is worried about having enough money to pay the rent and enough food in the pantry to make it until payday. A good day is when their biggest fear is whether or not the car will start and get them to work. This is called living “hand-to-mouth.” I did it for years. Perhaps […]
I have a theory about people who succeed: they cheat. And I’m in favor of it. I saw you recoil from that word a little, so I’ll say it more delicately: they’re quick to embrace an unfair advantage. Exceptional marketing gives a business an unfair advantage. Businesspeople who embrace this advantage are usually the ones who succeed. […]
Do you sometimes identify with Don Quixote, the self-appointed knight-errant who set out on his horse, Rocinante, along with his friend Sancho Panza on a donkey, to right the world’s wrongs and change the course of history? He was a delusional, but happy old fart. You and I are not the first to identify with him. John […]
Although he lived more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci drew pictures of machines that would not be invented for more than 400 years. His paintings of the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man are perhaps the most widely recognized images in the world. WIKIPEDIA says Leonardo “was an Italian painter, sculptor, […]
Andy Warhol’s greatest work of art was Andy Warhol. Other artists first make their art and then celebrity comes from it. Andy reversed this. For me the Factory was a place of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, for some of the others it was: from ferment comes art.” – Nat Finkelstein, Andy Warhol: […]
You can hope the value of a stock will rise, but when you invest money in that stock, your hope becomes faith. Did you make a foolish commitment? Time will tell. We believe the sun will rise because we’ve seen it rise day after day. It is a repeatable observation. We believe what we have seen. […]
You don’t need to go to college to become successful. What Americans call education is usually just the passing along of traditional wisdom, which, when you think about it, is essentially a deepening of the status quo: conformity, indoctrination, groupthink. When students can imitate their teachers perfectly, we claim they have achieved excellence. But aren’t […]
You own a business. You sell a product or a service. Your growth is limited by one of two things: The right people haven’t heard about you. Because if they had, they would surely be buying from you. The right people have heard about you. They just didn’t care. The grand illusion of advertising – […]
Since the year 2000, the cognoscenti of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop have happily endured the fanfare and pageantry of my 3-day explanation of Third Gravitating Bodies. It remains the most highly attended class at Wizard Academy. For the uninitiated, a Third Gravitating Body with a high degree of divergence and an explicit moment of […]
In 1879, Ferdinand Cheval was a postman in France who tripped on a strangely shaped stone and stumbled awkwardly forward. He was 43 years old. This would not normally be news but Cheval continued to stumble awkwardly forward each day for 33 more years. His was not the 10,000 hours to excellence championed by Malcolm […]
I made the decision 20 years ago that the Monday Morning Memo would rarely be about news or current events. I chose to leave the singing of fleeting facts to a chorus of professional reporters. It is a choir that does not need my voice. But today I’m making an exception. There are four things […]
Phil was nearly 70 when I met him 30 years ago. He’ll be 100 soon. Phil doesn’t know it, but I think of him as one of the people who speaks wisdom into my life. Do you have a favorite word? Phil’s favorite word is balance. Most of us are out of balance and suffering […]
I’m talking with a man about his happy future. There will be decisions to make and risks to take, but it’s a future that can definitely be his. And then he says, “I don’t want to get my hopes up.” The air leaves my body and I want to cry. And then I want to […]
The silent workings of my mind are of little interest to anyone but me, yet occasionally I feel the need to chronicle some small discovery; to write it down so that it might continue to exist after I have been forgotten. Once a year I write a Monday Morning Memo that is more for me […]
The problem with most websites is that they’re built inside out. It’s an easy trap to fall into, almost inevitable, in fact. You’re on the inside of your company, looking out at your customer. She’s on the outside, looking in. Your website is built from your perspective, not hers. But let’s be fair: your website […]
When you write ads for a living, you learn that the truth is often the opposite of what people believe. Most people believe an ad will work if people like it, and an ad won’t work if people hate it. But that’s just not true. And we’re wrong about far more important things than that. […]
