A distinctive brand identity system requires consistent visual, verbal, and experiential elements applied across every touchpoint. Wizard of Ads for Essential Services builds these systems by defining core positioning first, then codifying logo, tone, and messaging rules that guarantee instant recognition and customer trust.

Brand systems demand five sequential steps.

1. Visual framework,
2. Verbal guidelines,
3. Consistency rules,
4. Application standards, and
5. Governance, applied uniformly across every touchpoint.

A distinctive brand identity system requires strategic alignment across every visual and verbal touchpoint—logo, color, typography, and messaging—unified under one narrative. By building these systems on neuroscience-backed memory triggers rather than me-too advertising, growing companies scale flexibly while staying instantly recognizable, distinctive, and unforgettable to prospects at their exact moment of need.

Key Takeaways

• A Brand System provides visual and conceptual frameworks that ensure consistent communication across all organizational touchpoints.
• Strong brand identity includes five key elements: name, logo, color scheme, typography, and cohesive design elements.
• Distinctive brands communicate a unified story, mission, and personality that resonates deeper with consumers than product features alone.

Why Do Most Brand Identities Fail To Stick?

Roughly 10,000 advertising messages compete for attention in front of the average American every single day. Weak or generic identities disappear into that noise before a prospect ever registers them. Growing companies rarely lose because their product is inferior; they lose because nothing about the brand lodges in memory.

Advertising itself is not neutral. Done well, it shapes what prospects think and what they want, turning attention into demand. A poorly built brand identity squanders that lever entirely, leaving spend on the table instead of building recall.

Is a strong brand identity really necessary for a growing company?

Necessity, not luxury, describes where strong identity now sits for companies scaling past their first few years. Founders who treat brand-identity-design as optional discover that competitors with clearer positioning out-earn them and acquire customers more cheaply.

What happens when identity stays inconsistent?

Inconsistency costs money in measurable ways. Companies with consistent, well-articulated identities outperform competitors by 20 to 30 percent in revenue growth. Their customer acquisition costs run 40 percent lower than businesses stuck with unclear branding. Three failure patterns show up repeatedly among growing companies:

• Sameness with competitors — messaging blends into the category instead of standing apart from it
• Inconsistent execution — visuals and voice shift across channels, forcing prospects to re-learn the brand each time
• No process for how-to-create-brand-identity work — decisions get made ad hoc rather than through a repeatable framework

None of these failures stem from bad luck. They stem from treating identity as a logo project instead of a strategic system built to survive 10,000 daily distractions and still get remembered at the moment of need.

What Is Brand Identity?

Visual and symbolic elements define brand identity. The marks, colors, and cues a company uses to represent itself in the market. Marketing leaders who treat identity as "just a logo" leave money on the table. A name alone rarely earns trust before a purchase decision gets made.

Concrete assets build that identity, not vague impressions. Name, logo, color palette, typography, and design elements work together as a system. Each piece reinforces the others rather than standing alone. Founders scaling a growing company need every asset pulling toward the same recognition, or the brand fractures across channels.

Identity carries more than a look, though. Informative advertising — a facts-and-figures method of proving to an audience why a product or service matters. Depends on identity to land those facts with credibility. Without a consistent identity behind the message, even accurate claims struggle to stick in a crowded market.

What should a brand identity include?

A working identity includes:

• A name that's easy to say, spell, and remember
• A logo built for recognition, not decoration
• A color scheme applied consistently across every touchpoint
• Typography chosen for legibility and personality
• Supporting design elements, icons, imagery, patterns that reinforce the whole

Why does brand identity matter before choosing colors or fonts?

Leaders must decide first what the brand most wants to build: money, a name, or a difference. That decision shapes every element that follows. Skipping it turns brand-identity-design into guesswork, and guesswork rarely produces distinctiveness that scales.

Understanding how to create brand identity starts here, with purpose defined before pixels get chosen. In-house brand managers who reverse that order end up decorating a strategy that was never built in the first place.

What Separates A Brand Identity From A Brand System?

Brand identity functions as the visible signature of a company — the name, mark, and story a customer recognizes. A brand system, by contrast, provides the conceptual and visual framework that lets an entire team communicate that identity the same way, every time. One is the face; the other is the operating manual behind it.

Confusion between the two costs growing companies consistency. A logo without a system becomes a suggestion, not a standard. Every designer, vendor, and new hire interprets it differently. That drift shows up in mismatched colors, inconsistent messaging, and a brand that feels different depending on who built the last touchpoint.

Is a brand system just a style guide?

No. A style guide covers fonts and colors. A brand system goes further, defining both the visual and verbal elements of a company. Voice, tone, imagery, and language rules. As a comprehensive set of guidelines that keeps every touchpoint consistent, from a website to a service van.

Does a small team need a full brand system?

Team size does not limit the need for structure. Wizard of Ads for Essential Services operates with a lean team, yet governs identity work across a wide roster of client essential home service brands. A focused, disciplined group proves that scale comes from process, not headcount. The system, not the staff count, carries the consistency forward as a company expands into new markets.

Why Does Distinctiveness Beat Merely Being Different?

Distinctiveness earns a permanent place in memory; novelty for its own sake earns a shrug and disappears within days. The ads that survive for decades follow a specific, engineered formula built by skilled advertising strategists, not random creative flourishes. Random weirdness fades fast. A deliberate, story-driven brand identity compounds in value with every impression.

Populations prove this pattern reliably. Ask a room full of strangers to name their favorite commercial. The same handful of ads surface again and again. That overlap signals something important: genuine distinctiveness is rare, and rarity is exactly what drives outsized recall. Difference alone, a brighter color, a louder jingle, rarely produces that shared memory. Distinctiveness does.

What makes a brand identity memorable instead of just different?

Memorable brands communicate a cohesive story, mission, and personality rather than a features list. Companies chasing "different" often bolt on quirky visuals without a strategic backbone. The effect fades once the novelty wears off. Effective brand-identity-design ties every visual and verbal choice back to a single narrative thread. Recognition builds instead of resetting with each new campaign.

How long does it take to build a lasting brand identity?

Legendary brand identities never happen overnight. They require careful planning, sequential decisions, and a willingness to reject the first "different-enough" idea that surfaces. Founders and brand managers who understand how to create brand identity systems that scale treat the process as infrastructure, not a one-time design sprint.

The distinction between different and distinctive shows up clearly in practice:

• Different: a one-off visual gimmick with no strategic throughline
• Distinctive: a consistent story, mission, and personality repeated across every touchpoint
• Different: recall that fades once the novelty wears off
• Distinctive: recall that compounds with every additional impression

Growing companies that mistake difference for strategy end up rebuilding their identity every few years, losing the compounding memory advantage distinctiveness delivers.

What Five Steps Build A Scalable Brand System?

Five sequential moves separate a memorable market leader from a forgettable competitor: research, strategic choice, identity design, team alignment, and touchpoint consistency. Growing companies lose customer loyalty and market share the moment their messaging turns generic or scattered across channels. A strong, consistent brand-identity framework prevents that erosion and gives a crowded market a reason to remember one name over the rest.

Step one starts with analysis, not artwork. Marketing leads examine how existing advertising already shapes audience thoughts and desires before a single guideline gets written. Skipping this diagnostic stage produces a brand system built on guesswork instead of evidence.

Step two forces a decision: informative or persuasive advertising. These two approaches move consumer behavior in different directions, so the choice shapes every later asset. In-house brand managers who make this call deliberately, rather than by default, keep their creative output aligned with actual business goals.

What comes after the strategic choice is made?

Step three translates strategy into visual and verbal form through brand-identity-design. Step four brings in structure: a compact, ten-person team model keeps research, writing, and launch phases tied to one coherent strategy instead of fragmented across departments. Smaller, tightly coordinated teams close gaps that typically appear when identity work passes through too many hands.

Step five locks in consistency across every customer touchpoint. Founders following a disciplined how-to-create-brand-identity process treat this final step as ongoing maintenance, not a one-time launch event.

• Analyze current advertising's effect on audience perception
• Choose informative or persuasive messaging deliberately
• Design the visual and verbal identity system
• Align a small, focused team across every phase
• Maintain consistency across all customer-facing touchpoints

Skipping any single step below leaves gaps competitors exploit within a crowded market. Companies that complete all five build the kind of recognizable, trusted identity that converts first-time buyers into loyal customers.

Building a distinctive brand identity system demands strategic clarity, disciplined consistency, and authentic storytelling rooted in your market position. The work requires aligning every customer touchpoint—from messaging to visual language to employee experience—around a coherent brand promise. When executed with intention, this foundation transforms how prospects perceive your business at the moment of need, anchoring memory and trust in ways that generic competitors cannot match. The result is a brand that endures.

FAQ

What are the five steps to building a brand identity system?

The five sequential steps are visual framework, verbal guidelines, consistency rules, application standards, and governance applied uniformly across every touchpoint to create a distinctive, memorable identity.

What are the key elements of a strong brand identity?

Strong brand identity includes five key elements: name, logo, color scheme, typography, and cohesive design elements, all unified under one narrative that resonates beyond product features alone.

Does brand consistency actually impact revenue growth?

Yes, companies with consistent, well-articulated identities outperform competitors by 20 to 30 percent in revenue growth and run customer acquisition costs 40 percent lower than businesses with unclear branding.

You're sick of your ads. Your audience hasn't seen them yet.

That is the entire problem, and it's costing businesses millions in prematurely abandoned campaigns, reset brand signals, and marketing energy aimed at the wrong target entirely.

In this episode of Advertising in America, Michael Torbay and Chris Torbay take different doors to the same room. Mick's argument: your good ads need to run longer than you're comfortable with. Chris's argument: the individual ads should stay fresh, but the advertising idea underneath them should never change.

Both are right. And the distinction between the two is what separates businesses that build real brand equity from businesses that keep starting from zero.

The conversation goes deep into why the client is always sick of the ad before the audience has registered it once, what peer-reviewed wear-out research actually says about how long ads stay effective, why the new marketing hire who needs to "make their mark" is the single biggest threat to any great campaign, and how to tell the difference between a campaign that's bored and one that's actually broken.

If you've ever been tempted to kill a campaign that was working, or suspect someone on your team is doing it for the wrong reasons, this episode is the intervention you didn't know you needed.

Episode Highlights:

• Your Audience Hasn't Started Counting Yet: Why the client's clock and the customer's clock are never synchronized and what happens when you act on the wrong one.
• The Science of Wear-Out: What peer-reviewed research from the Journal of Advertising Research actually says about emotional ads vs. rational ones, and which outlasts which by a significant margin.
• Ads vs. Advertising: The distinction between the episode and the show. Mac vs. PC ran 66 individual spots. The advertising never changed.
• The CMO Tenure Trap: Average CMO tenure is 4 to 4.5 years. Great campaigns take 5 to 7 years to compound. The runways don't match, and the industry pays for it.
• Bored or Broken?: One question to ask before you change anything, and what to do depending on the answer.
• Famous Campaigns Don't Die of Natural Causes: From Skittles to Nike to Allstate's Mayhem, why the brands we still talk about stayed the course while everyone else chased novelty.
• The New Marketing Hire Problem: Why the fastest, easiest, most visible win for a new CMO is to kill the campaign that was just starting to build real equity.
• The Mona Lisa Test: The Louvre didn't change the exhibit because the security guards were bored.

🎧 Hit play if you've ever been tempted to kill a campaign that was working or suspected someone on your team was doing it for the wrong reasons.

👉 Is your campaign bored... or broken? That's the only question that matters before you change a single word.

On this episode of Advertising in America, we're asking the question: when is it time to change your ads?

When is it time to change your ads? Two possible answers. Leave them up longer than you think. Or change them up more often than you think.

How often do you change your ads? You change them all the time. How often do you change your advertising? Not nearly as often as you think. Hardly ever. You want your ads to be fresh and your advertising to be consistent.

Think long and hard about how good your ads are. If they're compelling, entertaining, and the sort of messaging that makes you turn the volume up rather than down when you hear it on the radio or see it on TV, leave that sucker on a little longer.

It's like asking the security guards at the art gallery how often we should change the exhibit. They've been standing here looking at the damn Mona Lisa for days on end. They're going to suggest we change the art on the walls every week. But the general public is still perfectly happy to keep coming in and seeing it. It is far from burnt out.

Ryan Chute: On this episode of Advertising in America, we're asking the question: when is it time to change your ads? And I'm asking the question: why are we doing a podcast that could have been an email? Turns out the Torbay twins have some special feelings about the duration of ads on the air, and that if we just did a podcast about it, we could save them having to type out their minging and whinging every time they get asked a simple question. And to leave an interesting topic, we'll be sure to double the cussing for your entertainment. Up first, Mick is here to explain why you get bored of your commercials far sooner than your audience. Mick?

