When David faced Goliath, he wasn’t playing games. But when Bob Moog faced Hasbro and Mattel, his games and puzzles were all that he had. Bob has gone nose-to-nose with the world’s biggest players and found a way to beat each of them at their own game (pun intended). In this fun, fun, fun episode […]

The Mr. Haney compilation I promised you is below. To the right is Chat GPT’s response to the question Cedric Yau asked it after Cedric learned the premise of today’s MondayMorningMemo. Based on this answer, Chat GPT seems to be aware of its limitations.  HOWEVER, Cedric is one of those people who is highly aware […]

“It is not the offer you make that causes people to like and trust you, it is the person you are that makes people like and trust you.” (Ask a Wizard of Ads partner how a Character Diamond affects Customer Bonding.)

The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry mid-term and an actual answer turned in by a student. The answer by this student was so ‘profound’ that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well: […]

When two historians start talking, the conversation can skip across centuries like two little girls playing hopscotch. On this week’s episode of Monday Morning Radio, historian Maxwell Rotbart talks with historian Ron Shafer about how the future is looking a lot like the past. If Rod Serling were alive, he would say, “Consider if you […]

  February 29, 2024, my friend Brad Lawrence celebrated his 15th birthday. I took this photo of Brad in front of the Wizard’s Guest Cottage on the campus of Wizard Academy because IT IS THE ONLY TIME I HAVE EVER SEEN THE MAN WITHOUT A TIE. I’m pretty sure he even mows his lawn in […]

“We named this shirt after a guy who used to work in our office. You know the type, worked nights, Saturdays and Sundays. A vice-president by the age of twenty-eight. Then one day he just snapped. Poor Henry, I guess the growth got him. Last we heard he was living off 20-inch trout from the […]

  “Should this strike you as rather presumptuous on my part, you’re probably not just whistling Sinatra. On the other hand, the halls of publishing houses were not sufficiently insulated from the ongoing amphetamine pace of Manhattan, and while the prevailing physical and psychological hubbub, the busyness of it all, might actually be a fitting […]

Jack Heald performs for a group of his Wizard of Ads partners in the Atlanta hotel where all of us stayed last week. The next day, Tulani performed for us during lunch in Magnolia Hall, perfectly situated in the middle of magnificent Piedmont Park. The clip below is from Tulani’s performance of, “I Feel Good.”

  There are two ways to become invisible, and both are easily accomplished. To become invisible to yourself: get lost inside your own head. When you ignore other people, it never occurs to you that they can see you. This is how you become invisible in your mind. To become invisible to others: say what […]

    It took Viktor Frankl only 9 days to write  Man’s Search for Meaning in 1946. The English translation was published in 1959 and became an international bestseller. In a 1991 survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Frankl’s book was named one of the 10 most […]

Most people fail to say their own name correctly. Odd as that may sound, Laura Sicola explains her assertion in a YouTube video that is approaching 7 million views. Dr. Sicola earned her PhD in educational linguistics and has two decades of experience teaching good vocal habits to executives at companies including Comcast, IBM, and […]

  “For those interested, Brendan Ballou explores private equity in depth in his new book. ‘Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America.’ The book is filled with examples and thorough explanations of how these firms function.” – Joseph Ariel Saliba In the video clip below, Charles Duhigg, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Julie Creswell, and Louise Story […]

Following Hattie McDaniel’s 1940 Oscar win for best supporting actress as Mammy in Gone With the Wind, she was accused of being an Uncle Tom. McDaniel responded that she would “rather make seven hundred dollars a week playing a maid, than seven dollars being one.”  

“Do you want to be one of the world’s great ad writers? Don’t read ads. Read the poems, short stories and novels written by the winners of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes in Literature.” – Roy H. Williams, the Monday Morning Memo for Oct. 10, 2022

If this week’s ads are driving this week’s traffic, your ads are transactional.  If all your ads collectively are driving this week’s traffic, your ads are relational.

“I’ve never convinced a duck to stop being a duck, and I’ve never convinced a twitchy little bastard to stop being a twitchy little bastard.” – Roy H. Williams Q: Why did the wizard say “duck” instead of another animal, plant, or mineral? A: He wanted to connect his statement to a phrase you’ve heard […]

[I’ve been writing twice a month for Radio Ink magazine for more than a quarter century. The column you are about to read will be distributed to every radio station in North America – more than 10,000 of them  – when it is published in a few weeks. – RHW] Traditional wisdom would suggest that […]

Seven-hundred-thousand Americans per year submit a trademark application, but Andre Mincov says that number is far less than it should be. Prior to beginning his global consultancy specializing in trademarks, Andre worked at a law firm helping companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and Dell file and defend their trademarks. Today Andre rescues small and mid-size […]

With 3 BIG stores in Detroit, Tapper’s is a high-end jewelry store that sells all the finest brands. But when you hear their ads, you realize that Mark and his Dad are really fun people that you would love to know and hang out with. Stephen Semple is the Wizard of Ads partner in charge […]