Jerry Seinfeld is the richest actor on earth. Google it. He’s worth eight hundred and twenty million dollars. You don’t make that kind of money working as a stand-up comedian in Atlantic City. You make it when companies pay to run ads during your hit TV show. Based on the advertising revenues it generated, Seinfeld […]
When we think of Romeo and Juliet, we think of Shakespeare. But Shakey didn’t create those characters. The source of Shakespeare’s 1594 play was a 3000-line poem by Arthur Brooke, Romeus and Juliet, published 32 years earlier in 1562. Romeo and Juliet didn’t originate with Arthur Brooke, either. He compiled it from a number of […]
I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that businesspeople think of advertising and sales training and customer service as three separate departments within a company. Have you ever developed an impression of a company through their advertising and then gotten a totally different impression of that company when you met them? The external personality of your company is created […]
Jeffrey Eisenberg sent me this 1994 Compuserve ad that talks about delivering “up to 60 messages per month” as though 60 would be the largest number of emails that any of us would ever need to send. Isn’t it interesting how our use of technology always seems to evolve differently than any of us expected […]
Before becoming a poet, a Wizard of AdsTM and a writing instructor, Peter Nevland was an engineer at Motorola. Andrew Backus is a geologist and the living embodiment of Doctor Doolittle. The number of injured animals Andrew has rescued from the roadside would overflow the San Diego Zoo. Andrew and Peter are both cognoscenti graduates of The Magical Worlds Communications […]
Some of you are going to feel like I’ve spit on your shoe or mocked your religion or told you that your baby is ugly, so I’d like to apologize in advance for what I’m about to say. Teamwork in business is highly overrated. There, I’ve said it. I realize those 6 words are going […]
Targeting is impotent. That wasn’t a misspelling. If you want to waste a lot of money on advertising, just target exactly the right audience and then make an offer that fails to move them. Targeting isn’t the answer. Having the right message is the answer. Most ads underperform because they say, “Here’s what we do […]
If you were to ask 1000 people to name the behavior that marks 93 percent of all successful companies, what do you suppose they would tell you? I didn’t ask 1000 people but I did ask Google, which is sort of like asking the whole world. Here’s what the whole world told me: “Successful […]
Thirty-one years ago, David Ogilvy wrote, “In some developing countries radio still reaches more people than television. Yet even there nobody really knows what kind of commercials make the cash register ring. Isn’t it time somebody tried to find out?”– David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1983, p. 116 Sleep well, David. We found out. And […]
Advertisers are attracted to online media when they’re not entirely happy with their investments in traditional broadcast media. To understand the reasons behind their disappointments, we need only to revisit the subject of last week’s Monday Morning Memo: “Linear, no-threshold thinking” assumes that every statistic is scalable. It’s what causes advertisers to assume they […]
Reliable data tells us exactly how many motorcycle riders have died trying to navigate an S-curve at 100 miles per hour. The straightforward logic of traditional accounting, with its linear, no-threshold thinking, predicts one-tenth as many deaths at 10 miles per hour. But we know this is ridiculous. The number of riders that die at […]
American retailers learned some interesting things last year. Although consumer confidence was higher during Christmas 2013 than it was during Christmas 2010, ShopperTrak tells us that in-store, holiday foot traffic declined by almost half during those three years. But don’t assume sales volume declined by half for those retailers or that half their customers bought […]
Michael participates in our monthly Wizard of Ads LIVE webinar. Last week, Michael asked for a method that would let him create fewer leads, but better leads. I responded by telling Michael that broad targeting can be done geographically by zip code, financially by income, demographically by age and gender, or psychographically by targeting specific […]
Her plan was obviously brilliant, so why wasn’t it working? Susan was as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. I was about to suggest an answer when she said it herself; “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Every experienced consultant knows that a third-best plan that will be executed is better than the first or […]
1. Bring positive and negative into close proximity. 2. Resist the temptation to clad them in insulation. 3. Witness the flow of electricity as it leaps between the two. Speaking in 1980 of his songwriting experience with Paul McCartney, John Lennon said, “He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the […]
