Facts are stacked like bricks to become a tower. Do you see it? But a story is a wave that takes you on a journey and leaves the memory of the tower far behind. Facts are solid. Stories are seductive. You will find the facts in the paragraphs below. You will find the stories in the rabbit […]
Agnes De Mille once wrote, “No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.” Agnes was right about most of us, but she was completely wrong about Herbert. Herbert sculpts and paints. Abstract expressionism is his thing. “It’s like jazz,” he says. “Art is a feel. I […]
Pressure, pressure, pressure unspeakable then BANG the world breaks open and a plateau pops up from solid rock, creating a fabulous view of the land below. That’s what happened in Central Texas. That’s what happens in life, too. But we’ll talk about that in a minute. Wizard Academy straddles the Texas escarpment, a magical place […]
When you challenge traditional wisdom, the first hand in the air will often be that of a guardian of the status quo who will challenge you with an “outlier argument,” pointing to that rare exception as though it disproves your premise. But an outlier does not disprove the rule. In fact, statisticians consider data to […]
What is the income range of snowboarders? What is the age range of people who do yoga? What is the age and income range of Carolina Panthers football fans? What is the age and income range of Republicans? What are the beliefs and opinions of a person who is 30 years old? What the hell is a Millennial? […]
What stories do you tell yourself concerning your disappointments, failures and embarrassments? Were you the unfortunate victim of evil? Perhaps it’s time you start telling different versions of those stories. Regret and fear are incapable of guiding you to Success. The stories you tell yourself are the foundations of your self-image. “The first principle of self-deception is you […]
Blockbuster Video had 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees and $5.9 billion in revenues at their peak in 2004. Then the installation of cable modems made streaming video possible. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection on September 23, 2010.* Technology is a freight train that doesn’t care who is standing on its tracks. Flashback – In the […]
Watson is the mega-powerful learning computer created by IBM. A brief interaction between IBM’s Watson and singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has gathered more than three-and-a-half-million YouTube views in just 90 days. ESTABLISHING SHOT: [Dylan walks into the frame carrying a guitar.] WATSON: Bob Dylan, to improve my language skills. DYLAN: [sits down on sofa with his […]
Springtime pierced the pale heart of winter with a shout of green and a blade of grass. The rumbles of summer are wooden wagon wheels banging hollow in the dust far away. Autumn sings of passage in a minor key as the quail fly up for the hunters. The white of winter is a splinter […]
Here’s a link to last week’s Monday Morning Memo, The Other Kind of Excellence, Part One. “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” These are the words of an Entrepreneur who has an idea half-formed and a dream bigger than the sunrise. He or she believes that if you leap, a net will appear. Entrepreneurs are […]
Your company is approaching an intersection. The light is green. Turn left and you’re headed toward Excellence. Turn right and you’re headed toward another kind of Excellence. Go straight and you’ll arrive at Mediocrity. Most companies go straight ahead because if they turn left or right they’ll be moving toward one kind of Excellence but […]
Branding – as it is taught today – will at best cause people to remember you and have a mild opinion. But unlike yesterday’s branding, today’s bonding is the beginning of relationship, the essence of loyalty and the foundation of community among human beings. Bonding, when done properly, makes people feel connected to you. It […]
Words ring like bells when you collide them correctly. It’s in the Bible. In the opening chapter of Genesis we read about the creation of the universe – God spoke it into existence if you can believe it – and we read about the creation of mankind. An interesting chapter, that one. The only information we’re given […]
Some word-people feel it’s their duty to correct you when you use a word improperly. These people are pedantic, pointy-nose dogs determined to give you a posterior probe, pretending it’s for your own good. I am not that sort of word-person. The people of my tribe believe words are colored with sparkling tints of nuance […]
More than 500 people have seen the earth from space and 12 have walked on the moon. Most of these people returned home strangely altered. Their families were the first to notice. In 1987 this phenomenon got a name. “The overview effect” refers to what happens when a person sees, firsthand, the Earth as a tiny, fragile ball of […]
We believe knowledge is freedom. We believe you can learn big things quickly when your instructor is experienced, passionate, organized and entertaining. We believe an expert can teach you – in less than a day – more than you can learn in 4 years of college. We believe traditional wisdom is often more tradition than […]
When each customer buys four and a half times the average amount of stuff per visit and you attract four times the average number of visitors, you make eighteen times as much profit. (4 x 4.5 = 18) If you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of convenience stores, you’re going to […]
