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 […]
Wal-Mart is the biggest company in America, followed by 3 oil companies and then Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway, Apple Computers, General Motors, and General Electric. Yep. Apple today is bigger than both General Motors and G.E. “Yippee, Skippy, call the press. Oh, you did already? And the press said Nash-Finch is number 500? Who the hell […]
Every employee has opinions about the advertising that represents their company. This is natural I suppose because those ads, by extension, represent the employee as well. And so they tell the boss what they think, “and all of our customers think that, too.” But if the development of successful advertising were as instinctive as most […]
“So there I was, first time in Iraq, officer in charge, first time under fire. I had been studying at the Air Force Academy for 4 years. I had a master’s degree in leadership. And I was scared. You know, the first time I heard the BOOMs, the sirens. And I was hunkered down by […]
You and I are aware of the superficial motives we have for the things we do, but only rarely do we consider the deeper motives that hide behind the superficial ones. Pennie and I have been discussing the future and how it revolves around you. Yes, you. Today, July 8, 2013, is the vortex […]
I’ve had a handful of memorable moments.Among them is a meeting with Zig Ziglar in 1986. Zig stood at a whiteboard and smiled at the 20 of us staring back at him with big eyes. Zig had written several bestselling books and created America’s most popular sales training program. The 20 of us were neophyte […]
In the world of bricks-and-mortar, 1. a spectacular building, 2. good signage and 3. an excellent location are the best advertising money can buy. In the binary world where Ones are bricks and Zeroes are mortar, 1. your website is your building, 2. your masthead is your signage and 3. your domain name is […]
A person capable of creating is happiest when they are creating. Artists create visual and auditory artifacts that affect our thoughts, moods and attitudes. Riddle-solvers perform feats of engineering and invention. Teachers create new understanding in the minds of their students. Entrepreneurs create businesses that offer us new and different experiences. Communicators create stories and […]
A radio commercial begins, “I’m Ronald Watersdown, and I’m here to tell you about a very important opportunity that I’m sure you won’t want to miss. It’s an incredible chance for you to…” What did those twenty-nine words make you see in your mind? Not much, right? But what about these? “Owl was neither wise […]
Laid side-by-side, a stick and a rope of the same length share a similar appearance. Likewise, rules and principles look alike even though they have virtually nothing in common. Rules are like sticks. You can prod people with them. You can threaten people with them. You can beat people with them. But you cannot lead […]
The principal benefit of creative thought is hope. New possibilities are electric, and hope is the light that shines from them. Creativity is the source of hope even when your hope is in God: “I don’t see a way out of this, but I’m betting that He does.” We depend upon God’s creative thoughts to […]
The smartest thing I ever did was drop out of college on the second day. What I wanted to learn, they couldn’t teach me, so I left to figure it out on my own. That was 37 years ago. A number of years later I wrote a series of New York Times and Wall Street […]
Radio Ink magazine, published by Eric Rhoads, is the principal trade publication of the radio industry. Today we examine a feature article I wrote for that magazine recently. In it, I speak directly to the frustrations of the account executives – the salespeople – employed by America’s 10,000+ commercial radio stations and the many hundreds […]
Quixote sees the turning of the windmill as the flailing arms of a giant that must be defeated. Peter Pan will remain young only if he can escape a tick-tocking crocodile that has swallowed a clock. In 1904, old Mrs. Snow spoke of her late husband to author J.M. Barrie on the opening night of […]
The Da Vinci Code was published in 2003, exactly 10 years ago. The book has been denounced as an attack on the Catholic church and sharply criticized for its historical and scientific inaccuracies, but that hasn’t keep it from selling more than 80 million copies in 44 languages. The story is fiction, marketed as fiction, […]
Fear is the bullet that eliminates happiness. Fear is the bullet that kills the dream. Fear is the assassin of success. Why not become bulletproof in 2 easy steps? 1. Make peace with the possibility of failure. 2. Amputate your sense of shame. “Failure is not an option” is the platitude of people who have […]
If you’re not being criticized today, then no one was listening when you spoke. Welcome to the time of the witch-hunt. This is that time when angry cyber-terrorists post incendiary online reviews and pretend their only motive is to protect the public. This is that time when corporate assassins take pleasure in shooting elephants from […]
I’ve never seen a business fail due to “reaching the wrong people.” So why does every business owner instinctively believe that “reaching the right people” is the key to successful advertising? Who, exactly, do you not want to know about you? Who isn’t qualified to repeat the good things they’ve heard about you? And when […]