Mick Torbay: When is it time to change your ads? Two possible answers: leave them up longer than you think or change them up more often than you think.

In my world, it's the first answer, and the you in this case is the client, the business owner. The client generally thinks we should change the commercials more quickly than we do because the client is sick of them. But this isn't actually fair, you see. The client read the script months ago and went through all the permutations of the copy, approved the final version, might have been sitting in the recording studio or on set when the commercial was made, watching it over and over again- rough cuts, better cuts, final cuts- and all of this is before the consumer saw it once.

Sure, you're sick and tired of it, but the audience hasn't even seen it yet. So yeah, you need to give the viewers a chance to spend a little time with it. The time you spent already doesn't count. And also remember, when you were poring over the script or watching those first edits, you were looking carefully with a critical eye. Your audience is doing no such thing. It might not even register the first couple of times they hear it. So even when your media buyer shows you that the listeners are getting exposed to it, that doesn't mean they're as invested in this thing as much as you were. That's why we run it over and over again.

There's a mathematical formula that we use at The Wizard of Ads to ensure it's on for just the right amount of time, and it varies with the media buy, so it's not of any use to you here. But as a rule, you want people to hear it a bunch of times. But how much is too much? On the topic of too much, all you have to do is look at our friends in the large agency space.

They live in the world of the 13-week flight. Now, I don't know how long a Budweiser ad should run, but I know that 13 weeks is too long. My guess is that they run them that long because they've always run them that long, and the union pays based on how many 13-week runs they run. And of course, the fact that they spend half a fucking million dollars to make a 30-second commercial will also factor into why they don't change them every month or so.

So even if the viewers are no longer laughing at the jokes, that's how often they change them. But there's another variable to consider. Is your commercial any good? Is it boring? Is it shitty? Because if it brings nothing to the table except the same crap as everybody else, then the last thing you wanna do is run that same shitty ad over and over again. The least you could do is rephrase it a bit. I remember years ago, I had a meeting with a client. They were a mortgage broker, and I can't remember how I got the meeting because he didn't want new ads. In fact, he told me he already had the perfect radio ad, and he even played it for me. I'm gonna play it for you. He won't be annoyed because after all, it's perfect.

Mick Torbay: And that was the perfect ad. So perfect, in fact, that he ran the same fucking ad for literally two decades. Why change it when it's perfect? If I were this guy, I'd change it a lot because that is a shitty commercial. Just a list of who their potential customers might be. A really long list.

So think long and hard about how good your ads are. If they're compelling, entertaining, and the sort of messaging that makes you turn the volume up rather than down when you hear it on the radio or see it on TV, leave that sucker on a little longer. If it's just, "Here's who we are and here's what we sell," change your ads early and often.

Ryan Chute: Mick, you seem to have some strong feelings about the Savers mortgage ad. Like sarcastic feelings, but feelings. I'm left wondering about the parking situation and whether or not their experienced, courteous staff cares about my needs, though. Chris, take it from here.

Chris Torbay: How often do you change your ads? You change them all the time.

How often do you change your advertising? Not nearly as often as you think. Hardly ever. You want your ads to be fresh and your advertising to be consistent. Most people who have tried advertising and been unsuccessful tell the same story. They finally tried running a radio ad after the sales guys hounded them for long enough to try advertising on their station.

So they wrote one ad, probably full of all the same table stakes messages that are in their competitors' ads, and ran it for thirteen weeks. And when their business didn't magically quadruple, they decided advertising didn't work. Or perhaps the ad did work, so the next year they ran it again, and again the year after that.

After spending so much money to make that one ad, "Hey, let's run the TV ad again." And so people got sick of it and stopped paying attention. The anecdotal feedback went from, "Hey, cool, I saw your ad," to, "Yeah, I saw your ad again."

If you choose to do advertising, you don't need an ad. You need to become an advertiser.

You write an ad, then another ad. You make me want to know what's coming in the ad that comes next. You make me interested in your campaign as much as you do in any single ad. You make me think of you as the brand I know and trust in this category, not the guys with that one ad.

Taylor Swift didn't write a song and become a superstar. She wrote dozens of songs, and then an album, and then more songs, and then more albums, and then toured, and then started working with better producers and wrote even better songs. Now, when the tour comes to town, you say, "Let's go. I like her stuff."

And just like Tay-Tay has another song ready to release-

Whenever the current song starts dropping on the charts, you need to keep your ads fresh. Run them at a decent weight, and when people have seen them about a dozen times, give me a new one.

But your advertising idea, the campaign that brings all those ads together in a way that is unmistakably you, don't touch it. And if you're new on the account, on the client side or the agency side, ask yourself if you're changing it because it needs to be changed or because you need something to do to justify your existence.

There is no greater threat to the longevity of a great idea than the turnover among the marketing people involved. No one is closer to the advertising than the marketing people. They get sick and tired of it way before the general public does. They went to the meetings, the production, the edit, the research. They burn out on this stuff way before the average listener does. It's like asking the security guards at the art gallery how often we should change the exhibit. They've been standing here looking at the damn Mona Lisa for days on end. They're gonna suggest we change the art on the walls every week.

But the general public is still perfectly happy to keep coming in and seeing it. It is far from burnt out, and the The Louvre has built a global brand on being the place with the Mona Lisa, still to this day. Keep your ads fresh and your advertising consistent.

Ryan Chute: Chris, I'm uncomfortable with you referring to Taylor Swift as Tay-Tay. Henceforth, you shall refer to her as Miss Swift or Mrs. Kelce. Find your dignity, man.

We'll be right back after these messages.

Ryan Chute: Okay, we're back. So the boys did it again, different door, same room. Mick says, "Leave the good ones up longer than feels comfortable." Chris says, "Keep the ads fresh, but never touch the campaign." Both of them are saying change the execution, not the idea. Let's pull this apart.

There are three things I want to dig into today with the Peanut Gallery. Number one, Mick, you said that the client is sick of the ad before the audience has seen it once. Tell us about that.

Mick Torbay: It's just the nature of the production process. We're pitching scripts to our clients, say, in September that are not going to run until January.

Because by the time the script is approved, and we're moving into production, and we're recording, we're shooting, we're editing, we're approving again, there's many levels of approval, and by the time it actually gets to, of the air, literally a third of a year can go by, and the client is experiencing the ad over and over again.

Let's say the ad is funny.

Chris Torbay: They're not laughing at the jokes anymore. The joke has long since gone stale, exactly.

Mick Torbay: They're not finding it hilarious when they hear the ad. So it's easy after a couple of weeks, and then now they're driving to work, and now they're hearing the ad, and they're like, "Okay, all right.”

Chris Torbay: “I bet you people are getting sick and tired of this.”

Mick Torbay: “We've made our point here. Like, when are we going to move this along?"

The consumer has barely registered this at all. So you have to think in terms of what the consumer's experience is, which is, "I barely noticed it. I have to hear it several times before I start to notice it. Then I hear it, then I say, 'Ah, it's pretty funny.' And then around about the fifth or sixth time, it's like, 'Hey, honey, sh- sh, listen to this one. It's hilarious.'"

So we need to understand that we are not the consumer, and the only opinion that matters is the consumer. Since you can't think like a consumer, you can just behave like one.

Chris Torbay: And the only people who have listened to this ad over and parsed every single thing that's in it, and whether it says this and whether it says that, the only people who've done that are the people who were in the meetings.

The consumer is hearing it in the mix, in between music and sports and news updates and other things like that. And if you've written an interesting enough ad, sometimes you're not going to get all those jokes the first time, the second time, the third time. It's the fourth time where you go, "Oh, yeah, that's funny. I never noticed there's that part where he does this at the end,” that actually refers to those little Easter eggs or things that are in it. If it's a well-structured ad, those things don't come out until you've heard it a few times, and you're sick and tired of them, but they're just getting it for the first time.

Ryan Chute: Robert Heath, in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2009, alluded to that in his peer-reviewed work around the exposure and the emotional engagement of the person watching television. In this particular one, he was talking about how, when people are watching TV, and particularly TV ads, they're at a level of low attention, that peripherally almost everything else is going on. They're folding the laundry. They're making dinner. They're looking at their phone. They're driving to work. Two screens are a normal thing nowadays as we start to see the evolution of attention being pulled in multiple directions.

Chris Torbay: The only people with full attention are the client-

Mick Torbay: It's the client who's like, "Oh, it's our agent. It's our ad on the end."

Chris Torbay: Because they're all in the meeting to discuss this very ad, so they are actually evaluating it in a different mental frame of mind than the average viewer is receiving it.

Ryan Chute: And think of it like you're paying attention as a business owner at 100%, and the viewer is watching it at 5%. So it needs multiple hits. Which is why you need to- so 5% just to get your build-up.

Chris Torbay: Some of those 5 percentages until you get to something effective.

Ryan Chute: Exactly. That's excellent. Now, some of the other research that's come out around this: the Journal of Marketing Research by Calder and Sternthal, the TV commercial wear-out and an information processing view, classic peer-reviewed wear-out study. So this is all kind of verified research, but it's also about people just wearing out or the ad starting to get stale or tiring; found that wear-out is real but it's gradual, and emotionally engaged ads wear out much slower than rational, feature-led ones. So, if you have an incredibly boring ad, you're going to have to change it up much faster. Why don't you just go ahead and say the ad that we played earlier?

Chris Torbay:  See, always the one everybody loves to hate is Kars4Kids, because the jingle just- oh, goodness- is just crazy. It's just nuts. It's a great musical hook. You actually get beef, it's like people would they would look forward to that one.

You can watch, you could hear Claire Feller

Ryan Chute: Yeah, she's adorable and endearing.

Mick Torbay: She's still alive today. She's 180 years old now.

Ryan Chute: Wow, that's fantastic. I think she might be a Jedi. Or a Sith. We don't know. So a great ad can run far longer than a bad one, so the question of when to change isn't just about time; it's about the quality or impact quotient of the actual ad itself.

Chris Torbay: Which is why the discussion flips when you're talking about a campaign, right? You can keep running the same campaign, and we've talked a bunch of times about I'm a Mac, I'm a PC or Mayhem for Allstate. You can keep going back to that because it's funny every time. Every time the Mayhem guy turns up, he's in another form of chaos because that's who he is.

Chris Torbay: We look forward to another one of those, or you look forward to another Justin Long being snooty to the poor PC guy. You can just keep coming. I look forward to going back and going back. So, suddenly the consistency is stronger and staying with the campaign is stronger, but it's because you're actually refreshing the individual ads.

Ryan Chute: In and around page 120, 122 in Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads™, we talk about a very specific repetition as well, which ties into impact quotient and total reach. And ultimately, reach ends up being a quotient of your budget. But repetition is excruciatingly important. You're going to have to run the ad more often if your customers, prospects, or your audience are barely hearing it as well. You could run it for half a year if your frequency was wrong or your repetition was wrong, but you're missing the mark on so many other things that you're actually better off to get your repetition, and to shorten the length of that ad run.

Mick Torbay: And I wonder how long or how often businesses are doing it because that's the way it's always been done. Where for decades people would run TV ads for 13 weeks and then sometimes another 13 weeks. The question of how long an ad should run has literally run the gamut from the early days of radio, when radio ads were done live. So it ran once like this. They might have used the same script, you might reread it again tomorrow, but it wouldn't be the same. And they would literally make that one ad live, and so it would run once like that.

And now, I literally got an email today that said that a commercial, a national commercial that my son was in that has run in the United States for one year, is now being picked up for a second year. So it's now going to run for two years in America, and I think to myself, "It's a good ad; there's no question. Maybe we can run it if we can. Maybe it's running now. If we can't, it's not." I don't know what the rules are, but the point is it's on YouTube. It's not a secret. The point it's a good ad, but my goodness, two years. Write a new freaking ad, guys.

Chris Torbay: Now, to their credit, they're probably not running it at the frequency that we would say, right? Where you want to see it three times a week for however many weeks. Almost certainly. If they're running it at that kind of weight, no, they're not going to.

Mick Torbay: And I also have a fairly good idea of how much they spent to make it just based on counting the production trucks, which was 22. So if you were there when they were making this ad for buns, you'd think that they were making a feature film. The catering was 75 crew, 25 agency people. It was just ridiculous, the amount of people there.

Chris Torbay: So we're going to run that ad for a while.

Mick Torbay: So they're going run that ad for a while, but I would still question: is that the right thing to do?

One of the things we do is we will sacrifice budgets like that- in order to make more commercials a year, running maybe eight commercials a year instead of one, or one every two years. But we can change the campaign, change the commercial so it can be a campaign, and the consumer gets to see the next chapter, and can enjoy it.