Institutions of higher education offer a degree path, a specific series of classes that will prepare you for the journey you’re about to take. Wizard Academy’s board of directors is preparing a similar map for those happy adventurers who come here for refreshment, instruction and advice. Dr. Oz Jaxxon and space shuttle scientist Mark […]
Cedric Yau is one of a handful of geniuses I know. In our most recent conversation, Cedric opened my eyes to a truth I had not previously encountered, but it reinforced everything I know about ad campaigns and it’s about to make Cedric a billion dollars. I’m not exaggerating. You’ve seen long lines of ants […]
Have you ever gone shopping only to come home with something entirely different than what you had planned to buy? Of course you have. We all have. “Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, ‘these are the conditions, now what happens next?'” – Richard Feynman, (winner of the 1965 Nobel […]
When Jacqueline Bouvier married JFK she became “Mrs. Kennedy.” She was the Princess Di of her generation. Following her husband’s assassination, Jacqueline’s voice was almost never again heard in public. She quickly became the most mysterious and glamorous woman on earth. When she married Aristotle Onassis, the world’s richest man, she became forever thereafter, “Jackie ‘O’.” […]
Dean Rotbart says you are three different people. The first of the three is the person you see when you look in the mirror; the person you believe yourself to be. The second is the person other people see when they look at you; the person they believe you to be. The third is […]
The next time someone tells you an advertising success story, especially if that success was online, ask to see the ad – the content – that triggered it. Here’s a Really Big Tip for you. You might want to write this down: “The media doesn’t make the ad work. The ad makes the media work.” […]
Do you have code words and phrases whose meanings are known only to the people closest to you? I laughed a little when I realized the absurdity of some of the communication abbreviations that Pennie and I have developed over the years. Every couple has code phrases, I suppose, and there is doubtless a story […]
You can do it. I don’t know how long it will take or what you will have to go through, but you can most definitely do it. 1. See your objective clearly in your mind. You must see it before you can seize it. It takes courage to focus on your objective. Reach for the courage […]
Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I’ve come to learn, is women. I borrowed that sentence from Charles Johnson, a storyteller who begins his tale, Middle Passage, with that line. I chose not to enclose it in quotation marks because I didn’t want to alert you to the […]
Retailers are asking, “Why do people buy from my competitors without even giving us a chance?” And I reply, “They gave you a chance. They just didn’t physically come to your store.” Customers carry instant access to all the knowledge of the world in their pockets. They no longer have to visit your store to […]
“Cream rises to the top” is what we tell talented people who are frightened. It’s a lie, of course, but it makes them feel like they have a chance. Confidence and courage are not the same thing. Confidence is trust in your ability. Courage is to have such security in your identity that you’re […]
I should begin with an apology, I suppose, because the secret of great advertising, the secret to great wealth, the secret of status and stature and your name on the lips of all the beautiful people is actually a wee bit disappointing. Yes, it’s a sadly disappointing big secret. The reason the big secret is […]
When Ann Richards was Governor of Texas, she said, “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” Governor Richards was slightly militant in her feminism, as was common 20 years ago when she made her piercingly witty statement. But the once-edgy voice of feminism has softened in […]
Nine Voices, Nine Movies Each of us speaks and writes without thinking. This is why so much of what we say is predictable. Do you want to be more interesting? Choose an unusual perspective and verb tense. A movie begins in the mind of the listener every time you speak or write. At whom is […]
Today we call it Data but we used to call it Statistics. Statistics are boring. That’s why a clever boy in Silicon Valley gave them a new and better name. A scientist is willing to change a belief when presented with data, facts and logic. But very few customers are scientists. This is why you […]
People will direct their attention to whatever gives them a sense of identity, purpose and adventure. You must always remember this when crafting advertising. The fans of a sports team are the members of a club. Their team gives them identity, purpose and adventure. Political parties, too, give their members identity, purpose and adventure. Religious […]