Chandler Canterbury is a child actor with a dazzling future. Immediately following the world premiere of When Angels Sing, a not-yet-released movie young Canterbury made with Willie Nelson, Connie Britton, Lyle Lovett, Fionnula Flanagan, Kris Kristofferson and Harry Connick, Jr., Harry grabbed a microphone and told a funny story about his first encounter with Chandler. […]
If I had any sense, if I had half the brains God gave an aardvark, I’d talk about politics or religion and fewer people would be annoyed. But aardvarks look at me with pity because I’m foolish. My social filter is so misaligned that I’m going to share with you my thoughts about planning. “Plan your […]
Jeff says I have a confirmation bias, a strong attraction to information that reinforces my convictions and helps me prove my point. That makes sense. I’m an ad writer. Does anyone really want their ad writer to be unbiased? The job of the ad writer is to: 1. discover a persuasive perspective, and 2. develop […]
Is it wise to protect the ones we love from the hardships that taught us all we know? Hardship is the undisputed School of the Masters, but very few students seek admission. Education begins with memorization. Having learned all the theories, steps and rules, we parry and thrust against the light in a kind of […]
I think there should be something in science called the ‘reindeer effect.’ I don’t know what it would be, but I think it’d be good to hear someone say, ‘Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.’– Jack Handey The Reindeer Effect isn’t real. The Ikea Effect, however, is real […]
Things depend on how you look at them.Through what lenses do you examine possibilities? The first 2 lenses are intellect and emotion. Sometimes you use one, sometimes the other. This is normal. Intellect employs hard facts and cold logic. Emotion relies on soft intuition and warm connections. Will the first impression be made in the […]
Nothing sounds appealing. Have you ever had that feeling? You’re sort of hungry, but nothing sounds good. You want to have fun, but nothing sounds fun. So you drive to the bookstore but none of the books – not a single one of them – whispers for you to carry it to the cashier. You […]
A mirage is not a hallucination, but a misinterpretation.We see the sky reflected from the ground and we assume it to be water. But it isn’t. That reflection is caused by light passing through cold air that sits on a thin layer of hot air, heated by sun-soaked sand. 1. FaceBook, for business, is a […]
Wizard Academy exists to educate, equip and encourage small business owners, little people with dreams who face giant corporations with big bank accounts. Like the windmills of Quixote, these giants are often unaware and unfeeling of their challengers. Don Quixote was an average man, distinguished only by his beautiful dream. He called this creation of […]
A rich knowledge of history is better than creativity. Let me qualify that. A rich knowledge of history is better than creativity if your goal is to make money. The most profitable form of creativity is to repurpose the proven. Do you want to put together a group of colors that create a powerful effect? […]
We have, for the most part, the feelings we choose to have. Please don’t be angry with me if you prefer to be tragic. I do not deny you this choice. I deny only that you have no escape. Our feelings in the first moment are triggered by our circumstances. Happy news. Sad news. News […]
Use half as many words and they’ll hit twice as hard. Every writer knows it. Salespeople need to learn it. A few weeks ago I invested a day of training in the telephone staff of a client of mine and doubled their close rate as a result. “You’re working way too hard at it,” […]
When your friend says something interesting, write it down. Better yet, post it online and give your friend eternal life. I was whining to Rich Mann over a plate of sushi one day when he reminded me to shut up and be happy. Rich didn’t even look up when he said it. He just mumbled, […]
Today I’m going to tell you 3 new things you need to know about. My enthusiasm will probably make it sound like I’m giving you a sales pitch. Sorry about that. If you’re not in the mood, the tiniest motion of a finger will take you to a new and different place… You decided to […]
I recently spent a day with two lawyers who practice the same legal specialty. We’ll call them Nick and Ralph. They live on opposite sides of the country. They met at a conference and became friends. Nick read my books, attended Wizard Academy, and decided to go fishing for customers with a net. He put […]
Most of the choices we make have effects we did not anticipate. This is due to the Law of Unintended Consequences. “Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it.”– Rob Norton, author of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics Here’s an […]
Voltaire is often quoted as having said it, but he never did. It was actually Pierre de Beaumarchais in 1775, just a few months before Thomas and George and Ben and the boys wrote their scathing letter to England’s king. Beaumarchais was working on the second scene in the first act of The Barber of […]