Chris Torbay: There's another, what happens to these characters again? Or how does this situation affect another family, or whatever the premise of the ad is. Let's do it again, and do it in a different place and a more interesting place and have me look forward to the next installment. And that's the idea of keeping the advertising idea consistent, the campaign idea, so that I know you as the brand that believes this, or the ad that does, the company that thinks this way, because I see you do it five different ways in five different contexts.

That sets up a sense of who you are as a brand, whereas one ad is entertaining for as long as it's entertaining, and then it's not entertaining anymore.

Ryan Chute: And Chris, this goes back to your whole thing about ads versus advertising. And it makes me think of a blockbuster film during the summertime versus a sitcom that runs for 20 years. What is the right play? When we're trying to embed and entrench a deep bonding to the characters, and we have a minute at best to create that bond, what's the distinction?

Chris Torbay: I think the way you do it is that minute is only- it's not a minute; it's if we're doing 12 spots a year, it's 12 minutes. So now we do have time to have you get to know these characters and what they represent from the brand, as opposed to the average person, and it's more than that.

Mick Torbay: And it's more than that if they hear it more than once.

Chris Torbay: And the average person who's running a 30-second commercial read by the announcer, who's not a character that you know and trust, then that's, that makes a big difference.

Ryan Chute: But it's, and you start to think of the GEICO Gecko. You start to think of Mac versus PC, Bobby and Mr. Jenkins. These were campaignable stretches where you started to create a relationship, even if it's a parasocial relationship, with the characters to know, like and trust them. Which is ultimately the goal that we're trying to achieve prior to them needing what you have to sell.

Mick Torbay: Bobby and Mr. Jenkins was a 30-second sitcom (Morris-Jenkins). That ran all year round. It was television. They were making television. They were making a television program, which was only tangentially about air conditioning, which is what the guy sells. But in fact, what it was, is it was an interesting little moment between two interesting and disparate characters who shouldn't be together and yet somehow are, which is always interesting, because you don't know how they're gonna react 'cause the characteristics are so they don't go together, and yet they're stuck in this truck.

Mick Torbay: But that made for interesting television, and you didn't have to have a broken air conditioner to want to watch the next one.

Chris Torbay: And it said something about the character of the company, because they each represented a facet thereof, and so it built up in you a sense of what this organization was like, and how they behaved, and what they believed, and what you could expect from them if they were to ever come to your house.

Mick Torbay: Absolutely.

Chris Torbay: By building that up over episode after episode.

Ryan Chute: And Ryan's fun fact: Jenny Romanak and Byron Sharp, The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, How Brands Grow Part Two, the second book in Byron Sharp's category from Oxford University Press, 2016, and Romanak's Building Distinctive Brands in Oxford 2018. Again, peer-reviewed research that talks about how brands actually grow, and it's the distinctive brand assets. The opportunity for us to embed certain things, jingles, sound signatures, sound logos, characters, colors, this kind of ongoing recurrence of consistency, that allowed us to help people make the decision that they were the ones that are familiar, trustworthy, endearing, empathetic, competent. All of the things that brand assets can't do if they don't get noticed.

It's one thing to have a truck wrap that is every other truck wrap, and even if it's clever and unique and colorful it means nothing without any kind of auditory and visual signature behind it that actually tells a story, consistently changing these things up to create novelty is a big way that Broca's areas of the brain captures that information and allows it back into, to club imagination, where you get the chance to be selected when it comes time to buy the thing.

Chris Torbay: But some of those- this is classic branding, those things build up over time. If you think of the early Apple commercials, it was people dancing. They still do it the really tight close-ups of the phone spinning in high-definition graphics, or the watch, or the whatever, and it kind of rotates and whatever. They have a look about them, but it's after seeing 10 of them that you go, "This has got to be an Apple commercial," because that's how they show their product. You look at the Skittles campaign, which has been running for years. It's always a completely absurd situation, and then it ends with, "Skittles," "Eat the rainbow. Taste the rainbow." They always change the word, right? It's always, "Barf the rainbow. Taste the rainbow." They always change the line. But it can come from- there's a look about them, and there is a vibrancy about them, and it only starts to look like that when you've seen 10 of them, and you can say, "I think this is fitting into that campaign now."

Ryan Chute: That's it's a combination of novelty breeds and familiarity.

Chris Torbay: Each one of them will be, "What the heck is this thing?" And we end up there, which is new every time. But the process of getting there is the same every time.

Mick Torbay: I think you brought up a really interesting point when you mentioned Taylor Swift as your example. Someone who is a brilliant songwriter, very prolific, writes albums, produces so much really good material. And that is why we acknowledge that she is one of the greatest. And we compare that to the one-hit wonder who we all disparage because they did this one thing and it was crazy and it worked, but they could never do it again, which means they're not one of the greatest, which is true. Isn't it interesting that we understand that when we're talking about music? When we talk about advertising, we revere the one-hit wonders.

Chris Torbay: We’re still looking for that killer ad. Give me another 1984 ad.

Mick Torbay: We talk about that Super Bowl ad from three years ago, or that Super Bowl ad from one year ago, which, and literally all of them are attempting to be one-hit wonders. None of them have a second chapter. None of the great, interesting Super Bowl ads are ever part of a series. They're never part of an ongoing. They're never part of a freaking album. They're just throwing a dart at the wall saying, "Maybe we can do something crazy that will be interesting, and they'll be talking about it tomorrow a- around the water cooler."

Why do we revere the one-hit wonder in advertising, when we acknowledge that in music that's not what we're going for? What you want to be is Paul Simon.

Chris Torbay: And just to beat the comparison to death with music, it's interesting that the great artists have new songs all the time, and we appreciate the next new song and the next new song and the next new song, but they're in a lane, too, right?

Like Taylor Swift has great hit after great hit, but she doesn't try to rap. She doesn't try to do trip hop. She doesn't try, and even when she went a little bit away from country and into pop, there was a bunch of people who said, "Oh," because of brand, because she's a brand, and you want your brand to do things that you know the brand for, and you've come to expect it, and you've come to look forward to more of it. So the people who were listening to Taylor Swift in the early days when she was a country artist, it's like, "I would like some more of this country stuff coming from Taylor Swift, please, because I love it." And so she can move this far, but if she moves this far, everybody's going to fall off the train.

Mick Torbay: We don't want to hear her classical stuff.

Chris Torbay: We don't want to hear her classical. We don't want to hear her rapping. We don't want to hear, you know-

Ryan Chute: I do ...

Chris Torbay: Drum and bass.

Ryan Chute: I would like to hear her rap because we got it in

Mick Torbay: the right order this time.

Chris Torbay: I did.

Mick Torbay: Ryan’s fun fact….

Ryan Chute: Not right now. But maybe. Chris, you'd also made the point that the single biggest killer of great campaigns is the new marketing hire trying to make their mark, and we often see that if we're transitioning out and somebody else is transitioning in, the very first thing that gets killed is what we created because mostly of ego and those types of things. But very often, most companies aren't dealing with that problem; they're dealing with They have terrible advertising, and they're transitioning into doing something that actually works.

Chris Torbay: But it's usually because they do something to start. They either bring in a marketing person, or they decide to hire an agency if they've been writing their own ads beforehand or they, and we've talked about this before is nobody starts working on a piece of business and has the personal confidence to say, "I'm the new sheriff in town, and first thing I'd like to say is, as you were people. Keep up the good work." No one will do that. They come into it with the sense that I should come in here and,

Mick Torbay: Things are gonna be different.

Chris Torbay: And change some things up. But that's their perspective, and that's their desire to look like they are taking the bull by the horns, that they're earning the money that we've paid them. If they hire you on as a new creative director at the agency for 150K, you're gonna want to demonstrate that you are worth that money, and so show me what you're gonna do.

I'm going to change something. From the audience perspective, there's a campaign that's been out there for a while, and it is, it has created an impression in people's minds. If it's a brand that you're inheriting, if you think of brands that have been around for generations like Campbell's and Nike and Budweiser and things like that. They're turning over people who are working on that business all the time. There is a certain responsibility to not break what's out there. And Nike's a great one. The “Just Do It” has been their tagline for what? 30 years, 40 years. But every couple of years, or if there was a period of time where every two or three years is a one of the greatest examples of this of all time is Nike. Their tagline, Just Do It, has been around for, I don't know, 30 years, 40 years. It's obviously one of the greatest lines of all time. And about every three or four years, there's a front-page story in Ad Age about how we're moving on from thing. We got a new line, a new tagline. It's going to replace Just Do It. And then it doesn't, because it sort of peters out and research, they run some focus groups, and yet they ask the focus groups what they think of the new tagline, and they go, "You mean Just Do It?" And it's, “Ah, for God's sakes.” And so it stays, but every new person on the business sort of feels like they should earn their keep by showing that they can finally be the one to replace it.

Mick Torbay: And they dearly want be the one who does it,

Chris Torbay: And if you could, I guess that would be the greatest thing ever. The second greatest thing ever is to keep giving me great Just Do It ads, right? And that's what ends up happening is you come up with a new way of showing how great it is to work out at your highest intensity, or you do find new athletes that you can feature and show how awesome they are and pay off with that line, and those also become great ads.

And in fact, the fact that they join the canon of great Just Do It ads is also awesome.

Ryan Chute: I think that comes down to, particularly in these large agencies, when you start looking at.

Ryan's Fun Fact: Spencer Stuart's annual CMO tenure study they've been publishing this since 2004. The average CMO lasts approximately four, four and a half years. But the average breakout of a campaign, the average breakout-win of a campaign, is somewhere between five and seven years. So if we're three years into a campaign, they're just starting this campaign, they're moving on, and now somebody's coming in to make their mark.

Chris Torbay: And God help you if the agency review was two years before the CEO changed, because now the new CEO's coming in. He's in the first or second year of the new campaign. He already wants to make a difference, but it's only just started, so now he's got to wait to really screws up aany sense.

And that's why I say the greatest threat to the longevity of a great idea, something truly becoming part of the zeitgeist-

Mick Torbay: That could be a 10 or 15-year campaign,

Chris Torbay: That could turn out to be a great idea, is that the new person's gonna want to come in, and with the best of intentions, help make things new and different.

Mick Torbay: Nobody arrives to wreck it. The new person wants to take it to the next level, or be the one who brings the transitions from the last idea to the next idea. The intentions are always good. They're always honorable.

Ryan Chute: Roy H. Williams, our partner, and of course, our mentor, has-

Mick Torbay: Certified crazy person ...

Ryan Chute: …certified crazy person, has been warning against this for years. He's always been of the mind that refreshing the brand is much more about career anxiety than it is about strategy.

Mick Torbay: Agreed.

Ryan Chute: The veteran move, if you inherit a working campaign, extend it. That's the real wisdom that comes into these things.

Chris Torbay: Or what aspect of it can you keep? And I've talked about this in a previous episode. I recently inherited a campaign, and I was obviously brought in to make a difference and do something different, in order to help the brand grow more than it was.

But the answer can't be to throw everything out. The question then becomes an even more difficult one to answer, which is: what is it that I can take from here and continue to do and somehow do in a better way or a different way or a more compelling way where the viewer goes, "Oh, I see what the brand has done," but doesn't break or discard what's been established? Or clashes with the equity that has been established.

Mick Torbay: And evolution is harder to do than a transition.

Chris Torbay: And shows do it all the time. You make the comparison to sitcoms. Sitcoms will get rid of a character, and they'll bring a new character in, or various people will fade in and out. But the show may be better with the new set of characters, but the show continues to be the show. It's not, “Oh, the whole thing's out the window now, and it has a totally different vibe and a totally different feel.”

Ryan Chute: And in some cases they've tried, and the show goes flat and they've realized…

Chris Torbay: Realize that key character was the crux of it.

Ryan Chute: Well, and it's the baby with the bathwater. It's identify, the baby, and make sure you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Mick Torbay: He's always the baby.

Ryan Chute: He is a baby about a lot of things. He is. But he does get his own way. Bored or broken, before you change anything, ask yourself one question. Is this ad boring? Are you bored of the ad yourself, or is it broken? Is the ad not doing the thing that it's supposed to do?

If it's boring, then that's your problem. Stop worrying about it.

Chris Torbay: I'll attach to the bored, do you feel like you're underperforming if you don't do something? It's not just that you're bored with it, but you also feel helpless if you're not making a change, if contributing, in some way.

You have to get comfortable with, “I've inherited this thing. It's working really well. Let me be the steward of it and continue to take it forward,” and that's enough to be the person who didn't break the Campbell's Foodservice's brand after five generations.

Ryan Chute: That's a great example. The ROLEX brand, after however many generations as well, being transferred into professional management, if the audience is fine, let it run. If it's broken, that's the customer response. Now we have to assess that and determine whether or not we need to reinvigorate to change the momentum. But it's not always inclusive of complaints. The optimal number of complaints is never going to be zero on ads. In fact, if you're not getting complaints, that's a signal that it might be broken..