It’s Friday morning, September 7, 1951. John Steinbeck emerges from deep in his writing of East of Eden to scribble a note to his friend, Pat Covici: “This week has been a hard one. I have put the forces of evil against a potential good. Yesterday I wrote the outward thing of what happened. Today […]
I look in the mirror and see the person I believe myself to be. You look at me and see the person you believe me to be. We don’t see the same person. Businesses, too, see themselves differently than their customers do. A flatterer disguised as a branding consultant will help you create an idealized self-portrait and […]
A cafe owner, famous for his soup, was told by his accountant that he could boost his profit significantly if he would add just 5 percent more water to the recipe. The accountant was right. The water was added and no one noticed. Months later, the cafe added 5 percent more water and still no […]
Contrary to what my headline might suggest, this is actually an upbeat message. Guilt is about what you have done. Shame is about who you are. Failure in business has no connection to either of these. Failures are footlights along the dark pathway to success. One of the defining characteristics of Wizard Academy alumni […]
“Once, there were 3 kittens named Murry, Furry and Wurry…” I’ll admit to fabricating Murry and Furry, but you and I both know that Wurry is often pampered and protected like a cherished pet. We talk about our Wurry and cuddle it. We share our Wurry with others, hoping they will choose to love our […]
We could call this memo, “The Poodle and The Vamp, Part Two,” but we won’t. No one likes the sequel quite so much as they liked the original. Talent isn’t rare. Our world overflows with worthy talent that continues day-to-day unrecognized. I’ll wager that you possess such talent. There is something you’re capable of doing, I’ll […]
Type “business plan” into Google and you’ll see an impressive array of articles from BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur and SBA.gov. Everyone has a business plan. Almost no one has an advertising plan. And we are coming to a critical fork in the road. I want you to choose your fork consciously […]
“Normalization” begins with an idealized norm of conduct – for example, the way a soldier should ideally stand, march, and present arms, with each of these actions defined in minute detail. Individuals are then rewarded for conforming to this ideal or punished for deviating from it. Normalization allows a leader to exert maximum social control […]
This is the dangerous gang that learned How to Write Direct Response Ads last week. Really smart marketers screw up badly when they move from “Metrics are Good” to “Metrics are God.” Dan doesn’t do this. Dan came to Wizard Academy in 2001, determined to build an online business. He was 22 years old. A […]
The Eye of the Storm is what we call the classroom in the tower at Wizard Academy. This name is doubly appropriate; not only is The Eye of the Storm a momentary escape from the buffeting winds of business, it was funded by Tim Storm, a wildly successful entrepreneur. It was the third day […]
The official wedding count for Chapel Dulcinea in 2013 was 824 weddings. When I talk about the number of weddings performed each year at Chapel Dulcinea I usually say, “more than a thousand,” but it’s not because I’m lying. I’m just telling the truth prematurely. We’ll soon be at 1,000+ per year. I’m certain […]
I admire John the Beloved and Abraham Lincoln. These were quietly determined and reliable men, full of love and compassion, unwilling to leave anyone behind. But if I am honest, I must admit that I’m actually more similar to Simon Peter and Teddy Roosevelt; blustering and thundering, quick toward combat, often causing more pain than […]
Sarah says if you rely solely upon reason, your actions will be based upon what you believe to be possible. You’ll not likely attempt the impossible. She goes on to say, “Quixotism is the passionate pursuit of an ideal which may not be attainable. It is the belief that an individual can alter reality […]
You have within you an idea, a possibility, a thought that has never quite gone away. You tell yourself it’s a childish fantasy. Perhaps it is. And that’s precisely why you should rescue it from the shivering shadows. Let your child live in the light. You’re strong enough now to watch over it and […]
This ocean adventure called life is most easily navigated when we have a guiding light. The winds and waves of circumstance push at all of us. 1. We can passively go with the flow. 2. We can choose the badge of the victim. 3. We can loose ourselves in pleasure. 4. We can harness the […]
Fifty-one times a year I write things I believe you’ll find to be useful. Once a year I turn the mirror toward myself. This is that time. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve enjoyed 8 distinct advantages in life for which I can take no credit. I am thankful for 6 of these advantages, […]