An auction house is an island of cast-offs and misfits where the rejected and broken feel finally at home. I am speaking of the merchandise, of course, not of the people. Perhaps I am speaking of the people, as well. From the age of 18, Pennie and I have searched for buried treasure in auction […]
A hardback copy of Pendulum sent to the 12 addresses of your choice for just $96. Shipping and handling included; 12 books, 12 deliveries, the works. Wow. You’ve got at least a dozen friends worth eight bucks apiece, right? Michael Drew, co-author of Pendulum, is making this offer in celebration of his invitation to return […]
A wise man sees both sides of a matter. The fool sees only one. The origin of the word “wizard” is wise-ard. It means wise man. Nothing more. The wise-ards of the Christmas Story followed a star, had an adventure, made a discovery and leaped onto the pages of history. What did they talk about […]
We can listen much faster than we speak. Consequently, a listener’s mind will wander when we take too long to make a point. This isn’t new. What is new, however, is the current trend toward voluntary, rapid distraction. Defenders of this practice call it ‘multi-tasking.’ But brain-imaging studies reveal that ‘multi-tasking’ is merely the switching […]
Everyone wants to make the same three things,” the Princess said, “money, a name, and a difference. But our actions are dictated by the one we want most.” You can make a name for yourself – become famous – or you can make a lot of money in complete obscurity. Either way, people will consider […]
Most people believe in The Way Things Ought to Be. Others embrace The Way Things Are. Arguments, terrorism and war happen at the intersection of these Ways. “Here’s what you ought to do.” “That’s just not going to happen.” “Okay, then we’ll fight.” An even weirder, three-way intersection happens at The Way I Remember It, […]
Pennie and I were at the airport in San Francisco about to board a flight for home. I needed a book to read. I’d been thinking about the halfway points in Pendulum theory as well as pondering a phenomenon I’ve decided to call Information Saturation. Both are heady topics. I needed to take a break. […]
The pervasive fantasy in business today is that you can tweak your way to success. Tweakers believe you need only “monitor your metrics” to ratchet your way to the top of the mountain. “Hold your position, then make a tiny change and click up to the next level.” Tweakers find comfort in numbers, decimal points, […]
Travel agencies were eliminated as a business category when the Digital Age arrived. Likewise, encyclopedias found they were no longer needed. Soon we were opening the newspaper each morning to read headlines we already knew about. Newspaper doubled over in pain and fell to its knees. The Yellow Pages got dusty and catalogues quit arriving […]
More than 1,000 businesses will be featured in this book. Each will have fewer than 100 employees. On average, they’ll have been operating for at least 20 years. We’re going to ask them about their advertising. Research tells you what ought to work.We’re going to ask these businesses what actually worked.Actual experience is the highest […]
A schmuck falls off the balcony on the 30th floor. A putz is the guy he lands on. A putz is passively stupid; ridiculously unlucky. Could a company succeed with a name like Putzmeister? Could a company win if its logo was indistinctive and boring and literally gray? Putzmeister was founded by Karl Schlecht in […]
I am, by profession, a communications consultant. I craft strategies, write ads and buy media. My clients ask for my advice. They even pay me for it. Advice is dangerous to give. If you are thinking, “Yes, it’s dangerous to give advice because your advice might be wrong,” you probably haven’t worked full-time in a […]
Every “Me” cycle in society begins with: 1. a beautiful dream of freedom from restraint 2. a hunger for self-expression 3. a search for individuality Our last “Me” cycle began in 1963 and reached its zenith in 1983 when freedom from restraint had evolved into conspicuous consumption and individuality was being “self-expressed” through costumes, big […]
You wrestle with lions daily. Lions are powers outside yourself: circumstance and serendipity, fate and phenomenon, bad luck and good. A lion can oppose or assist you. It can be your enemy or friend. A gang of lions is called a pride. Interesting. Unlike lions, tigers are solitary. Your tiger is your own, inner ferocity: Determination. […]
June 25, 2012, 8:29 PM Step 1: Create a monster by networking 16,000 ultrafast computer processors. Step 2: Feed the monster 10 billion images chosen at random from YouTube videos. Step 3: See what happens. What Happened: The monster taught itself to recognize cats. “We never told it during the training, ‘This is a cat.’ […]
Jack became dull when he failed to free the beagle in his brain. You let your beagle romp and play, don’t you? Don’t you? The beagle in your brain connects nonlinear events – think of these events as a collection of dots – to reveal fantastic patterns. Intuition. Humor. Leap of Faith. These are just […]
“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.” – David Ogilvy A creative problem-solver consciously or unconsciously realizes the problem at […]