Chris Torbay: Or boring. It is forgettable that nobody bothered to say, "Hey, that offends me."

Mick Torbay: But on, on the topic of broken, sometimes a client will say, or someone on the team will say, “I think we should change the ads," and I will challenge that with the following question.

The reason why you should change the ad is that what we're doing is wrong, and that means it must always have been wrong, and that's okay. You can do it wrong. You can make mistakes in marketing; that's fine. But if it was right before, why would it be wrong now? Otherwise, it's just because you're fucking bored, and it's another way of calling bullshit, because if you're saying this is not right, it's like, then it was always wrong. The reason to change the ad is if it's wrong, or the advertising.

Chris Torbay: Forgive me, unless something fundamental, for advertising changes about your brand, right? And I'm trying to think of an example.

Mick Torbay: Which almost never happens.

Chris Torbay: No, it does sometimes and in which case then you stop calling yourself. You do a name evolution, or you do something like that.

Mick Torbay: Subway had to change their advertising. Fair enough. Fair enough. Sometime, but in my defence, they should never have had that guy on the ad in the first place.

Ryan Chute: Hindsight is 20/20. See, what, guys, this conversation was far less boring than I anticipated. Thank you. I'm very glad to, that we had it. That's a wrap.

Ryan Chute: To wrap things up, if you're running a business in America trying to figure out when to change your ads, here are the three things I'd want you to hitch your wagon to.

One, your customer hasn't started counting yet. Don't change the ads because you're tired of them. By the time you're sick of it, the audience is just starting to figure out that you exist. The clock doesn't start when you start. It starts when they start, and they haven't started yet.

Two, change your ads. Don't change your advertising. Same brand, new episodes. Mac versus PC.  Bobby and Mr. Jenkins. The GEICO Gecko. Allstate's Mayhem. The assets stay, the episodes change. That's the move. Anybody who tells you the whole campaign needs a refresh is either bored or a noob, or both.

Three, if you inherit a working campaign, don't kill it just to prove you're working. That's a rookie move. The wise veteran extends a working campaign, writes the next chapter, and takes all the credit when the numbers come in. Famous campaigns don't die from natural causes. They die from imbeciles with a tiny ego.

If you don't hear anything else, hear this: The campaigns we talk about in advertising history weren't great because someone had a great idea once. They were great because someone had a great idea once, and then everybody who came after them had the discipline to not kill them. That's the whole game.

Keep your ads fresh. Keep your advertising consistent. Trust the people you hired, and try to outlive the urge to make your mark.

Until next time, this is Advertising in America. Thanks for tuning in.

Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nugget of marketing magic. Want to hear more? Subscribe, leave a review, and share this podcast with your friends. Do you have questions or topics you want us to cover? Join us on our socials at Advertising in America.

Want to spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Wizard Ryan Chute today. Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

In essential service branding, wordmarks and logos serve different jobs: a wordmark, like Instagram's recent typography refresh, carries the full business name for instant recognition, while a logo mark builds shorthand recall. Home service brands need consistent wordmark-logo pairing across trucks, ads, and digital touchpoints so households recognize the name before competitors even enter the search.

Why Did Instagram Just Change Its Font?

Instagram updated its wordmark for the first time in nearly a decade, breaking almost ten years of visual consistency. The platform's designers rebuilt the lettering after hundreds of iterations, testing curves, spacing, and ligatures until the mark felt tied to the creative energy of its users. Nothing about that process was accidental. This Instagram wordmark rebrand shows what disciplined brand evolution looks like at scale. It holds a lesson for local service businesses too.

Is the New Instagram Logo That Different From the Old One?

Not much, and that's the point. Despite months of refinement, the word "Instagram" stays instantly recognizable to anyone scrolling their feed. That balance between fresh and familiar is the real skill: change enough to signal growth, keep enough to protect recall.

What Can Contractors Learn From a Tech Giant's Font Change?

Few HVAC or plumbing companies will ever spend hundreds of design rounds on lettering, but the principle transfers directly. A wordmark vs logo decision isn't cosmetic. It's the front door to brand recall for contractors who need a name to surface first when a furnace dies at midnight.

Service businesses building service business visual identity should borrow Instagram's discipline:

• Refine deliberately, not impulsively. Sudden identity swaps confuse existing customers.
• Protect recognizability while modernizing details.
• Treat typography as strategy, not decoration.

Wizard of Ads for Essential Services applies this same rigour when turning small service operators into household-name branding stories, proof that even a font choice can carry strategic weight.

What's the Difference Between a Wordmark and Logo?

A wordmark vs logo distinction comes down to typography versus symbol. A wordmark spells out a brand name in custom lettering. A logo often relies on an icon, mark, or abstract shape standing apart from the text. Instagram's recent overhaul makes this distinction concrete: the Instagram wordmark rebrand left the app's familiar camera icon largely untouched and rebuilt the lettering itself instead. Typography, not a symbol, became the most noticeable change in the entire redesign.

Instagram's design team abandoned straightforward, generic lettering. Handwriting-inspired strokes and craft-lettering details replaced the old, plain type. That shift matters for contractors: letterforms alone carry enough weight to signal a brand's personality, without needing a new icon at all.

Why does this matter for a plumbing or HVAC company?

Service trucks, uniforms, invoices, and yard signs display a company name far more often than any icon does. Strong service business visual identity starts with lettering that reads instantly from a moving vehicle or a stapled invoice. A distinctive wordmark builds brand recall for contractors faster than a generic symbol ever could. Prospects register the name, not an abstract mark, at the exact moment they need help.

Wizard of Ads for Essential Services treats typography as strategy, never as decoration. Core competencies span brand-forward marketing, creative storytelling, and media planning, and every wordmark decision flows from that same discipline. Strategy dictates the creative and every channel it touches, keeping call centers, digital content, and mass media visually consistent under one name.

That consistency compounds into household name branding over years of repeated exposure, turning a contractor's truck lettering into a memory trigger long before a competitor's logo registers at all. Wizard of Ads Essential Services builds that consistency on purpose, treating the name itself, not just the icon beside it, as the asset worth protecting.

Why Did Instagram Choose a Wordmark Refresh?

Instagram redesigned its lettering to feel closer to the people who actually use the platform, not to chase a trend. This Instagram wordmark rebrand proves a point that home service owners often miss: identity work isn't decoration, it's strategy. Skip that distinction and a brand blends into the noise of every other contractor truck on the street.

The changes look subtle at first glance. Curves in the letters s, r, and g shifted. Spacing tightened. The way letters connect changed, too. Small moves, but together they gave the wordmark a more personal, crafted feel. Proof that a wordmark vs logo decision carries real emotional weight, even at the level of a single letterform.

Why Does This Matter for a Local Service Business?

Contractors rarely invest this kind of scrutiny into their own service business visual identity. Trucks, uniforms, and signage often get treated as afterthoughts rather than strategic assets.

That gap costs market share. Consider what separates a forgettable local vendor from a name homeowners recall the moment the furnace dies:

• Consistency across trucks, uniforms, digital, and radio builds brand recall for contractors over months, not days.
• Distinctiveness, not just difference, creates the mental shortcut that turns a business into a household name.
• Craft-level detail, the kind Instagram applied to single letters, signals professionalism before a single word gets spoken.

Household name branding starts exactly where Instagram started: at the level of how the brand looks and feels, refined with intention rather than left to chance. Wizard of Ads Essential Services applies that same discipline to the trades.

What Can Contractors Learn From This Rebrand?

A social media platform's typography overhaul carries a lesson far bigger than font choice: distinctiveness protects memory. Home service business owners who skip this lesson risk blending into a sea of identical logos, trucks, and slogans. And losing the next emergency call to a competitor who looks and sounds different. The rebrand itself matters less than the discipline behind it: refining an identity so it feels unmistakably owned.

For HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors, the takeaway is not "redesign the logo." It's understanding wordmark vs logo as a strategic choice, then building every touchpoint. Trucks, uniforms, radio spots, phone scripts, around one unforgettable identity. This is where service business visual identity and sound work together, not apart. Ads written to entertain a busy public, while anchoring memory, turn a routine furnace repair into a moment the customer remembers at 2 a.m. when the heat fails again.

Why does brand consistency matter more than a logo redesign?

Consistency compounds. A distinctive identity applied across every customer touchpoint builds brand recall for contractors faster than a one-time visual refresh ever could. Neuroscience-informed messaging, paired with durable mass media reach, keeps a brand from fading into the same generic noise every competitor produces.

How does sound reinforce visual branding for contractors?

Auditory cues, a jingle, a signature phone greeting, a radio voice, lock identity into memory alongside visuals. Aligning that auditory messaging with brand identity captures leads before rivals even register in the customer's mind.

Contractors chasing household name branding need both dimensions working in concert. Wizard of Ads for Essential Services builds that alignment for essential service brands, proving the same principle Instagram just relearned: distinctiveness, not mere difference, is what makes a name unforgettable.

Why Does Brand Recall Matter for Contractors?

Emotional resonance decides which HVAC or plumbing company a homeowner calls at 2 a.m. when the furnace dies. Contractors who build lasting brand recall for contractors win that moment before a competitor even shows up in a search result. Without that recognition, service businesses fight for scraps in a crowded market where price becomes the only differentiator.

Strategic brand-building produces results that outlast any single ad campaign. One HVAC brand grew its revenue substantially after owning its local airwaves through a strategic rebrand paired with memorable radio creative. That growth came from consistent presence in the customer's mind, not from a lucky lead-gen month.

Does Brand Recall Actually Drive Revenue?

Recall works because familiarity shortcuts decision-making under stress, and a broken water heater is stressful. A track record spanning 211 happy clients, 109,033 ads produced, and pricing that varies by billions in media buys demonstrates that recall-driven strategy scales across markets and trade categories, not just isolated wins.

Which Trades Benefit Most From Recall-Based Branding?

Home service and essential service categories, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and related trades. Depend on recall more than most industries because purchases happen infrequently and urgently. Homeowners rarely comparison-shop a burst pipe; they call the name they already trust. Wizard of Ads Essential Services built its entire practice around this reality, treating recall as the core growth lever for contractors rather than a branding afterthought.

The math favors owners who invest early. Contractors chasing pay-per-click leads pay repeatedly for the same prospect's attention. Contractors who build durable recall get remembered for free, appearing first in the customer's mind long before any search box opens.

How Do You Build a Household Name Brand?

Trusted local names earn their status through consistent strategy, not one flashy redesign. Service business owners who chase quick-fix taglines or seasonal promotions rarely outlast competitors who invest in household name branding year after year. The strongest local brands share one trait: they commit to long-term recognition instead of short-term gimmicks, becoming the trusted name their market reaches for first.

Wizard of Ads for Essential Services builds this kind of recognition by converting service-based companies- HVAC, plumbing, electrical- into household-name brands. The approach relies on brand-forward strategy paired with neuroscience principles that lodge a company's identity into memory through sound, story, and repetition. That combination drives stronger brand recall for contractors than a logo swap or a cheaper price point ever could.

Does a Logo Redesign Build Brand Recall?

A logo change alone rarely moves the needle. Even a high-profile Instagram wordmark rebrand proves the point: refining letterforms improves aesthetics, but recognition depends on far more than typography. Contractors need a full-service business visual identity. Consistent voice, media presence, and customer experience work together, not a single visual update in isolation.

What Does the Brand-Building Process Involve?

Building recognition follows a defined sequence rather than guesswork. The engagement moves through six phases:

1. Uncover — on-site discovery of the brand's true position
2. Research — market and audience analysis
3. Write — strategic creative development
4. Buy — media planning and negotiation
5. Approve — client sign-off before launch
6. Launch — full campaign rollout across channels

Ryan Chute leads the team executing every phase, aligning creative, media buying, and daily operations so recall gets embedded into each campaign. That distinction: wordmark vs logo thinking versus full brand-system thinking. Separates contractors who fade into the directory listings from those who become the name everyone remembers first.

Why Ditch Yellow Pages Thinking for Modern Branding?

Printed directories once served as the only map to local trust. For decades, homeowners flipped through thick books to find restaurants, plumbers, and other household services. That model collapsed the moment search engines entered the picture. Print directories vanished from homes almost overnight once Google became the default tool for the Yellow Pages. Contractors clinging to the old playbook, hoping a listing alone builds trust, are fighting a battle that ended years ago.

Search behavior tells the real story. A homeowner with a broken furnace no longer digs through a dusty book. The reflex now is a phone in hand and a quick Google search for a nearby solution. That shift changes what actually earns a callback. A business survives on brand recall for contractors. The instant recognition that surfaces in a customer's mind before the search bar even opens.

What replaced the Yellow Pages for finding local services?