You have a dream, a hope for the future. But are you willing to spend what it costs to achieve it, endure what is required of you and fight for as long as it takes? Unrelenting action is what turns starry-eyed daydreams into steely-eyed objectives. You say you have a goal. Let me look into […]
A person is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. They say, “One picture is worth a thousand words.” I say, “In 1985, after finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple Computer Human Interface Group adopted the motto, ‘A word is worth a thousand pictures,’ and a descriptive word […]
I had an interesting moment a couple of weeks ago. A client came to Austin for his annual marketing retreat and brought his top lieutenants with him. His company has a couple of hundred franchisees that do about a quarter-billion dollars a year. Everyone was anxious to hear my marketing strategy for 2016. “I need […]
You own a business. You believe in your company. You believe you deliver a better experience than your competitors. Is this confidence based on your intentions, your goals, your beliefs, your values and your personal commitment to your customer’s happiness? It is? Uh-oh. Judging yourself by your intentions isn’t a danger among friends, because a […]
Magenta. What color is that? It isn’t violet and it isn’t purple. And why isn’t it in the rainbow? Doesn’t the rainbow contain the whole color spectrum? The short answer is that magenta doesn’t actually exist. (Well, none of the colors actually exist, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. Magenta doesn’t exist in an […]
“I could’ve bought that building 5 years ago for $70,000. It’s worth half a million now.” “I could’ve been his partner in that business. He’s worth a fortune now.” “I could’ve…” This went on all day. My host believed I would be impressed that he was “connected” and “in the know,” but the only thing […]
Psychologist Carl Jung saw life as a journey on water. Above the waterline is the conscious mind, this place of sunshine and scenery that you and I call home. Below the waterline is the unconscious, a wet and moonlit world of symbols and meanings and metaphors on which we float like shadows along the upper edge […]
If your sales lead is one hour old, you’re about to make a cold call. In other words, you don’t really have a sales lead anymore. In fact, if that sales lead was generated online, your contact rate declines by 99 percent – meaning that you’ll reach just one in one hundred at the end of 30 minutes – […]
You can choose a dragon or you can wait until a dragon chooses you, but every happy person fights one. Our dragons give us purpose. Our dragons give us adventure. The problem with adventure is that we seldom realize how much fun we’re having until it’s over. When you’re having an adventure, you wish you […]
Dean Rotbart once told me that a person can do well without doing good. It took me a beat to grasp his meaning, but then it hit me and I’ve never forgotten it. “Doing well” is financial. It’s about you. “Doing good” is personal. It’s about others. And the difference you’ve made in their lives. […]
“Bonding” is falling in love with a company, a product, a spokesperson, an outlook, a belief system. This bond of love inevitably manifests itself in a tangible way. And then again. And again. A bonding ad is about the customer. A direct response ad is about the offer. Direct response ads trigger immediate action. Bonding ads do not. The results […]
Branding – bonding with a hero or a company or other imaginary character – is merely an entangling of identity hooks. We connect because we are alike. But where do we gather these identity hooks on which hang our self-definitions? “The music we listen to may not define who we are. But it’s a damn […]
I got some great news last week. A friend who read my Musings of an Old Ad Writer said to me, “You’re not old, you’re middle aged.” Woo-hoo! If he’s right, I’m going to live to be 114. During the years that I was, in fact, middle aged, I was too busy to have a […]
There are words used by young advertising professionals that I try desperately to avoid. Two of the most painful phrases for me are “unique selling proposition” and “branding.” When I was young, those phrases meant the same to me as they did to everyone else. But I take comfort in the words of Muhammad Ali, “The […]
Laughter brings escape from monotony. Sadness teaches us what is important to our heart. Commitment carries us through the dark hours, the dry places, the sad times. Enthusiasm, “God within,” opens our eyes to the possible. JP Engelbrecht says a business owner can learn a lot about managing groups of people by studying famous monarchs. “If you […]
You cannot instruct a person to have enthusiasm any more than you can instruct them to give birth to a redheaded child. The person must first be inspired. Inspiration is what you give them. Enthusiasm is what they give you. People inhale inspiration and exhale enthusiasm. They cannot give you enthusiasm until you give them inspiration. […]
Occasionally a client will send a spreadsheet of company statistics and ask me to comment on what I see. I usually look and see ambiguous statistics but I certainly don’t want to say that. Discussing business numbers with people is like discussing religion. No matter what you say, you’re unlikely to change their intrinsic beliefs, so […]
Whiners, blame shifters, indignant people, people with victim mentalities, online trolls, people who demand things and cheerless givers of “constructive criticism” are all herded into one decrepit old corral in my brain. That corral is a category in my mind. As these unhappy cows moan “moooo” I walk sadly away and think “dog food.” I […]
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 […]
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