Courage might look like confidence to onlookers but confidence and courage are not the same. Confidence means you’re not afraid. Courage means you do your best even though you’re scared half to death. Courage does not rely on confidence. Courage relies on commitment. “It embarrasses me to admit that there have been seasons in my […]
Reality doesn’t exist; at least not in the way that we usually think of it. Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira writes, “Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses. We experience electromagnetic […]
Dave saw adventure where others saw only shadows because Dave is a creative genius who never forgot how to play. The mind wants closure, for everything to add up and make sense, for there to be no loopholes, paradoxes or remainders. Intellect wants to believe that it has the answers, that is sees beyond broken […]
Wendy Clark sponsored a trio of young protégés to attend this year’s annual Young Writer’s Workshop at Wizard Academy. While she was on campus with her crew, she said, “There really needs to be a book of helpful tips for start-up business owners. The E-Myth warns you that being a good housecleaner doesn’t necessarily mean […]
“Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers,” is a phrase I heard a lot as a kid. My school career began at Hilldale elementary in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Having been absent from that fair city since 1973, I Googled Muskogee to see what had changed in 39 years. As it turns out, not much. The person(s) who wrote the Wikipedia […]
Robert Pirosh died on Christmas Day, 1989, in Los Angeles. He was born in Baltimore in 1910. But prior to that Christmas Day in L.A., Pirosh taught screenwriting at the University of Southern California. He was considered a credible screenwriting coach because he had written the screenplays for Gathering of Eagles (1963) starring Rock Hudson […]
Roughly 400 years before the wise-ards followed their star to Bethlehem, a Greek physician recognized four basic styles of behavior, calling them Choleric, Phlegmatic, Melancholic and Sanguine in the mistaken belief that these observable patterns of behavior were triggered by excesses of certain bodily fluids. Today’s Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, DiSC, True Colors and The Behavior […]
If I could give you the gift of Curiosity, I would risk a great deal to do it. I would buy it for you illegally, inject it into your arm with a needle and watch as Life flowed into your eyes. I would do this for you because your future would brighten and your days […]
Joe Kraus was co-founder of excite.com in 1993. Today he’s a partner at Google Ventures, an angel investor at LinkedIn and on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Kraus says we live in a culture of distraction. Prior to the availability of smartphones, we accessed the internet an average of 5 times a day. […]
The person who achieves spectacular failure has at least attempted something bold. Failure is a temporary condition. Success is likewise temporary. Life, itself, is temporary. So quit hesitating. Do something. Mediocrity comes from having perfectly implemented tried and true, traditional wisdom. The outcome is the only thing that separates confidence from hubris. If your bold […]
1. Today’s reader is riddled with information hitting us from every side. 2. Traditional and online media assault our senses to the point of sensory shutdown.3. Consequently, today’s reader is strongly attracted to numbered lists.4. A numbered list promises a starting point, a conclusion, and milestones along the way.5. A numbered list contains the fewest […]
“Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.” – Maggie Tufu I agree with Maggie Tufu even though she’s a character in fiction. Dare to look closely at what our society admires. It will take your breath away. We’re a nation of addicts, craving that which […]
Fantasy and Science Fiction are alike in that each requires the creation of a complete new world. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Avengers and Planet of the Apes each occupies its own imaginary universe. Fantasy and Sci-Fi are great for entertainment but not so great for selling most products and services. The process of […]
The average person would rather be angry than bored. Anger is exciting. Likewise, love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of both is indifference. I’m not suggesting that you be angry all the time. I’m suggesting only that you care enough to take action. No, that’s not it either. I’m suggesting that you take […]
“You know me; I find a crowd all headed in the same direction and call it my parade.” – Roy Laughlin, April 26, 2012 Brother Laughlin uttered this phrase as he was telling me of his involvement in the development of two new daily radio shorts involving a couple of well-known celebrities. Living as […]
Alfred taught me never to be ruled by fear. I met Alfred when he took the first photograph of my family that didn’t include my father. Mom wanted a family photo, I think, to prove we were still a family. Alfred was married to Ella Mae, a friend of my mother’s from work. Ella Mae […]
She jumped from the window of a building on New York’s East Side on January 19, 1981. Her face was erased by the fall. I’m not sure what I was doing that day but I did not kill myself. No one knew her name so her body remained unclaimed until she was reported missing. She […]
Guilt is about what you have done. Shame is about who you are. I’ve always been attracted to people who are guilty, but unashamed. Guilt without shame is audacity, a special kind of courage. It’s what we admire in the little boy who shouted, “The king is naked! Right there in the middle of […]
He seems to have been crazy. Seems to have been. Bubbling, babbling in bits of broken English, Sam was a cantankerously crazy old man. But what he left behind was beautiful. He worked on it alone from 1921 to 1954, then signed the deed over to a neighbor and disappeared. Never came back. The Beatles put […]
How tall is your brand? As long as we’re on the subject of brand identity and reputation, how are brands created in the first place? Is a brand merely the sum total of all the things a company says about itself? Of course not. Ads do, of course, play a big part in branding. Brand […]
Elijah, according to the Bible, was a Tishbite. Google “meaning of Tishbite” and the first page of results will give you a glimpse of the grand sweep of opinions we have when it comes to things religious. Tishbite means “stranger” according to some sources but Wikipedia says Tishbe was a place, thus, “The […]
“‘Hunches,’ his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really just a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.” – The Alchemist, by Paulo […]
Before we begin, you need to know that a “3.0 frequency” is RadioSpeak for reaching the same listener 3 times. TSL means “Time Spent Listening” and PPM is “Portable People Meter.” Hi Roy, I’m sure that you receive this question often, but I didn’t find your personal response to it online. How do you believe […]
This isn’t what Richard Exley said last week, but rather what I took from it: If you want to be truly happy, 1. Commit to a cause greater than yourself. 2. Value people rather than things. 3. Give thanks for what you have instead of complaining about what you don’t have. 4. Celebrate the ordinary. […]
In 1605, Quixote’s fearsome giants were windmills and Dulcinea1 was his beautiful, impossible dream. “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 […]
My back is against the wall and I don’t know what to do. The vortex of this crisis is pulling me into a toxic blue quicksand of the soul. I struggle until hope is gone. The light is growing dim. I have no one to blame but myself. As I lift my weary […]
James Lipton asked Barbra Streisand the secret of her success. She responded by saying, “At the moment of commitment, the Universe conspires to assist you.” – September 8, 2003, while recording an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio that would air on March 21, 2004 Streisand was summarizing a quote usually attributed to Johann Wolfgang von […]
I love Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon for the same reason I love Norman Rockwell. The people in those worlds are quirky but loveable, flawed but happy, sincere but imaginary. When you think about it, Lake Wobegon is a lot like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, where the children are mischievous but good-hearted, racial tension is nonexistent and […]
“Two heads are better than one,” is often quoted but horribly wrong. Trust me, I know. Anything with two heads is a monster. “Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the […]
My original plan was to make today’s memo the sequel to last week’s memo about media buying, but I decided not to go to the trouble. You see, I’m convinced no one believes me. I wrote last week’s memo to warn you of the extraordinary dangers of using Gross Rating Points as a guide to […]
I’ve never seen a business fail because they were reaching the wrong customer. But I’ve seen hundreds fail because they were saying the wrong things. Most ads answer questions no one was asking. How did we Americans become so fixated on “targeting the right customer” in our advertising? That question has two answers. The […]
People today are different, less naïve, less gullible, less open to suggestion than in the past. Christopher Isherwood describes this difference perfectly: “To live sanely in Los Angeles or, I suppose, in any other large American city, you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist the unceasing hypnotic suggestions […]
1845: This is the year Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman will plant his final apple tree. Mark Twain is 10 years old, living the boyhood that will bring us Tom Sawyer. Florida will be added to the U.S. this year, raising the total number of states to 27. We think of life as being simpler, more […]
America contained about two and a half million people when we declared our independence in 1776. Today’s Portland, Oregon is bigger than that. The Constitution (1787) empowered every citizen who was white, male and a landowner. Minorities, women and poor people? Not so much. America was unlike Europe in that we didn’t divide our population […]
Every person is a collector, I think.Businesspeople collect money. Travelers collect places.Competitors collect shining moments. Insecure people collect conquests, panties hanging from the bedpost.My own collection consists of curiosities, tokens of moments nearly forgotten; captured glimpses of interesting lives. I’m not certain what this says about me but I like to think it says I’m […]
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