The internet now covers the entire customer journey, not just emergency lookups. Homeowners use it for routine maintenance tips, seasonal reminders, and locating an HVAC contractor during a true crisis. This broader role means a company's online presence must work harder than a single directory listing ever did.

Does a logo alone build that recognition?

A logo marks a business; a wordmark vs logo distinction matters because full brand identity spans messaging, tone, and consistency across every touchpoint. Modern service business visual identity requires:

• Consistent visual and verbal identity across web, radio, and truck signage
• Messaging that sticks in memory before a need arises
• A distinctive story, not a generic listing

Directory thinking treats visibility as a checkbox. Household name branding treats it as the entire business strategy.

Why does distinctive branding matter for contractors specifically?

Homeowners used to dig through thick, dusty directory books when a furnace failed at 2 a.m. That search behavior is gone. Today's homeowner searches digitally and picks the name already lodged in memory. Proof that brand recall for contractors now decides who gets the call before the competition even shows up.

The building blocks work together, not in isolation:

• Media strategy that bypasses volatile PPC costs
• A compact, accountable team executing without bureaucratic drag
• Post-launch refinement that keeps mass media campaigns aligned
• Digital-era visibility replacing obsolete directory-based discovery

Each element reinforces the next, turning a regional contractor into the name homeowners remember first.

The wordmark versus logo decision ultimately hinges on your essential service brand's commitment to memorability and market presence. Whether you choose a refined wordmark that anchors your name or a distinctive logo that transcends language, the strategic imperative remains constant: your visual identity must align with your positioning, resonate with your audience at the moment of need, and sustain recognition across every customer touchpoint. The strongest rebrand strategy treats this choice not as a design preference. As a foundational element of your brand architecture—one that supports long-term equity and competitive advantage in your market.

FAQ

What is the difference between a wordmark and a logo?

A wordmark spells out the brand name in custom lettering. A logo typically uses an icon or abstract shape apart from the text. Instagram's rebrand kept its camera icon untouched and redesigned only the lettering.

Why did Instagram change its wordmark?

Instagram refreshed its typography for the first time in nearly a decade, testing hundreds of iterations of curves, spacing, and ligatures. The goal was to reflect the platform's creative energy while keeping the name instantly recognizable.

What can home service businesses learn from Instagram's rebrand?

Contractors should refine branding deliberately rather than impulsively, protecting recognizability while modernizing details. Wizard of Ads for Essential Services applies this same discipline to turn service operators into household names.

Google Business Profile Optimization: The Complete Guide for Business Owners to Maximize Local Visibility and Lead Generation

In an increasingly digital world, establishing a strong online presence is essential for businesses to attract local customers effectively. A Google Business Profile (GBP) serves as a vital tool, enhancing visibility on search engines and maps, thus allowing potential customers to find essential information quickly. This comprehensive guide outlines everything business owners need to know about setting up, optimizing, and managing their Google Business Profile to drive lead generation and local engagement. Many businesses often fail to take full advantage of their GBP, missing out on significant opportunities for attracting clients. By leveraging the insights in this article, you'll understand how to enhance your GBP effectively and create a robust online presence that converts inquiries into leads. We will dive into topics including the setup and verification process, optimization strategies, local SEO, and best practices for maintaining your profile.

What is Google Business Profile and Why Does It Matter for Business Owners?

Google Business Profile is a free tool offered by Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. Business owners can create a profile that displays essential information such as location, hours, and services. By utilizing GBP, businesses enhance their local visibility, making it easier for customers to discover them when searching for relevant services nearby. This increased visibility plays a crucial role in customer engagement, driving traffic to websites, and ultimately boosting lead generation through local outreach.

Managing a GBP provides business owners with an opportunity to connect directly with customers. It allows them to respond to reviews, post updates, and upload photos that showcase their offerings. A well-managed Google Business Profile not only builds consumer trust but also increases the likelihood that potential customers will choose your services over competitors.

The profound impact of Google Business Profile on local businesses cannot be overstated, as it directly influences how potential customers discover and engage with services in their vicinity.

How Does Google Business Profile Enhance Local Business Listings?

Google Business Profile enhances local business listings by ensuring that search results reflect accurate and updated information. With GBP, businesses can optimize their visibility in local searches through relevant categories and by providing comprehensive details about their services. Local SEO techniques integrated within GBP, such as utilizing keywords specific to services offered, directly contribute to higher rankings in search engine results.

Additionally, GBP enables businesses to manage their information actively, ensuring that potential customers have access to the latest updates regarding services, special offers, or changes in operations. The integration of customer reviews into search results further enhances a business's profile, impacting reputation and engagement. By responding to reviews promptly, businesses signal their commitment to customer service and satisfaction, creating a favorable impression on prospective clients.

The strategic implementation of Local SEO through Google Maps significantly boosts a business's digital presence and helps convert online visibility into actual customer visits.

Local SEO on Google Maps for Increased Business Visibility

In today’s digital era, consumer behavior in searching for building materials and home renovation services has shifted to digital platforms, especially Google Maps. Traditional building material businesses still lag behind in digital visibility and often lose competitiveness against modern building depots. This community service activity aims to help traditional MSMEs survive and grow through digitalization by increasing business visibility and customer footfall conversion. This study applied a local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) approach through a case study of a building material MSME. The research stages included initial observation of the business profile and customer visits, implementation of Local SEO optimization strategies, and final observation to evaluate the resulting changes. Optimization strategies included completing business information, applying local keywords, adding visual content, and actively managing customer reviews. The novelty of this researcImplementation of local seo on google maps for increasing footfall conversion in building store business, 2026

What Are the Key Benefits of Managing Your Google Business Profile?

Managing a Google Business Profile comes with several key benefits, including:

1. Increased Visibility: Regularly updating your GBP ensures that your business appears in relevant local searches, making it easier for potential customers to find you.
2. Enhanced Customer Trust: Engaging with customer reviews and posting updates demonstrates your commitment to being transparent and responsive, fostering trust.
3. Improved Lead Generation: With an optimized GBP, the chances of attracting local leads significantly increase as potential customers find the information they need readily available.

The management of your Google Business Profile plays a crucial role in ensuring your business is represented accurately online. Moreover, it opens the door to analytics and insights that help you understand customer interactions and preferences, which can inform future business decisions.

How Do Business Owners Set Up and Verify Their Google Business Profile?

Setting up a Google Business Profile is straightforward and requires several key steps.

1. Create a Google Account: If you do not already have a Google account, you need to create one.
2. Set Up Your Business Information: Enter essential details such as your business name, address, phone number, and website URL.
3. Verification: Google requires verification to ensure that business information is accurate. Verification can occur via postcards, phone, email, or instant verification for eligible businesses.

Step-by-Step Guide to Set Up Google Business Profile

To further clarify, here’s a detailed look at how to set up your GBP:

1. Go to the Google Business Profile page and click on “Manage now.”
2. Sign in with your Google account or create a new one if necessary.
3. Enter your business information, including business name, address, and service area.
4. Choose the correct categories that best represent your business for customers to find you more easily.
5. Add contact details and a website link to improve connections with potential customers.
6. Complete the profile with images and business hours, providing a comprehensive view of what you offer.
7. Verify your listing using one of the methods mentioned above to activate your profile for public view.

Successful verification confirms that you are the owner of the listed business and allows management of your profile effectively.

Getting your business listed on Google Maps is a crucial, mostly free, and straightforward process that can determine whether potential customers find you in their immediate search.

Getting Your Business on Google Maps for Local Customers I pulled up my phone last week to find a coffee shop in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Within seconds, I had four options with ratings, photos, hours, and directions. The whole process took maybe 15 seconds.That’s the reality of how people find local businesses now. Nobody’s flipping through phone books or asking random strangers for directions. They search, they tap, they arrive. If you want to get your business on Google Maps and show up in that 15-second window, the work is mostly free, mostly one-time, and more straightforward than most owners assume. Skip it and you don’t exist to that potential customer.

How Can Business Owners Optimize Their Google Business Profile to Drive More Leads?

Optimizing your Google Business Profile involves several strategies to ensure that your listing stands out and effectively attracts local customers.

1. Complete Your Profile: Ensure all fields are filled out, including business hours, contact information, and a description of services. The more complete your profile, the more trustworthy it appears.
2. Utilize Local Keywords: Integrate relevant local SEO keywords into your business description and posts to improve search engine visibility and attract targeted traffic.
3. Engage Customers with Updates: Regularly post updates about services, special promotions, and business announcements to maintain engagement with your audience.

These strategies can significantly enhance your GBP's performance, ultimately leading to increased inquiries and business growth.

Which Profile Elements Should Be Enhanced: Photos, Attributes, and Posts?

Visual elements of your GBP play a vital role in attracting potential customers. High-quality photos of your business, products, or services enable visual storytelling that engages visitors. Additionally, it is essential to regularly update your profile with relevant posts about special offerings or events. Engaging visual content leads to improved customer interactions and can motivate users to visit your business.

• Photos: Upload diverse and high-quality images that represent your brand.
• Attributes: Specify attributes that describe your business, such as "women-owned" or "free Wi-Fi," enhancing appeal to specific customer segments.
• Posts: Share news or promotions directly on your profile to keep customers informed and engaged.

How to Effectively Manage and Respond to Online Reviews for Reputation Growth?

Online reviews are a critical component of managing your Google Business Profile. They influence potential customers’ perceptions and can impact search rankings.

• Soliciting Reviews: Encouraging satisfied customers to leave positive reviews can improve your business's visibility and reputation.
• Responding Promptly: Actively respond to both positive and negative feedback to show customers you value their input, fostering goodwill.
• Using Reviews for Social Proof: Highlighting favorable reviews in your marketing and on your website reinforces consumer trust and credibility.

Proactive management of online reviews underscores your commitment to customer satisfaction and can lead to sustained business growth.

What Local SEO Strategies Leverage Google Business Profile for Market Advantage?

Implementing effective local SEO strategies alongside GBP can significantly enhance market presence. Key strategies include:

• Citations and Consistent NAP: Ensure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across all online platforms to boost local search performance.
• Building Backlinks: Develop backlinks from reputable local websites or blogs to strengthen authority and improve search rankings.
• Engagement Through Social Media: Promote your Google Business Profile on social media platforms to drive traffic and improve visibility.

Integrating local SEO strategies with your GBP maximizes its potential to attract relevant clients and grow your customer base.

Which Contractor-Specific Case Studies Demonstrate Successful GBP Use?

Several contractors have successfully leveraged Google Business Profile through strategic optimization and management. For instance, one contractor saw a 40% increase in inquiries after optimizing their GBP with local keywords and high-quality images. Another company experienced improved customer engagement and trust levels by consistently responding to reviews and maintaining an active profile. These examples illustrate that businesses that commit to managing and optimizing their Google Business Profile can generate notable results in attracting and converting local leads.

How Do Business Owners Monitor, Update, and Measure the Impact of Their Google Business Profile?

Monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of your Google Business Profile involves utilizing various tools and metrics to analyze performance.

1. Google Analytics: Leverage insights from Google Analytics to track traffic and user behavior stemming from your GBP.
2. Monitoring Reviews: Keep an eye on online reviews to gauge customer sentiment about your business and identify areas for improvement.
3. Reviewing Business Insights: Regularly check GBP insights to understand how customers find your listing, engaging with various profile elements.

What Tools and Metrics Track GBP Performance and Local Visibility?

To effectively track GBP performance, consider the following tools and metrics:

These tools provide insight into the performance of your GBP, enabling continuous improvement and effective engagement strategies with local customers.

How Often Should GBP Content and Structured Data Be Updated for Optimal Results?

Regular updates are critical to maintaining the effectiveness of your Google Business Profile. Frequent updates to essential information, such as hours of operation or promotions, ensure that potential customers have access to the latest offerings.

• Updating Crucial Business Information: Whenever there is a change in hours or services, these should be reflected immediately on your GBP.
• Seasonal Promotions: Regularly refresh your GBP with seasonal offers that can attract customer interest based on current trends.
• Engagement Strategies: Regularly engage with customers through posts and responses, creating a dynamic, interactive profile.

Consistent updates not only benefit customer engagement but can also influence local search rankings positively, driving more traffic to your business.

Start by Reviewing Your Own Profile's Completeness

A well-optimized Google Business Profile, backed by complete business information, high-quality photos, active review management, and consistent local SEO citations, remains the most direct way for business owners to appear in local search results and turn nearby searchers into leads. From setup and verification through profile optimization, local SEO strategy, and ongoing performance monitoring via GBP Insights, each element reinforces the trust and visibility that convert a search into an inquiry. Business owners who manage their Google Business Profile as an active, evolving marketing asset, rather than a one-time listing, see the strongest gains in engagement, local visibility, and lead generation. Start by reviewing your own profile's completeness and activity today, and build from there.

Every terrible ad that's ever hit the airwaves was approved by someone.