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“With the partnership of the world’s largest network operators, we future-proofed our platform and did the legwork to get to intent-based, zero-touch service assurance. Drawing insights from our customers who have embraced converged infrastructure, hyperscale architectures, and digital transformation, we prioritized operational efficiency and manageability. This led us to develop a cloud-first performance assurance platform that is easily deployed and excels within these ‘massive multi’ environments – multi-vendor, multi-operator, […]

You’re in an elevator, moving from one level to another. Sometimes the elevator goes to a higher level.Sometimes it goes to a lower one.You won’t know until you get there. You are in that aimless time between one chapter of your life and the next.You are moving from a predictable past to an unpredictable future.You […]

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray. South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio. Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television. North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe. Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom. Brando, “The King and I”, and “The Catcher in the Rye.” Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen. Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye. We didn’t […]

      A Song of Galaxies The brightest lightin our sky at nightis called “the dog star.”You know I’m right. But different eyessee different skies.Look it up!I tell no lies. Those in otherhabitationshave their ownconstellations. They look upat other stars.These are ours.Those are thars. – Alfie the Elf,standing in the light of the golden […]

  Canis Major The great OverdogThat heavenly beastWith a star in one eyeGives a leap in the east.He dances uprightAll the way to the westAnd never once dropsOn his forefeet to rest.I’m a poor underdog,But to-night I will barkWith the great OverdogThat romps through the dark. – Robert Frost .

1957 The Year of the Catwas when it was at,but as for that,who knows where? Something in the airwas not really there.I do not care.Buyer beware. And so it goesinto your nose,this thing that flowseverywhere. Like I said,it was in the airlike radioor yes and no,or bad B.O.or Dr. Suessor something loose. Did I still […]

On a morning from a Bogart movie,In a country where they turn back time,You go strolling through the crowd like Peter LorreContemplating a crime.She comes out of the sun in a silk dress runningLike a watercolor in the rain.Don’t bother asking for explanations,She’ll just tell you that she cameIn the year of the cat. She […]

        “My name is Inigo Montoya.” “You killed my father…”     .

  Jacqueline Bouvier, age 7,at a horse show in 1936. It will be many years before she becomes famous as the First Lady of President JFK, then later the wife of the world’s richest man, Aristotle Onassis, following the assassination of JFK in 1963. This news photo was purchased from the archives of the newspaper […]

      Royal blue with gold braids. You gotta love Jimi’s jacket. Jimi died at 27. He never got any older than he was in this photo. Looking at him now – in this photo – you wonder if maybe he knew that. – Indy Beagle

The Light of Christmas, by Jim Serrett

Stuyvesant Curiosity Shop, 48 Third Avenue, Manhattan, by Berenice Abbott

The Wise Men, by Litvinov Daniil Olegovich of Ukraine Have you ever heard of the Gall-Peters Projection Map? It will bend your brain.

            Cour, 7 rue de Valence, by Eugène Atget (1857-1927)

On her journey to the corner office at Microsoft, Jane Boulware was hit on, spit on, and shot at. Literally. She says Microsoft was a viper pit known for eating its young. Jane was one of the top ten women at Microsoft by the time she turned 40, working for Steve Ballmer and bringing home […]

The Wise Men by Pablo Picasso, 1964, written on the back of an invitation to an art show.

  “The stupid will always be with you. Do not gloat over the misfortune that will inevitably follow them, though you are allowed a giggle or two.” – Gordon Atkinson, his English translation of the Pseudepigrapha of Delphi, to which Tom Grimes added, “All of us are stupid about something. Just some folks are a […]

    You read a really long Monday Morning Memo today, so I’m just going to show you a few interesting photographs and some unusual pieces of art, okay? – Indy Beagle PS: At the end of last week’s memo, the wizard promised to give you “Part Two” this week. Did you notice that last […]

Rebecca Davison was a banker – a financial advisor to multimillionaires – who went on to build a global following among female entrepreneurs, many of whom are important business leaders. Rebecca teaches them how to earn more money, but that’s not what makes them love her. Like many of you, Rebecca can feel what others […]

    “One of the peculiar things about bad moods is we often fool ourselves and create misery by telling ourselves things that simply are not true.” – David D. Burns

  Jeff Sexton wrote an eyebrow-jacking article in the Wizard of Ads partner blog this week. Read it, and Jeff will  explain to you why so many people believe they have a brand when they, in fact, do not.

    “You were in an ill-humor when you wrote that letter, and, no doubt, intended that I should be thrown into one also; which, however, I respectfully decline being done.” – A. Lincoln, Jan. 26, 1839  

  “From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who […]

“Lightning, come on out!” Lightning yelled back, “If you want my beer so bad, come on in.”  The policemen opted to wait until Lightning had finished his cooler full of beer. This is how they arrived at their conclusion: They did the math: Lightning was a 6’4″ schoolboy.They weighed the evidence: There were 400 pounds […]

Does it surprise you that a person could notice the strange addition to the cooking instructions on this package, feel the humanity and whimsy and sense of humor of the people who package this bacon, and then choose to buy this brand of bacon from now on because they feel a friendly connection to the […]