Give a mundane product an evocative name and you will dramatically increase its appeal. Humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sounds. Some of these sounds are musical; pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, interval and contour. But much more specific in their meanings are phonemes, the building blocks of words. Cat and Kite begin […]
A spoonful of Entertainment helps the medicine go down, medicine go dowwwwn, medicine go down. The public will give you their time if you offer them entertainment. They will give you their money if you offer them hope. But don’t ever call it hope. Don’t accuse your customer of being hopeless. Just let them […]
David sees a giant and says, “I will defeat him.” Everyone else sees a giant, as well. David walks toward the giant with his sling and BANG, David is king. That’s a favorite story everywhere. Here’s another. Don Quixote sees a giant and says, “I will defeat him.” His companion sees only a windmill. […]
The following press release will soon be received by the media in Midland, Texas. Diamonds to be Cut in Midland (MIDLAND, TEXAS – October 29, 2013)[Name of Diamond Cutter] is coming to Midland to cut diamonds on Saturday, November 16th and the public is invited. “It’s one of the Christmas gifts we’re giving the city,” […]
One of the books I’ll write someday is a collection of true stories gathered from extremely successful people. My business as an advertising consultant and seminar speaker has put me face-to-face with many of the brightest stars in the entrepreneurial sky. And rarely do I miss the opportunity to ask them, “Can you recall that […]
“Dangling like this from his leg, his upside-down perspective made him giddy. If this were to be his last moment he would die happy, but it would not. Instead, he’d soon be singing karaoke with a group of Korean tourists. But first, the roller coaster.”? – Christina Gressianu, opening lines of an unwritten novel Anton […]
My friend Jeffrey and I were talking one day about this and that when he said, as much to himself as to me, I think, “What is it that separates confidence from hubris?” I replied, “The outcome.” “That’s it!” Jeff gasped through his laughter, his head thrown back as tears began to inch toward his […]
Do not confuse pleasure with happiness. Unhappy people can have pleasure. And uninterrupted pleasures are not happiness. Happiness is the result of knowing who you are, why you are here, and what you should do. We need identity, purpose, and adventure. Identity – Who am I? Purpose – Why am I here? Adventure – What […]
I’m 21 years old but my thinning hair makes me look about 30. I consider this to be my greatest asset. I walk the retail sidewalks, looking in windows, deciding if I will go in. A peddler goes door to door unthinkingly, playing the odds, tossing his pitch to anyone who will catch it like […]
I hate that I’m good at writing direct-response ads. You know the ads I’m talking about. The ones that sell you something you don’t really want or need. Twenty years ago Woody and I bought Melrose necklaces at 11 dollars and sold them by the wheelbarrow load at 99 dollars apiece. You couldn’t comparison shop […]
Unifying Principles are those guiding thoughts around which all your actions revolve. When you hold them in plain sight, you always know what to do next. Brilliant people stumble when they focus on the parts and neglect to see the webs of connections between those parts. This is what causes medical doctors to treat each […]
Headlines often tell the truth more powerfully than is completely accurate, a disturbing trend in this day of sound-bite news. The mental image conjured in the mind by the headline, “Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Agrees With Wizard Academy,” is one in which the Nobel Laureate (1.) is aware of Wizard Academy and (2.) makes a statement […]
The perfect customer is like a beautiful woman, distant and desirable and pursued by countless competitors. An appropriate metaphor, don’t you think? Most advertisers want ads that equate to a magical pickup line. “Tell me what to say to this beautiful woman so that she’ll rip off her clothes and jump into bed with me.” […]
Commentators say that people today have a shorter attention span than in the past, but Jerry Seinfeld and I don’t believe this is true. “There is no such thing as an attention span. There is only the quality of what you are viewing. This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. […]
We tend to think of imitation as the opposite of innovation but I don’t believe this is true. “Opposite” indicates opposed positions, left and right. But my observation is that innovation and imitation are usually the second and third positions in a continuing circle that has improvisation as its starting point. Here’s how that circle […]
When you find your mind wandering, ask yourself these two questions: What am I thinking? Why am I thinking this? And when you’re busy, ask these three: What am I doing? What do I hope to gain by it? Why does this matter to me? Ask these questions and you’ll sidestep the bullet Socrates fired […]
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