Think about that. The HVAC commercial with the handsome technician and the voice-over about years of experience. The radio spot that lists quality, service, and low prices and nothing else. Every stinker. Every tune-out moment. Every ad that sounds exactly like every other ad in the category. Someone reviewed it, said yes, and unleashed it on the world.

That person might be you. Not because you're bad at your job because nobody ever taught you how to do this one.

In this episode of Advertising in America, Chris, Mick, and Ryan dismantle the most overlooked skill in marketing: the approval. Chris makes the case for hiring great people and getting completely out of the way, and what it actually means to be the person who says yes to the brave idea. Mick follows with four concrete questions that separate great advertising from forgettable garbage. And the discussion goes deep on the forces working against you: the built-in psychological bias against creative ideas, the committee effect that only knows one word, and why your gut reaction to something scary is almost never the right guide.

If you've ever stared at a script and felt completely unqualified to judge whether it would work, you weren't wrong. But you don't have to guess anymore.

Episode Highlights:

• The Approval Paradox: Why the person who says yes to the brave idea gets credit for everything and why the ones who said no are never remembered at all.
• The Get Out of the Chair Rule: What hiring Ridley Scott to direct a commercial actually teaches you about restraint as a professional skill.
• The Four-Step Filter: Mick's framework for knowing exactly what to reject, what to approve, and how to explain why to the team.
• The Bias Built Into Your Brain: Research shows that people who say they value creativity unconsciously associate it with vomit, poison, and agony before they've read a single line of the script.
• The Committee Trap: Every person added to an approval committee is structurally incentivized to say no. Here's why they can't help it.
• The Apple 1984 Lesson: The board voted to kill it. One executive overruled them. The rest is the most famous ad in advertising history.
• The Rick Rubin Model: The most successful music producer of the last 20 years doesn't play an instrument or write a single note, and what that teaches you about enabling greatness without authoring it.
• The Approver's Real Job: You are not the co-writer. You are the person who creates the conditions for a great ad to exist. That distinction is everything.

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🎧 Hit play to learn why the approval is the most powerful and most misunderstood job in the entire marketing operation.

👉 When was the last time you approved something that actually scared you?

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💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Essential Services

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On this episode of Advertising in America, we’re talking about how to approve great ads. 

Knowing how to approve ads is not something that is taught. I mean, other than at the course that I teach at Wizard Academy. For the most part, clients are not well trained at providing useful feedback. They typically just tell us if they like it or not.

Here’s the most powerful thing you can do to approve great work. Hire people who are really good at what they do. Get the heck out of the way. Let them do, what they do. 

I can’t help but notice but you fellas are always saying the same thing from like two different doors. Chris says, “Hire well and get out of the way.”  And Mick says, “Know how to reject the right stuff.” I’m starting to question if you two lied on your resumes about being master debaters. 

I’m going to give you some ways you can guide your ad people to greatness. Step one…

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RYAN: On this episode of Advertising in America, we're talking about how to approve great ads. I'm gonna be honest — I let these two pick this week's topic, and I'm a little concerned. I always thought approving an ad was pretty easy. Somebody else does the work, they show it to you, you say Micks’ favorite word "approved," and you go home. Done. Turns out, no. Apparently, the approving part is the hard part. Evidently, there's a whole skill set involved. Seemingly, I've been doing it wrong for all of these years myself. Up first, Chris is here to explain why if you ever hire  Ridley Scott you’re not allowed to talk to Ridley Scott. 

CHRIS: When something great is created, there's plenty of glory to go around to everyone involved. Some of that glory can go to you.

Everyone knows that Craig Allen and Eric Coleman, the two guys at Wieden+Kennedy who wrote "The Man Your Man Can Smell Like" for Old Spice, are the two guys who wrote "The Man Your Man Can Smell Like" for Old Spice. But when that ad became a runaway success and changed the fortunes of the brand and cleaned up at all the award shows, you can bet there were dozens of people who took credit for their part in getting it made. The creative director, the executive creative director, the head of the agency, the brand manager at Procter & Gamble, the director of marketing, the VP of marketing, the CEO of P&G, all kinds of people probably went on to stellar careers because they got to tell the story this way: "I'm the guy who approved that."

And to be fair, they're not wrong. Good on you.

We've talked before about what it's like to stare down a truly innovative idea and actually say yes. The men and women who do say yes deserve some credit. You don't have to be the person who comes up with the great idea. You just have to be the person who says, "Yeah, I'm in."

Everybody thinks George Lucas is a genius who made Star Wars, but somewhere there's an executive at 20th Century Fox who said, "Alright, I'll pay for it," even though everyone else thought it was going to be a turkey. So how can you be that guy? How can you set yourself up for success by saying yes to the right thing?

Here's the most powerful thing you can do to approve great work: hire people who are really good at what they do. Then get the heck out of the way. Let them do what they do. Resist the temptation to always think the idea needs your brain power to make it work.

When I worked on the Gatorade business a million years ago, we hired Ridley Scott to direct some commercials with Michael Jordan. And when you work with Ridley Scott, you're allowed to come to the shoot, but you have to sit over there, eat M&Ms from the craft service table, and not talk to Ridley Scott. Because you hired him to be Ridley Scott. Don't try to teach him how to be Ridley Scott.

Nobody hired Andy Warhol to do a painting and then said, "I don't know, man, do you think Campbell's Soup cans are the right subject? What about bowls of fruit like all the old masters used to do?"

If you sell diamonds for a living, you know the worst customer is the one who thinks he knows more about diamonds than you, even though you have a gemologist certificate on the wall. If you sell air conditioners, the best customers are the ones who listen to your explanation of what's required to get the airflow and cooling capacity right for the house, and take your advice from years of experience. The ones who say, "I don't know, I think we can just do it this other way" don't hire me!

Hire someone you think is great at this, and let them do their thing. Sure, ask questions. You don't have to roll over and approve everything they put in front of you without explanation. But start with the assumption that this weird new idea wouldn't be in front of you if the experts in this area didn't think it was great.

Ask yourself what it says about your brand. Ask yourself if it's inimitable and distinct from all the middle-ground competitors' messages. Ask yourself if you'd rather be the person who took a leap on something that might change the world, or the person who played it safe and never made a mistake, other than never making a difference.

RYAN: Chris said, "Everyone knows Craig Allen and Eric Coleman, everyone knows." Nobody knows these guys. Their kids barely recognize them. I have not heard of either of those names in my life. If Craig and Eric walked into the studio right now, I'd assume they were looking for the bathroom. But sure, everyone knows. Mick, mail us you.

MICK: Okay. My brother Chris makes some pretty good points. If you're going to hire someone like Ridley Scott, he's probably going to make some pretty good choices as a director. But let's face it, you probably don't have a Gatorade budget. So how are you going to get good work if you can't afford to literally hire the best people on the planet?

Luckily, I will be more helpful than Chris.

Knowing how to approve ads is not something that's taught. Other than through a course I teach at the Wizard Academy, for the most part, clients are not well-trained at providing useful feedback. They typically just tell us if they like it or not. Sadly, that's not actually relevant. We don't write for the client. We write for the consumer. And "I don't like this one" doesn't get us any closer to a solution. So I'm going to give you some ways you can guide your ad people to greatness.

• ‍Step one. Be ready to reject stuff. But it's really important what you reject. What you're rejecting is boilerplate. Table stakes. If you're an HVAC company and your ad guy suggests a TV commercial where a truck pulls up to a beautifully landscaped house, the incredibly handsome technician walks up to the door, the attractive homeowner answers, close-up on him slipping on the booties, and there's a voice-over going on the whole time about their years of experience and quality of workmanship, and we watch as he turns a wrench and polishes the condenser unit before shaking hands with the homeowner and waving goodbye. Yeah, reject that. We've seen it before. Explain why you're rejecting it.
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• ‍Step two. Ask yourself: could this ad be for any other company in my category? Yes? Into the binit goes. Explain why you're rejecting it.
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• ‍Step three. What about this ad is entertaining? Remember, no one is listening to radio or watching TV to experience your commercials. What are you doing to entertain your audience? Is it all about you? That's no good. And crowbarring a joke into an ad filled with "quality, service, selection, price" does not count. I mean actual entertainment. The audience should want to turn the volume up, not down,  when your ad comes on. Have you achieved that goal? No? Keep working on it.
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• ‍Step four. What about your ad is part of a series? Is it clear that this is the next segment of an ongoing campaign? That's how you get the volume turned up, they liked the last one, they want to hear the next one. But that means it can't be a standalone. "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" was a great ad, but it wasn't part of a campaign. You want people to react to the next one. It has to be clear that there's another one coming, and it's even better than the last one. You need to think three or four steps ahead. Are you doing that? Where does this one fit in?

Providing good feedback to your ad people is one of the most difficult skills in the world. But when you know the path to greatness, you can be part of the team that helps achieve it. If you're not part of the solution, then you're just the person who yells and swears all the time.

RYAN: Mick gave us four steps. Numbered. In order. With instructions on each one. Mick is a creative. Creatives do not number steps. He drives a self-driving car, for goodness' sake. He literally wears two wristwatches. Creatives navigate by feelings and the moon's gravitational pull. That's his entire system. We'll be right back after this commercial break.

RYAN: Okay, we're back. So I can't help but notice that you fellows are always saying the same thing from two different doors. Chris says "hire well and get out of the way," and Mick says "know what to reject, and reject the right stuff." I'm starting to question if you two lied on your résumés about being masterful debaters. Typo, I suppose. Let's pull this all apart, shall we? There are three things I want to dig into here with the lads. Mick, you said approving is a skill that most folks are very bad at. You're really not out here making friends in this area.

MICK: I never am. That's not why I'm here ever, under any circumstances. I think probably the first time a business owner is asked to approve an ad, there's likely a bit of a shock, "Oh crap, I have to approve this." There might even be some imposter syndrome kicking in, “I'm the one who has to make the final call on this”. And with no preparation and no training on how to actually do that, you're stuck with one of a couple of possible ways of doing it. One is to say "sounds okay to me, I guess I like it, it's fine." Another is that they might compare the script to the brief. Did the ad match what I asked for? If it checks the boxes — quality, service, life, price, community, just like a pre-barking checklist, then I guess this must be approved. But that doesn't mean it's a good ad.

I agonized over that enough that, with two other Wizard of Ads partners, we created a course, it was basically an academy that helps teach you how to approve good ads. Not a course on how to write, it's a course on how to say "this will succeed, this one will not," and how to know in advance. Most people, they don’t teach you that in business school, they don’t teach you how to listen.

CHRIS: Until that moment when they're charged with approving their first ad, the only was to evaluate ads was one way: as an audience member going "that was good" or "that sucked." Entirely superficial. Emotional. Based on your taste, based on what you think is a good ad as a viewer. Because you've just seen ads on TV or heard them on the radio and liked them or not as a person. As opposed to now, you have to decide is this the right thing for our brand to be doing.

MICK: And neither of those things, “I think it's great” or “I think it's rubbish,” neither of those things are helpful. 

CHRIS: That's the only criteria you've ever had, and now it's the one criteria that doesn't matter.

RYAN: Well, and like you said, none of this is taught in business school. I think we've run into a few natural cognitive biases that humans have, innate desire to edit. They want to put their stamp on it.

MICK: Justify their own existence, 

RYAN: Bring their own layers of flavor. Or ego. There's also the other side of the fence. Ryan's fun fact: Kumar and Goncalo, Psychological Science, 2012, the bias against creativity. People who explicitly say they value creative ideas unconsciously associate the word "creative" with: vomit, poison, and agony. I mean it, these are literal words that came out of the research, on an implicit association test. So they associate "creative" with those feelings before they've even read the page.

Calling back from a couple of episodes ago, the bias is built in. If a brave idea is in front of you, your brain is already gagging before you read it on the page.  It's absolutely astounding how we have this visceral reaction from the approving side that has to be recognized when we're thinking about what we're asking our clients to do when we ask them to approve an ad. And it gets worse in groups. Anyone who's sat through a marketing committee knows this. The committee has only got one job, and Mick, you've said this better than anyone.

MICK: The job of the committee is to make itself look good to the rest of the committee. The committee is there to prevent you from doing yourself harm. So if someone on the committee thinks there might be something wrong with this ad, that person is going to stand up and say "I think you should not approve this." 

CHRIS: They've been brought in to be helpful, 

MICK: But in being helpful, all they can do is say no. The only thing a committee member can say is no. That's the trouble. The committee never says "here's the way to make it better." What they'll say is "you shouldn't run this ad because X." That's the inherent problem with the committee. But even if you've got just one person making the decision, the first time you approve an ad, what is the basis of that decision? Maybe you'd think, "Well, I've heard a lot of ads in my category, so... that sounds kind of like an ad in my category. I guess I should approve it." Well,  we've discussed that's not a good reason. That's actually a reason to send it back: "This sounds like an ad in my category."

There's no training for business owners to guide their ad people to greatness. And especially when you start advertising, there usually isn't an ad guy,  you're talking directly to the radio station, the TV station, or your digital ad person, who will simply do what you ask them to do. There's nothing evil there either, they're trying to keep you happy. They ask what you want and they do it. And what you want and what your competitor wants is the same thing. That's why all ads look the same, sound the same, and are almost interchangeable.

So you start doing it wrong, you spend most of your career doing it wrong, then you start working with good creative people, and you've spent your whole life just saying "well, I'll just approve what I think is good because I have no actual criteria on how to do it." And you perpetuate mediocrity.

RYAN: And the only reference you have without training is the authority figures around you. The people you defer to, the people you trust.

Ryan's fun fact: Solomon Asch, 1951, followed by Irving Janis in 1972 — groupthink and the conformity experiments run around committee-type thinking. If even one person says "I don't think so," they can get conformity from the rest of the group because they are following the leader; in spots where there is no leader, up to 35 percent of a room going one direction will bring the rest of the room along because they're not sure, so they follow the majority.

CHRIS: As a big agency guy, who spent way too much time in focus groups behind the glass, this is the problem with focus groups. You just need one guy in the room, you've got 12 people on a Thursday night, nothing better to do for 35 bucks than evaluate your ad ideas, and you just need one person to go, "Oh no, I think this is a little stupid," and then suddenly there are other people: "Well, if he thinks it's stupid, then..." The groupthink starts to really play.

"I thought it was fine, but if he thinks it's stupid, maybe I should agree it's stupid. And I'm also offended now, because I wasn't, but when he said it's offensive maybe I should vote..." 

MICK: And remember, the easiest thing to say is no. Saying yes is hard. If I say yes, I'm putting my name on the line: "Torbay said yes." So when this thing crashes and burns, it's his fault. As soon as you say no, you're safe. "Hey, I didn't even want to run that." 

CHRIS: No one will know whether you were right or wrong, it never got made. It never succeeded or failed. 

MICK: And if it succeeds, no one will remember that you didn't want to run it. Nobody talks about the stupid board of directors at Apple who turned it down. 

CHRIS: You talked about one aspect of it is that they instinctively go toward caution on everyone's behalf so they can be seen as contributing. The other thing is that people try to contribute to make a better idea: "What if you did this to it? What if you did that?" It really feels natural, especially when something's looking like a great idea, or starts to look really exciting  "Well, you know what else we could do? We could put a penguin in there." They all want to contribute; they all want to put their stamp on it, say they were part of the team, that they contributed.

What is very interesting about successful things is that it is not a zero-sum game. It’s not when it got super successful, for the five people who are in charge divide it up to 20% each, and decide who gets credit for making this thing awesome. When something great hits the market, everybody who touched it gets love for it. There's a million percent more credit to go around. The camera operator gets to take credit. Everybody who's attached to it, you don't have to put your fingerprints on it in order to say, "I was in the room when we made that." So maybe that's a piece of advice on approving: you don't have to change it and then say yes in order to take credit for the success. You can just say "I think it's great, let's go for it." And there will be love that comes to you when it succeeds.

RYAN: And ultimately, that's where the ultimate courage is: being vulnerable enough to take the risk. The people who say no aren't necessarily operating from a place of courage. They're operating from a place of fear, defensiveness, and insecurity, we have to recognize that. 

Now, if you're handed rubbish and expected to run it, that's one thing. There are certainly advertising agencies out there handing you a big pile of steaming crap and calling it magical. That's a risk you have to navigate by working with  people who aren’t going to be handing you shit.

This goes back to the 1984 Apple reference. Around the Super Bowl ad in December 1983, the majority of the board said no. They went into groupthink; they voted against it. The idea would be terrible,

CHRIS: Why are there not shots of the computer? 

RYAN: Exactly. Nobody saw the computer, we didn’t describe 100 features about the motherboard. They all voted to kill the ad. It was Steve Jobs and a small handful of executives who overturned the decision and ran it anyway, making it quite literally the most famous ad in the history of advertising.

MICK: On the topic of risk, though — if it had tanked… They would all have been on top of it.

CHRIS: Yeah, interestingly enough. Remember that? When I say hire somebody really good and let them do their thing, what's interesting is you will learn one thing for sure: whether that person is good at their job. The problem is when you hire somebody to write a good ad, then you change the script, then you make the ad. Now, if that ad performs at a mediocre level,  was that a great idea that you wrecked? Or was that a crappy idea, and thank God you made that little change that made it mediocre? You don't know.

Whereas if you say to Ridley Scott, "Make this ad — off you go, do your thing." If it tanks, you know what to do, which is never hire Ridley Scott again. And that's true with us. If we come in and say we have a campaign idea and it's going to scare the bejeebers out of you,  if it doesn't work, you can solve that problem. You just have to fire us and hire somebody you think is better. Whereas if you change it and you end up somewhere in the middle, you haven't learned anything. You don't know if I'm good and you ruined it, or if I'm mediocre and you saved it.

MICK: Well, and our jobs are always on the chopping block. Whenever we start working for a client, we know that if we don't deliver what we say we're going to do in year one, we will absolutely get fired. 

CHRIS: But also, you see this with big agencies all the time, they pander more and more to what the client's asking for. Two or three years go by, nothing really happens. And then the agency review comes in. And no one says, "No, no, don't do a review — you gave me good ideas. I always bought the mediocre one from your presentation because it felt safe, and you kept buying it." It's the client's fault,  but they always take it out on the agency.

So if you're going to make the agency the scapegoat anyway, at least let them do what they do. And if it's a brilliant idea,  the one Steve Jobs forced down your throat,  and it ends up being the greatest thing ever, you win. If not, you can fire them,

RYAN: I think that in itself is the fault of the agency. If you didn't hire a top-tier agency that gave you a safe option, that by default becomes mediocrity. So your agency also has to be courageous and step up to the line of vulnerability. Both for the writers themselves, who are dancing on the edge of creativity's knife's edge anyway because we're playing with emotions and people's feelings.

CHRIS: And there’s where smart agencies will not bring the safe idea. There was a tradition where you'd also always bring the "straw dog" the first ad you present, just to get the presentation going and the ego fed. And then you go, “If you like that, here's some really interesting ads.”  A saying evolved: "Don't bring anything to the meeting that you're not prepared to sell." Because the client might go, "I don’t know about those crazy ones. But I like that first one where you talked about service and selection."

So the agency has to be brave enough to not bring a safe one. To only bring ideas they think are going to make a difference.

And if all three ads you present, if you're one of those agencies that comes with three different ideas, you can't make one the easy one. Because inevitably, that's the one they're going to buy. And then it's on you. Then you go back and say, "Yeah, typical client — they didn't go for the good one." Well, why did you give them that option? You brought it with full endorsement of your creative directors. Don't bring three ideas if you think it's stupid to buy the first two.

MICK: We at Wizard of Ads, we can't do that because we're paid on performance. So we will not present an idea we know is not going to move the needle, because then we will get fired, and we know it. I would rather get fired now than get fired in a year because in year one, we actually lose money considering how much work we put in, compared to what we get paid in year one —we need to get to year three before we break even. So we would never bring an idea to a client if we did not believe it could absolutely move the needle.

In the larger agency world, they bill by the hour. They'll bring a couple of ideas because they're billing for all of it. There's no downside to bringing them. And if they run the ad for a year and a half and it doesn't build the brand, they don't care; they're not paid on performance, they’re paid by the hour. 

CHRIS: They’ll try again next year. 

RYAN: And that leads back to this: if you don't trust the people you've hired, fire them. Don't edit them. It's a complete mistake to start putting your own little flavor on things. If you have to, you've got the wrong people. 

CHRIS: If you feel like you're the only one who can fix this, then why are you hiring somebody to give you broken ideas? Do it yourself.

RYAN: And if you are going to speak up,  to Mick's point, what are you speaking up about? "I like it," "it's good," "it's bad," "I don't know, it doesn't feel right" those are useless commentary. 

CHRIS: You're a focus group of one person; that’s not relevant. And second of all, you may not be the target. 

MICK: You are absolutely not the target.  You are, by definition, not the target. If you're the client, you have to buy your products and services from this brand. So don’t tell me you’re the client, you are the one person I do not have to convince this is the brand for you. By definition, you are not thinking like a customer in this category because you’re not a customer. 

CHRIS: You already know way more about diamonds, or whatever else it is, than the buyer. 

RYAN: Certainly one aspect is taste, and the other is strategy. So this conversation is really about: what are we trying to achieve? How are we moving the emotional middle here to get a person to take an action or, at the very least, store you in memory because they know, like, and trust you until such time as they need what you have to sell?

MICK: The feedback is very often more along the lines of "you didn't mention enough features or benefits." And less often: "You really didn't make me feel much. You weren't reaching me on a deeper level. Can you dig in a little bit more."

CHRIS: The interesting thing that you said in your piece, was the number of times you came back to can I explain that to them, explain that to them, right? The feedback is helpful in the discussion. For example, if you say "there's not enough features and benefits" well, that's a conversation we can have now about whether we should be talking about features and benefits. We've done a previous podcast about whether you should fill an ad full of features and benefits or make an emotional ad that makes me like you as a service provider. That's a conversation I can have, and I can explain why I left features and benefits out. But that's because you said something concrete. You had an explanation to your feedback as opposed to "I don't know, I don't like it." That doesn't help. I can't debate it, I can't explain it, I can't rationalize why, even though you don't like it, it's the right thing.

MICK: But you could ask your ad person: "What is it about this ad that would make me want to listen to it, and maybe listen to it more than once even if I don't want to make a purchase in this category?" That's the entertainment question. And there should be an answer for that. If your ad person can't answer why someone should listen to or watch this ad even if they're not in the market for what you sell, you need to go back and answer that question. Give me some entertainment.

Imagine this: we're making a little sitcom, or we're telling a story, or we're doing a little vignette, and we're going to want to follow this, and we're going to want to hear the next one. We're going to want to hear the next one. It’s a story. It has a continuing story arc. Are we going to buy a water heater this week? No. But I still want to hear what these people have to say.

CHRIS: That's useful for Geico insurance. If I'm currently not in the market for insurance, why would I want to hear their ad? Well, because the gecko is funny every time. He's got a quirky little British accent; he says what he thinks, and he takes snide pot shots at people. There's an answer. 

MICK: At least there’s something there. 

CHRIS: And then maybe I will grow to love this brand, and when my insurance comes up for renewal, I'll switch providers. But there's an answer to the question: I can tell you what's entertaining about that.

RYAN: Well, this is all backed up by another one of Ryan's fun facts. Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School, her 30-plus years of peer-reviewed research on creativity in the workplace, most famously The Progress Principle with Steve Kramer, 2011, shows that the single biggest predictor of creative output is whether the creator's manager protects their forward motion or interferes with it. Vague, taste-based feedback like "I don't like it" is the most destructive form of management input she has ever documented.

CHRIS: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a subtle point. It's like she's loving me. Which is not helpful.

RYAN: Roy certainly, you know, has been saying this for years. This is obviously the precipice of Mick's famous committee and leadership video that's out on the interweb. That brings us to Mick's four big questions, distilling down the questions you should be asking reflectively about the creative in front of you.

MICK: And sending it back until those things happen. One of the things I'm always reminded of when we're talking about approving great ads: every great ad you've ever seen on TV or heard on the radio, someone approved that. Some courageous person said, "Yeah, we're going with this. It's crazy, but we're doing it."

We've also discussed the fact that most advertising is terrible. In every category, in every world, in every market, most commercials are absolute garbage. 

RYAN: Statistically speaking, it's +99%. 

MICK: A crazy amount. Every one of those ads was approved. Let that sink in. When you see a terrible ad, a real stinker, where it's just "service, quality, benefits,” there’s nothing there. It’s all about me-me-me-me. Here's who I am, here's where I sell." It’s just that crap. Someone approved that. Someone said, "Yep, put that on TV. 

CHRIS: I like the part where they hold up the package and go 'now 2 for $14.99.' Yeah, that's great. I love that you put that in there."

MICK: Let that bother you. The next time you hear an ad and think, "This is a complete waste of 30 seconds of my time," think to yourself: somebody approved that. Someone gave it a big thumbs-up, used my favorite word, wrote a giant telethon-sized check, and said, "Blast this at humanity. Make people hear it over and over and over again." This super crap ad.

Everything is approved. So how important is it to approve great ads? Really freaking important.

RYAN: And it comes down to these four questions: Is it an ad that can only be unique to us? Does it entertain? Does it set us up for a campaign? And does it make the customer feel something? If we can answer or explain those with a yes in each category, we know we're walking down the right path. Whether it's your taste is inconsequential. What matters is that it's true to your brand, and that those four things drive this forward and make something happen in the listening audience.

MICK: Most really good ads have all four. Most ads have none of them. So start with one. Dammit. Just for goodness' sake, start with one. Build up to four. It would be lovely to get up to four. 

CHRIS: It’s like Everest’s base camps. You go up, you come back, you go up, you come back. 

RYAN: If I were to look at these four, which one would I start with? I would start with the one that makes them feel. Then I would certainly go to "make it unique to us." By making it feel, by virtue of that fact, it's likely to entertain. You're always going to offend somebody, and that's okay. Entertain the masses and don't expect to be universally perceived well.

And then setting up for the next one, not every single one is about the campaign. There are an awful lot of people who are about the cute and clever of the moment, the killer ad, the one-stop-shop or the one-hit-wonder. And look, if that's all you have, that's better than 80% of ads out there. But to mature into a properly done campaign, you're going to deepen into those other questions.

MICK: If you can get a couple of those things into your ad, you're already going to be in the top 10%.

RYAN: This is a bonus. I think this is probably one of the biggest things that encapsulates what we've talked about today: the job of the approver is to enable. It's not to author. That's probably the big takeaway. You're not co-writing this ad. You're trusting people who know how to write to write ads. You're steering and approving. And the approval itself, by virtue of the fact that you've approved it, you've created the ad.

MICK: Your job is to call balls and strikes, not play the game.

CHRIS: Or to create the environment. I always come back to the fact that one of the best music producers of the last 20 years is Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin does not play an instrument. He was the head of Def Jam Records. He's produced a lot of great artists. He's not an engineer. not sitting there working the faders. He doesn’t play any instruments; he doesn't write any songs. He works with artists to draw out the best of their careers. And somehow he gets them to think about things differently. "Have you thought about... what else could you do to accomplish this?" 

He doesn’t say, “Can you put more notes into the guitar solo? I think more notes is better than few.” He doesn't get into the granularity. He just makes people want to be better. And he makes people dig into themselves to bring out the best creative, and that’s what you can do as the business owner or as the marketing director. How do you create an inspired environment where people want to do a great ad for you? Want to do a great campaign? A great marketing idea?

RYAN: That's awesome. I feel like I'm the Rick Rubin of Wizard of Ads.

CHRIS: He has a ridiculous beard. 

RYAN: Yeah, maybe that's what it is. I think it certainly has a part to play. 

‍Gentlemen, this has been a treat. Another great conversation around what we can do to make people's lives easier and have more clarity on how to get the great stuff out into the universe.

RYAN: So look. If you're running a business in America and you're the one who has to approve the marketing, the ads, the campaigns, the next direction, here are the three things I'd want you to walk out the door with.

• ‍One: Hire well, then get out of the way. Find the people who are great at this and let them be great at it. You didn't hire a copywriter to give you the chance to be a copywriter on the weekends. You hired them because you cannot do this job yourself. Pay them. Trust them. Then physically remove yourself from the meeting if you have to.
  ‍‍
• Two: When you do speak up, speak about the criteria. Not the execution. "I don't like it" isn't feedback. It's a feeling. Try this instead: "This could be any competitor's ad." Or: "This doesn't make me feel anything." Or: "I don't see how this becomes the next chapter." Those are real notes. Those give the team somewhere to go. The other ones just make them quit.
  ‍
• Three: Remember, the approver enables. The approver does not author. Your job is to create the conditions for a great ad to exist. Not to rewrite the great ad somebody else brought you. The names we still remember in advertising history aren't the ones who fixed the commas. They're the ones who looked at something scary and said, "Yeah. Run it."

‍

If you don't hear anything else, hear this:

Every great ad in the history of advertising was approved by someone who said yes when their gut was screaming no. That's the move. That's the whole skill. Saying yes to the things that scare you,  after you've made sure they're scary for the right reasons.

Hire the right people. Trust the right people. Get out of the way. And when it works — take the credit. They won't mind. They'll hand it to you.

Until next time. This is Advertising in America. Thanks for tuning in.

‍

Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nugget of marketing magic. Wanna hear more? Subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with your friends.

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Wanna spend your marketing budget better? Visit us at wizardofads.services to book your free strategy session with Ryan Chute today.

Until next time, keep your ads enchanting and your audience captivated.

Are you running direct response ads? No? Well, you should and I'll explain why below. Whenever you do advertising for your business, you should have one goal in mind: conversions. This includes all the people who need your thing today, and all those who will eventually need your thing, someday. You want to elicit responses and prompt your market to take action on your offer, whatever it is. However, how many times have you run an advertising campaign only to receive a few clicks and one depressing lead? Chances are, the principles of direct response marketing don't emanate in your advertisements. In direct response advertising, the entire point is to get potential customers to respond to your ad immediately. This means including a call-to-action (CTA) that's impossible to say no to with an offer that's too good to refuse. The truth is that you can riddle your advertising with as many CTAs as you want. However, this will not necessarily translate into conversions. Crafting direct response ads is both an art and a science. The art comes from direct response copywriting which is the use of persuasive, powerful words and mind-blowing angles. Conversely, It is a science because you need to know the intricacies of human psychology and neuroscience to actually persuade people. Unless you have both in your direct response ads, you're bound to a result of poor engagement and measly returns. You can't afford that as a growing business in the residential home service industry. Wizard of Ads™ is here to prevent that from happening. Here, we'll share with you everything there is to know about writing direct response ads. Keep reading.

What are Direct Response Ads?

Direct response ads are a form of advertising that aims to elicit a quick, specific response or action from users. Take note of the keyword "specific". By publishing direct response ads, you want readers, viewers, or listeners to take the action that you want, immediately. This could be to purchase your products, book a call, or sign up for a service, etc. That said, direct response marketing is the polar opposite of traditional marketing. The normative system of marketing focuses on building relationships and establishing brand recognition. In direct response marketing, businesses focus on driving conversions through ads to acquire customers, generate sales and a quick ROI. The key is in the immediacy of the response. Ads are direct, to the point and focused on a specific CTA. Nonetheless, I believe that striking the right balance between direct response marketing and traditional marketing is key. In their groundbreaking book, the Long and the Short of It, Binet and Field teach us you must invest 60% to 70% of the budget on branded endeavors and 30% to 40% of the budget to entice the “today” sale. Allow me to explain. Say, you bagged an HVAC installation gig through your direct response ads. Anyone who had their HVAC installed will have the unit maintained and repaired eventually. You want to be the business that gets both the installation and maintenance service. Only a healthy mix of direct response and traditional marketing will enable you to do this. Why? Because you didn't skedaddle after you got their coveted yes. You built a long-lasting relationship that got them committed and invested in your business. In other words, you can't have one or the other. This is especially true in a tightly competitive landscape like the residential home services industry. Your lifeblood is your club memberships, and only both traditional and direct response marketing can give you that. If you're struggling to craft killer direct response ads for your business, Ryan Chute from Wizard of Ads for Essential Services can help. Book a call.

Recruitment Ads

To some degree, recruitment ads are a form of direct-response ads. No other comes close to explaining their similarities than Roy H. Williams, in one of his Monday morning memos. In April 2018, Roy published a 60-second recruitment ad from Morris-Jenkins Plumbing and Air Conditioning from Charlotte, NC. The ad reached a staggering 19 percent of the entire Charlotte population in a span of three days. Listeners heard it an average of 6.3 times and cost only seven-tenths of a penny for every repetition per person. These are incredible feats and all, but the most important component of the ad is their wonderful copy. I won't mention it here so as to avoid plagiarism. My point is that Roy H. Williams hit the trifecta that broke the science of direct response ads. The advertising message he crafted had these three elements: remarkability, credibility, and urgency. We'll dig deeper into why these characteristics are important in a bit. Here are the tidbits that made the recruitment ad a head-turner:

"Would you like to make one hundred thousand dollars a year?"

This a truly remarkable message, considering the median salary of plumbers in 2021 was $59,880. Plumbers get immediately hooked when they hear these numbers.

"You hear Morris-Jenkins on TV and radio all the time."

Everyone in Charlotte knows who Morris-Jenkins is very well and they have a wonderful reputation. This line reminded listeners who was talking. Morris-Jenkins’ immense credibility wiped away the skepticism that plumbers may have from the previous promise.

"Be at Morris-Jenkins this Saturday at 8 a.m. for a confidential interview."

While their CTA is not to be at Morris-Jenkins within five minutes, they still displayed a sense of urgency. The interview was one-time. If a plumber missed their chance, they'll have to wait for another announcement.

Now then, what's with these three elements? Let's discover below.

Remarkable, Credible, and Urgent Ads

Again, direct response advertising is anchored on offering immediate specific actions. This is a quality absent from non-direct response advertising. "If that's the case," says plumber Joe, "let's just add a CTA button in all our advertisements." A respectable attempt, but a heartbreaking one when he realizes his ads yield little to no conversions. His strategy overlooked one problem: what makes him think his ads are persuasive enough to actually drive that action? Remember that sales happen when an alignment of principles occurs. Similarly, you can only persuade someone when you know what makes them tick and attack from that angle. It is basic science, and it tells us there are three things: remarkability, credibility, and urgency. These three are the combined secret sauce of successful direct response ads. Let's explore them further below.

Remarkable

Let me ask you something. Which is the more interesting news?

1. "Elon Musk spotted driving around town with the newest unreleased Tesla model."
2. "Elon Musk's newest unreleased Tesla model was stolen."

Okay, I agree, it sounds harsh but anyone would probably say B, right? But why? Because it's more remarkable. It tickles the right spot and piques our interest better. After all, so what if he drives around town with a new Tesla concept model? That's normal and quite frankly, no fun. You only truly access the realm of remarkability when your ads go against the grain. Adding a story that shatters the system and a fact that breaks the status quo is what people want. Saying that plumbers can earn $100 thousand is interesting, and truth be told, mouth-watering, especially for plumbers who earn half. What remarkable value do you offer that makes you stand 600 ft. above your competition? Do you have a perfectly fair competitive advantage that elevates you above the Sea of Sameness? That's your “remarkable.”

Credible

Another pillar in the success of direct response ads is their sense of credibility, particularly, of the one speaking. In the case of Morris-Jenkins, their many successful services and commercials have cemented them atop the industry. One mention of their brand name and every plumber is all ears. Here's the thing. For businesses that are only starting out, your credibility may be nowhere to be found. Does that mean you can't produce successful direct response ads without being a household name? No, not at all. However, you do need something to show for when people begin wondering about your credibility. This could include but is not limited to:

• A website with an appealing user interface and a smooth user experience
• An optimized local listing in Google Business Profile
• Optimized, authoritative, and value-dense content throughout your website
• Good and positive reviews
• An active social media page
• Desirable company culture and work ethics

With these elements, your business can rival even more popular brands in the direct response marketing scene.

Urgent

Finally, what makes direct response an action-driven approach is the pinch of urgency garnished throughout the ad. In Roy H. Williams' ads, he indicated a clear time, date, and place for the plumber and HVAC tech interview. Naturally, anyone who missed the date loses their spot among the Morris-Jenkins ranks. That's the sense of urgency the ad creates. With a desirable offer, you reclaim the power of decision-making away from your customers. You back them into a corner where their only choice is to take action now or miss the chance forever. One of the biggest drivers of urgency is having a sale. While I'm not all for lowering prices, I do believe in its power when done strategically. In the residential home service industry, you could try a limited-time offer for your club membership. Of course, list down the advantages of your value proposition.

What if a Direct Response Ad is Not Working?

The success of direct response ads is anchored on the presence of those three elements. Conversely, the absence of either one or two means your ad may flop.

1. If the ad is not remarkable or does not have a remarkable offer, people will not talk about it.
2. If the ad or you are not credible, your words, like static noise, will go over your listeners.
3. If the ad is not urgent, people take away the purchasing power from your business. They will decide when they want to buy. Sooner or later, they'll forget they ever came across your ad.

Direct Response Marketing vs Customer Bonding

Direct response marketing is distinct compared to customer bonding. When you bond with someone, you aim to build bridges and break barriers with someone. You're not after a quick buck. You want to be friends with them. You can only do this through constant association, hence the term "customer bonding." Customer bonding can be done in a variety of ways like through content or newsletters. They're not after your customer's cash, rather they simply want to introduce your company to prospects. Messaging that bonds with customers are the building blocks that make your direct response ads successful. You want to focus more on customer bonding ads, content, emails and social media posts than exploit direct response ads. As Roy H. Williams puts it:

"Customer bonding ads build long-term reputation and relationship. Direct-response ads erode it."

In other words, use direct response ads sparingly in your business and focus more on customer bonding fronts. Newsflash, Wizard Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads for Essential Services can do both for your company. If you need an advertising expert to make your ads for you, book a call.