  “I grew up listening to Tom Jones. My mother was crazy about him. She went to so many concerts, he began to recognize her from the stage. I’m crazy for him, too, and whenever anyone dismisses him as a ‘dated pop icon,’ I show them this video. We grew up in the best days […]

The job of a Wizard of Ads writer is to extract true stories from clients, and then tell those stories in such a way that causes the public to immediately think of that person – and feel good about them – when they need what that person sells. These customer-bonding ads don’t seek to sell […]

Read More About Ryan Chute

“Never quit on your worst day.” That’s Lesson #1. It’s easy to remember and it’s valuable advice. But the story behind lesson #1 is what makes the lesson magical. Lesson #2 is equally insightful. “You can’t score goals if you’re not on the field.” Phebe Trotman retired as a soccer superstar to become a superstar […]

Would you rather (1.) fight a massive wildfire requiring the evacuation of more than 20,000 people, or (2.) bootstrap a start-up, with no outside investors, that will sell an untested app? Clive Savacool has successfully done both. Battling blazes for 25 years turned out to be excellent preparation for extinguishing the many firestorms faced by […]

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One year before he created the Laughing Buddha bronze for Toscanini, Caruso sketched this caricature of Toscanini. Enrico Caruso, by all accounts, was a delightful host and friend.

In 1909, Enrico Caruso created this one-of-a-kind bronze caricature of himself as a laughing Buddha for his friend Arturo Toscanini, the most acclaimed symphony conductor of the late 19th and early 20th century. Born into poverty, Caruso became a multimillionaire operatic tenor who so loved America that he paid his taxes on January 1st each […]

Arturo Toscanini with Enrico Caruso

Wizard of Ads Partner Ryan Chute sent the wizard this meme, having no idea he had already written the Monday Morning Memo about precisely the same observation. – Indy Beagle

And to make sure they took this college-days-flashback to its ultimate height, the name of this particular wine from SLOdownwines is “Sexual Chocolate.” Do you remember that scene from “Coming to America,” the 1988 movie starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, each playing multiple roles? (Juvenile humor, yes, but distinctly memorable.) – Indy Beagle

After 16 years as a wedding photographer, Ryan Erickson decided he was barking up the wrong tree. He was making money, but he no longer had passion for his work. So Ryan decided to try his hand at fine art photography, and now he’s thinking of going nationwide! His clients love how his fine-art portraits […]

George Bernard Shaw’s most timeless play was “Pygmalion,” which was rewritten as the immortal musical “My Fair Lady.”(video below) George Bernard Shaw said, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.” “To dream the impossible dream,to fight the unbeatable foe,to bear with unbearable sorrow,to […]

In 1905, a hostile group of reporters confronted him to say that his new play was “a superabundance of foulness.” Shaw tried to explain that his characters, “behave like human beings, instead of conforming to the romantic logic of the stage,” but the reporters were determined to brand him as deviant and immoral. Shaw responded, […]

According to the painter, what we see at the end of Quixote’s lance are orange carrots. When you understand the life story of this painter, it becomes obvious that the horse carrying Quixote is the media, and the carrots are the different things he did to bait the media into giving him headlines.

Charlie Munger was the billionaire businessman who built Berkshire Hathaway side-by-side with Warren Buffett. Just weeks before Munger died at age 99, Gregory Zuckerman of The Wall Street Journal spent 4 hours with Charlie in the billionaire’s Los Angeles home and came away with some life-changing insights. This week, roving reporter Rotbart interviews the last journalist to […]

“When I was a very young actor, there was an improvised scene between a husband and wife going on inside. They got carried away and they started throwing things and he threw a chair and it lodged in the doorway and I went to open the door and I just got my head round and […]

He was a 5-year-old boy in Dublin, Ireland, when America’s Civil War began. He died in 1950 at the age of 94, and throughout his life he saw himself as Don Quixote. He even painted this watercolor of himself as Quixote.

  During the Victorian era, women were expected to maintain a poised and dignified manner, and to obey their husbands.  George Bernard Shaw was troubled by the fact that men often made  use of “laws that gave him total control of his wife’s person – and her fortune”.  His play, ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ (1905) was […]

Side Hustles, Online Retailing, Military Contracts, Bras, Walt Disney, Firefighters, Business Exit Strategies, and Worms. Those were 8 of the Top 10 Episodes for MondayMorningRadio in 2023. This week, roving reporter Rotbart – with brilliant co-host and son, Maxwell – revisit the highlights of 2023 and share an audio preview of their new book, a […]

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder… he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”– Rachel Carson Perhaps the finest nature writer of the 20th century, Rachel Carson (1907-1964) is remembered […]

. A Monday Morning Memo Replay from 8 years ago: Nov 23, 2015 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 […]

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”– Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost, one of the Salterton trilogy Batiste is married to journalist, musician and best-selling author Suleika Jaouad. The two met as teenagers at band camp. On April 3, 2022, the couple revealed in an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning that they had […]

“But let’s be very attentive to this; the fact that we are capable of thinking, reasoning… does not mean that we have forgotten about emotions. The emotions are still here. Feelings are still here. And they are accompanying everything we do.”– Professor Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC