What happens when you think your TV commerical style says "premium brand," but everyone watching hears "discount furniture warehouse"?

In this no-BS episode, Ryan Chute teams up with Ad Wizards Mick Torbay and Chris Torbay to tackle one of advertising’s most expensive delusions: believing you can look like Budweiser on a budget better suited for Honest Al’s Used Cars.

From Apple’s minimalist “I’m a Mac” spots to Restoration Hardware’s six-figure polish, the crew pulls apart why cheap production isn’t just a bad look—it’s a bad signal. They reveal how “average” ads waste your money, when a low-budget look can actually work in your favor, and why your nephew with an iPhone isn’t the next Spielberg.

The boys trade war stories on blown budgets, laugh at the charm of terrible cable ads, and argue over whether you should spend until it hurts—or until your brand finally stops looking like a garage sale.

Episode Highlights

• Why most $10K ads are tragically average —and how to rise above them.
• When "cheap" is on-brand (and when it tanks your credibility).
• How to make budget restrictions fuel creativity instead of killing it.
• The hidden costs of cutting corners in casting, gear, and post-production.
• Real-world case studies: from plumbing ads to premium retail giants.

Whether you’re running a scrappy small business or managing a big-budget brand, this episode will sharpen your instincts, save you from wasting money, and help you invest in production that makes your ads look as good as you say you are.

📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

💬 When was the last time you saw a “budget-friendly” commercial that didn’t look like your cousin shot it on a weekend—and did you trust that brand more or less afterward?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

In today's episode of Advertising in America, we're going to debate the high cost of TV production.

I love now. Now is the best. Everything is so much better now, and production is better too.

You need to spend enough to deliver a final product that looks professional, that delivers on your concept. If cutting corners compromises that, you can't cut those corners. Your goal is to look like an advertiser that people take seriously. If your production values look half-assed. You undermine that.

You can't just take any idea and try and pull it off on a shoestring. If it looks like you cut corners on production, people will think you cut corners everywhere else. Here's a commercial made on a low budget. But don't confuse Big Head Store with a high-end furniture store. Restoration Hardware spends six figures to make their commercials look good, and that's how they convince people they're a premium store. If cheap is not your brand, consider spending a bit more on TV production.

Ryan Chute: Is it worth paying the piper for premium work, or will the minimum viable product suffice to fight for all the bootstraps? Here's Mick.

Mick Torbay: There's a thing I like to say, and I've even said it a few times on this program I love now. Now is the best. Everything is so much better now, and production is better too.

I actually produce some of the radio commercials I write, and in my home studio, I have the equivalent of about half a million bucks worth of equipment, if I had bought it in the eighties. I have a multi-track recorder of a quality that didn't exist 30 years ago, even if Steely Dan wanted it. I have plugins that emulate the most expensive studio equipment in the world. I record on a Neumann U 87 microphone going into a manly Voxbox preamp. That's about 30 grand right there. Only, none of it is real. It's software and technology indistinguishable from the original. On the television side, I work with studios that have editing capabilities better than George Lucas had when he made Star Wars.

And I'm shooting 30-second TV commercials for a plumber in Milwaukee. Just amazing. So there's no question, production costs are at an all-time low. Enjoy it. But do remember lower production costs doesn't mean you can spend next to nothing and get something that looks as good as a Budweiser commercial. It doesn't level the playing field. It just means Bud spends half a million bucks on a 30 instead of a million, but you can't compete with that when you're spending 5K. The best way to pay less for production is to have a writer who understands the situation and looks at a low budget as a creative restriction.

Remember the Apple Ads from a few years ago. “Hi, I'm a Mac and I'm a PC.” They made 66 of those commercials over four years, so yeah, they couldn't afford to spend a quarter of a million bucks for each one like Apple normally did. It was all done on a white psych with little or no props. The dialogue did most of the heavy lifting, easy to light, easy to shoot. Looked like nothing else on TV. But if you noticed how many small businesses now do TV commercials with two people talking on a white seamless, it's no longer a distinctive thing. It's still cheap, but it's not interesting anymore. Low production value means you'll need above-average writing and above-average talent. The MAC versus PC ads had two top actors, like feature film actors, so be careful.

Keeping your budget low is not easy, but it's doable as long as everyone on the team is aware of the challenge. You can't just take any idea and try and pull it off on a shoestring. If it looks like you cut corners on production, people will think you cut corners everywhere else. Here's a commercial made with a low budget.

But don't confuse Big Head Store with a high-end furniture store. Restoration Hardware spends six figures to make their commercials look good, and that's how they convince people they're a premium store. If cheap is not your brand, consider spending a bit more on TV production.

And if you really want to trigger me, mention a production guy who quotes you a price on a TV commercial before they even see the script. Seriously, that happens. “How much for a TV commercial?” “Oh, we can do one for five grand.” Really? Imagine a construction company quoting to build your new house without even looking at the drawings.

That's what he sounds like to me. Anyone who tells you how much a commercial will cost before seeing the script is either full of shit or completely out of his depth. Avoid that guy like your life depends on it. Find a talented ad writer who looks at a small production budget as a creative challenge, and you could strike gold. It's happened before. It can happen to you.

Ryan Chute: I just love pitting you against the things you're so clearly for.

Mick Torbay: It's kind of mean, actually.

Ryan Chute: It's actually awesome to watch you dance. It's a beautiful thing. Maybe I'm the evil twin. Chris, you spent the national GDP of The Bahamas on a single ad before. What do you have to say?

Chris Torbay: How much should you pay for production? As much as you can afford. There are various rules of thumb. A classic is that you never spend more than 10 or 15% on production because you should spend most of your marketing budget on media, getting your message heard, not on making it.

That's fine, but it also breaks down when the numbers get low or high, for that matter. Just because a 30-second Super Bowl ad costs $8 million doesn't mean you should spend $1.2 million to make it. Some, apparently, try filling it full of celebrities and special effects when they haven't got a particularly good idea or a differentiating message. But how do you calculate that if you use non-traditional media, if you run YouTube or social media or play it at your trade show booth, your media cost might be zero. So what's 15% of that? You need to spend enough to deliver a final product that looks professional and delivers on your concept. If cutting corners compromises, that you can't cut those corners.

Your goal is to look like an advertiser that people take seriously. If your production values look half-assed, you undermine that. The truth is, we are spoiled. Now, the bar has been raised; even the simplest Kickstarter video has production values that look professional, and they have negative money. They actually go further into debt to make it look legitimate. They hire professionals. YouTubers and influencers have sophisticated lighting rigs and audio gear and edit their videos professionally, even when they're trying to look like normal people posting from their bedrooms. There's a reason we don't shoot this podcast on an iPhone in Ryan Chute's rec room.

Production values demonstrate professionalism. It shows we believe strongly enough in the things we say to present them in a way that looks credible and professional. Is there a cheaper way to do it? Yes, there is. Should we do it that way? No, we should not. The key is making sure all the money you spend goes onto the screen. Good gear, good cameraman, good audio production, actors, writers.

Hire somebody smart to give you a great idea. Can you get some kids straight out of community college with a communications diploma to write your ads? Sure. Don't spend the money. I'm expensive, but the money you spend will be on the screen. Where you stop spending is where it gets more expensive, but not visibly better. Extra money for celebrities for no good reason other than, “Hey, that's cool.” Fancy dinners and tons of people at the chute, staying in hotels and eating big meals that we bill to the job.

Corporations get themselves into this trap because the committee has to be there, and it costs money to send the marketing manager, the marketing director, and the VP marketing all to Hollywood for a week and eat at the Ivy every night.

In my big agency days, I was on tons of those jobs. That's how the big breweries end up spending $350,000 on a 30-second spot. Skip those expenses, but do pay for quality. We say this all the time in business: there's a difference between the lowest price and the best value. The Volvo might be the best value, even though it ain't cheap. You don't have to buy the Ferrari, but please don't buy the Trabant.

Ryan Chute: The Trabant 601 was a very reliable automobile. 499 ccs of fury that was. After the commercial break, we'll thoroughly investigate how to whole-ass your production work.

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Ryan Chute: I love how you both danced around the numbers. What does it look like in cold, hard cash?

Mick Torbay: I think where a lot of the problem comes from is that nobody wants to look the client in the eye and say no. Nobody ever wants to say, “Actually, maybe you can't afford this, and when it comes to television, sometimes you just can't afford it, no matter what your nephew says.”

If you're gonna make a commercial, we can't just pretend that there aren't people doing that really well on television today. And your commercial, you can't compare the amount you're gonna invest in production with the other guy who also sells grapple grommets. It's, it's no, you're right next to a Toyota commercial.

So if you look ridiculously cheap and shitty, and then the Toyota commercial comes next, you're fighting against them too. And so nobody wants to say, “This is TV. You really have to do this well. And so if you can't afford good production, no problem. Let's do radio where it's a lot cheaper to sound really freaking good.”

Chris Torbay: But even in radio, in all media, the problem is that when you say nobody wants to say no in all media, there is always somebody who can do it for less than that. Let's mention a number. As soon as you mention a number, if I ask you, is there a way of doing it cheaper than that? There's always a guy who could do it. And then when that guy gives you a number and you say, “Is there any way of doing it cheaper than that?” The answer is always “Yes, there is always a way cheaper.” And they're all making, I'm doing it cheaper commercials right now, and they're all making, but it's a straw that broke the camel's back argument at one point, do you say, “Okay, now it looks crap.”

It maybe only look incrementally crappier than the previous one, which only looked incrementally crappier than the one before that. But at some point it looks. Amateurish and embarrassing, and what are you gonna do with the money you saved, because now you just look bad.

Ryan Chute: These are absolutely astoundingly important things to talk about. Let's look at some of the fun facts here that will absolutely knock your socks off in a lot of ways. And one service business, this is US Small Business Administration, in 2024, small businesses are spending 5% to 12% of revenue on marketing production.

That's not the media spend, that's not the channel spend. That's not the management fees. When we're thinking about service businesses getting their message out, their revenue, based on percentage of revenue, it's not unheard of in the world of business, in services specifically, this is measured through census data, right? That you would spend 20% of your marketing budget.

Now we're talking home services, plumbers, everything else. As a rule, we're running somewhere between 3% and 12% for most of our clients. Some of the people who've ended up overspending a bit more because Google has spent more of their money this year, have dusted up to the edges of 13 to 15% to aggressively grow. But we're talking about fairly astounding levels of expenditure here.

I've seen production come in as low as $200-$250 for a video, and it is clearly not TV quality. There is just no way in the world that this is going to look good on TV. We have production houses that we've used that will do it for $1,000 to $1,500 a video if you do a bunch of videos together. And again, if you remember the old days of cable TV ads where the slick used car salesman is coming, asking, telling you to come on down to Honest Als, super amateur, and there's to some degree, the potential of charm is there. Not unlike Red House.

Mick Torbay: And might be on brand, right? If Honest Al is saying, I've got the cheapest Chevys in town and he's got a cheap ass commercial. That works, that's cool.

Chris Torbay: But if you're trying to sell a premium product, which any of our consumers, that's where our clients are.

Mick Torbay: It falls apart, because most of the clients that we work with are not pretending to be the cheapest solution in town. And if you're gonna expect your customer to pay more to hire you. You can't look like the cheap guy.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. And we've seen generic ads in a box where the technician walks up to the front door, the clip of the truck parked in the perfect spot, and the handshake and the smile, and then the talk at the thermostat. And then the conversation over the kitchen counter, all of the generic nonsense, and they're paying $10,000 for that one time and use it as much as you want. And that includes everything. Is that a good deal? Absolutely.

That is the worst money you have ever spent on the guy, and we've actually had this happen, who immediately threw out that he could do something that we were doing for a client for, somewhere in the realm of half. And that they would come to him and they would do all of this stuff without even seeing the script. They had no idea how much we had to pay the actual guy who was the actor.

Chris Torbay: Exactly. And that's why I say that money is money that goes on the screen. You can read the ad yourself, or you can get your brother-in-law, who always wanted to be an actor. He can be the star. Or you can cast somebody who is a professional actor. Who's got that right gravitas, if it's supposed to be gravitas or has got that comedic ability, if it's supposed to be a funny spot, and that's money well spent, you've created a character. Think of campaigns that are out there where you go, I love that guy, when you know, you mentioned I'm a Mack, I'm a PC. Justin Long's got some charm to him, and I forget the name of the guy who played the PC, but he was a well-known comedic actor, and he played the Schmo really well. That was good money. Could you and I have read those? Sure. But they wouldn't have been as good. It was worth the money to pay for those two actors for it to land.

Ryan Chute: Content Marketing Institute did a research study and found that small businesses are wasting 26% of their advertising budget on ineffective production. And that really does hurt when you're a small business. Like, we're never going to recommend doing TV if it's out of production. We're also never going to recommend that if you're going to do it, have a standard so that you stand up against the Budweiser commercial on one side and the Apple commercial on the other side. Otherwise, you are wasting your money if you can't land that joke, if you can't get the thing done, and I don't care if it's in front of a white screen. If the copy is there, I'm all for it.

If there's nothing that the copy is going to do, that's going to stand it out past the white screen setup. Don't do the white screen right? Looking at the production cost for what it is, is astoundingly more beneficial.

So what are we seeing typically for people who are really just asking us what they want to know?

The Wyzowl Video Marketing Research Council in 2024 said $1,500 to $5,000 per minute is a fairly common video advertising production cost, not TV.

When it comes to TV, the average advertising production cost ranges from $1,500 to $10,000 per asset, which is usually 30 seconds, and that's done by the American Marketing Association.

Mick Torbay: Remember, that's the average. That means there's a lot that's way higher than that. There's clearly stuff that's being done that's lower than that, but understand, if you spend $10,000, you are average. You are not standing out. You are not. “Oh my God. What a great piece of video.” $10,000 gets you average. That is something to bear in mind when someone says, “Yeah, I can do that.”

Chris Torbay:  Because it’s based on Crazy Charlie's discount, car dealer. Like all those guys. Those are guys in that average as well.

Mick Torbay: And they're doing it for $400.

Chris Torbay: So do an average of all the ads that you remember, and like, and you find charming or interesting or that stay with you,

Mick Torbay: Like what you talk about at the water cooler. All of those were made for six figures.

Ryan Chute: And the super cringey Red House one absolutely fits for a discount furniture mart.

Mick Torbay: They're not pretending to be anything.

Chris Torbay:  But the other thing you may find out too, is like you may find out that it costs more than you think, right?

In Canada, we have the Loblaw's grocery store chain has a line of products called Noname, and they're all this yellow label with plain black print on them, whatever.

Mick Torbay: It's ugly on purpose.

Chris Torbay: They advertise on TV, they make them look cheap. They look like they're in a studio. You can actually see the lights. So but they probably spend a lot of money to make it look like it's a low-budget spot. And I can guarantee you that they hired top graphic designers to design that ugly ass logo. No logo, but that ugly ass layout design that goes on all those things. So those guys from Red House, they may be doing it for 10 bucks. They may also not be doing it for 10 bucks and trying really hard to make it look like it was, because it's on brand actually.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. And there's other factors in production cost as well. The type of camera that's used. One of the studios that we often frequent uses some of the most state-of-the-art equipment, and they rent that equipment because it's so expensive to buy that camera, just that one camera. Not just the camera, but the lens for the camera and how it actually does the thing specifically.

Technology has absolutely advanced us so astoundingly forward and reduced cost dramatically, because we're not taking up a warehouse worth of space to have all of this studio space. We've often had meetings at Metalworks in Toronto, where they have just massive pieces of equipment that are incredibly costly, astoundingly accurate and high fidelity.

But we're really trying to recognize that, like you said, in your studio at home, you can knock out a radio commercial. It reminds me of Johnny Molson's creative that we had with a client where he talks about a helicopter coming in from Luxembourg and using the dynamite to blow at the back wall. And all of those things on the TV budget would've been somewhere in the realm of half a million to a million dollars. The helicopter from Luxembourg alone. But on radio, it costs the cost of the radio because we just created.

Mick Torbay: You can quote a radio commercial production before seeing the script.Because I challenge you to spend more than $5,000 on a radio commercial. And that’s when you get Harrison Ford to do it.

Ryan Chute: That's it. That's exactly it. So other costs include royalties and licenses. Real music or boxed music, right? If you have royalty-free music that everyone can use and that you're gonna recognize on 58 other things, you don't stand out anymore. And did you spend your money wisely?

Or do I spend the extra $600 to get proper production done? $2,000 for actual actors who have to land in time and enunciate and inflect all correctly to have that, that perfect southern drawl or Minnesota mom or whatever the case might be, that really hits it hard. All of these things cost money, flying them to locations, costs money, buying the royalties out so that there's no licensing where you're having to repurchase the copyrights or use them in different areas, all costs money. These people have rights that are doing this production as well. Heck, even with Dewey Jenkins, when they released Bobby to go to Hollywood, Dewey Jenkins paid him a hundred thousand dollars as a parting gift. And they announced it on an ad that he was actually letting them go, and then it hit the news. And of course they said, "Is it real?" And it was real. That's what he got. So these things add up, and they matter. But will it further your brand? That's the question of the day.

Chris Torbay: And that's where it comes down to. It is case by case, and the problem you get in is when somebody quotes a number. You just said a bunch of numbers, which may be appropriate for some things and may be completely inappropriate for others. I hate for somebody to hear $600 or $2,000 and then say that's how much the thing that you had just attributed to those actually costs, it depends, right? If you write a jingle and it has a choir in it, you gotta pay all the choristers. If you write a radio ad that has two people in it versus one that's got four. There are extra actors in there, and if they need to be comedic actors, and so you have to get good ones rather than just any old radio DJ reading the copy; it's gonna cost a little bit more. And this is the problem, we all have apocryphal stories. Everybody's got a friend who did a spot for $5,000.

Was that spot... I used to shoot corporate videos, and people would say, “I got a guy who did a corporate video, and we heard they were $5,000.”

And it's okay, you're a mining company and you want us to go 7,000 feet underground and shoot for a day. Was your friend's apocryphal corporate video that was done for $5,000, did it have those challenges? Did we have to go all the way to Sudbury? Did we have to get a crew underground?

Ryan Chute: You gotta pay extra just to go to Sudbury?

Chris Torbay: But no one ever asked that. They just get a price in their mind. And I guess that's going back to the very beginning, that's why we hesitate to say “what’s a number,” because until you know anything, the number is only misleading. We have to talk about the exact apples and oranges that we are dealing with here before. That's right. We can talk about the number.

Mick Torbay: And I think sometimes we get bogged down in the individual technology. Like, I know Apple released a TV commercial, which they proudly said was shot on an iPhone. And I believe they shot that thing on an iPhone. But what they didn't do is have another guy on an iPhone 20 feet back showing you the lighting rig because you can shoot things on an iPhone if you light the living hell out of it, and have a brilliant, super attractive model to be shot. And the whole thing's probably on a steadicam rig.

Chris Torbay: And post-production is color correcting. There was all of that stuff. There was all kinds of stuff done in post.

Ryan Chute: So there’s editing, right? And look, what we need to recognize is that this is all proportionate to your budget, that you decide on based on your business. We're not saying you have to spend this money when we're recommending something, and you don't have to feel compelled if you're doing it on your own to overspend or outspend. Some things are an investment, and you're paying for them like Kickstarter before you're even making money, and other times you're producing these things in line with what it costs to put out your brand in the best way.

Remember, the biggest thing that matters most is the words. The second biggest thing is the visuals and other aesthetics. The other languages of the mind that associate with those words. The thing is that we've proven that for decades on the radio, and we've proven that with Theatre of the Mind and how that leverages up. So, is it that we only wanna do radio or only TV or only social? Is there a different aesthetic for social than there is for TV? Absolutely, there is. All of these things are true, and they're all relevant to where you're at in your business today. It's your production should be a reflection of your current budget to play the game that can be played, within the confines of what we have to work with.

Mick Torbay: And it should be a reflection of how you see yourself in the marketplace. Like in the echelon of how you see yourself.

Ryan Chute: That's it. It's gotta match or wait until it does match or do a different thing to get to the next thing. There are lots of ways to approach this. There's more than one way to solve a problem. At the end of the day. We have to figure out what the problem is and what resources we have at our fingertips are from that. We can figure out what to do to make it all make sense.

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Ryan Chute: Where do we land on production costs? The truth is, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Mick made great points about today's technology, and a tight budget doesn't mean that you can't create something absolutely amazing. And sometimes a clever idea and a little creativity can do more than a big budget ever could.

And Chris brought up an important reminder, too. Investing in quality can make a big difference. Especially when you want to build trust and look professional in proximity to the ads that are in either side of you.

If you're a small business operator. I get it. Every dollar counts.

The good news is you don't have to spend a fortune to make a great ad, but if you do have the budget, invest a bit more so you can add a polish that tells your audience that you mean business in relation to what you're trying to represent in the marketplace. A premium product, a premium solution, versus a low-cost, low-budget solution. The sweet spot is where your budget, your brand, and your goals all align. And whether you're spending $500 or $5,000, focus on making every dollar work every bit for you. We're here to help you figure it out. So don't be shy.

Reach out, and we'll help you make the most of what you've got to spend. Whether you work with us or not, we always want to give you help.

Until next time, keep it real and keep it clear. This is Advertising in America.

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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. Do you have questions or topics you want us to cover?

Join us on our socials @advertisinginamerica. Wanna 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.

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The strongest brands are the ones with the most distinctive personalities. But even a weak and faded personality is better than none at all.

A brand with a personality is an imaginary character in the minds of the customers of that brand. It is similar to the characters in syndicated television shows, bestselling novels, and big movie franchises.

Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Robin Williams are actors, but they are also characters in your mind.

Willie Nelson, Michael Jackson, and Taylor Swift are musicians. but they are also characters in your mind.

Brands are like that.

Two people are now going to tell us about books.

Dear Person Reading This,

A writer can fit a whole world inside a book. Really. You can go there. You can learn things while you are away. You can bring them back to the world you normally live in.

You can look out of another person’s eyes, think their thoughts, care about what they care about.

You can fly. You can travel to the stars. You can be a monster or a wizard or a god. You can be a girl. You can be a boy. Books give you worlds of infinite possibility. All you have to do is be interested enough to read that first page…

Somewhere, there is a book written just for you. It will fit in your mind like a glove fits your hand. And it’s waiting.

Go look for it.

Neil Gaiman
A Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader, p. 22

Brands are like novels and movies and TV shows. Brands are like hit songs. Brands are like actors and musicians. Brands are like good books.

Here is the second person.

Dear Reader,

When I was 12, I was given a scholarship to a private girl’s school in the town where I lived. All the other girls came from another – wealthier – town. They were driven to school in Jaguars and Mercedes Benzes. They ate artichokes. No way would I ever fit in.

In the midst of my funk, the English teacher assigned A Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. As it happens, Frankie, the book’s heroine, is also 12 and also wants to belong. Her yearning is such that she wants to know everyone in the world and for everyone to know her – exactly what I wanted!

That’s what stunned me, not just the intensity of the longing, but the specificity. It meant – it had to mean – there were other people in the world like me. Not just Frankie, a fictional character, but the author who had to have felt that way herself in order to give Frankie that longing. I felt such an intimate connection with her, as if she’d looked deep inside me and knew me in the way I wanted the world to know me. Reading didn’t just offer escape; it offered connection!

All these years later, I just have to look at my copy of A Member of the Wedding on my bookshelf to experience again how I felt when I first read it and to feel the full force of that connection: to Frankie, to Carson McCullers, to the 12-year-old girl I was, and to 12-year-olds everywhere.

Emily Levine
A Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader, p. 52

A brand with a personality is like A Member of the Wedding, written by Carson McCullers.

Who was the first ad writer to give a brand a distinctive personality?

That’s like asking, “Who built the first car?” To answer that question, we would first have to agree upon the defining characteristics of a car.

For us to agree upon “Who was the first ad writer to give a brand a distinctive personality,” we would first have to agree upon a definition for the word “distinctive,” and then we would have to agree upon what constitutes a “personality.”

We could do that, or you can just trust me when I say that Carl Benz built the first car in July of 1886 and Bill Bernbach created the first brand with a distinctive personality in 1958. The ad is not logical. It does not speak of features and benefits. It does not feel like an ad.

Ads with personality are captivating and engaging because they give you a look at something through the eyes of someone else.

In this case, we are listening to a catty cat, an obvious metaphor for a snobbish society matron.

You might be thinking, “That ad isn’t special. I see ads like that all the time.”

These are my responses:
(1.) No, you see ads like that occasionally, perhaps 1 in every 1,000 ads you encounter. You only think that you see them “all the time” because when you do see one, it has an impact on you. Your mind has been ignoring the 999 others because they are uninteresting and predictable.
(2.) Keep in mind that we are talking about 1958. In those days, this ad was revolutionary.

A year after Bill Bernbach wrote that first Ohrbach’s ad, a group of Germans came to America and asked, “Where can we find the man who writes those ads for Ohrbach’s?” And thus the legendary “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen was born.

Volkswagen, a small car with an air-cooled engine from Germany, quickly became a powerful brand with a cult-like following. And this happened in America just 14 years after the end of WWII. Don’t tell me that ad writers don’t make a difference.

I began this journey by accident.

For many years, I have quoted Bill Bernbach’s famous statement, “I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”

The truth is that he never said it, and he never claimed to have said it.

Bill was searching for a new gimmick for Ohrbach’s Department Stores when his client Nathan Ohrbach looked at him and said, “I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”

It is foolish to create a personality for a company that doesn’t already have one. Great ad writers perceive the personality that is already alive within the company. And then they amplify it.

If you try to give a personality to a company that doesn’t already have one, the customers who respond to your ads will feel they have been deeply misled and betrayed. You can put lipstick on a pig, but everyone who encounters that pig will still recognize it as a pig.

Bill Bernbach never did that. He found the truth, amplified the truth, and then proclaimed the truth. When I recently learned what Bill Bernbach really did say, it freaked me out a little. Things that I have discovered, developed, practiced, and written about for more than 40 years had been discovered by Bill Bernbach before I was born.

This is Bill Bernbach:

“A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.”

“There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past.”

“We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics, we forget we can create them.”

“Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.”

“An idea can turn to dust or magic depending on the talent that rubs against it.”

“The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.”

“If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you, and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you.”

Richard Kessler owned an invisible little jewelry store in a sad little strip center in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Everyone in Menomonee Falls was willing to drive 21 miles to Milwaukee, but no one in Milwaukee was willing to drive 21 miles to Menomonee Falls.

But that’s exactly what we needed them to do.

Richard had vision and courage, but so do a lot of other business owners. The reason I agreed to work with the Kess-Man is that he was willing to be vulnerable. The man had genuine humility.

If a client doesn’t have humility, they won’t let you write ads that reveal their heart.

We had a tiny little ad budget, so we ran weird radio ads late at night that ended with Richard saying, “Kesslers Diamonds, inconveniently located on Appleton Avenue in Menomonee Falls.”

Humorless people assumed that Richard had misspoken. They called the radio stations and said, “He’s not saying ‘conveniently located.’ He’s saying ‘inconveniently located.’ That man is saying ‘inconveniently located!’ You need to correct that.”

My goal was for you to feel that you knew Richard Kessler. I liked Richard and I wanted you to like him, too. To like him, you just needed to get to know him.

We accomplished this in 60-second increments.

If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.

Kessler taught every employee to think and feel like they owned the store. He gave each of them his full authority. No employee at Kesslers ever had to “check with the boss” to make a decision. They were able to make gigantic decisions without having to check with him or with anyone else. That’s real vulnerability.

When Richard Kessler had grown the company 70 times bigger than it was when we got started, he gave his employees the company.

Kesslers Diamonds is the largest employee-owned jewelry store in America. They have 9 big stores across Wisconsin and Michigan with plans to open a lot more.

I shared that story with you to make you understand a transformative truth: Passion, pride, and confidence are overrated. The world is full of idiots who are passionate, proud and confident.

Untempered passion, pride, and confidence create a strutting peacock, a coarse cliché, a cardboard cut-out wearing an Armani suit. If you write ads for such a person, you must target people who want to be that person. Count me out.

If you want to write successful ads that win the hearts and minds of millions, look for business owners who have humility, vulnerability, and generosity.

America loves Warren Buffett – not because he has billions of dollars – but because he has humility, vulnerability, and generosity.

Be like Warren Buffett.

Nobody answers their phone anymore. 

Cold callers are sus. 

Cold calling is illegal. 

‍

Cold Calling in 2025? Are you Mad?! Maybe…

I don’t really care what opinions people have about cold calling in 2025. When you need to feed your business, you go hunting. If there’s no food in the pantry, you go get food. And that’s cold calling. 

As more people use caller ID to gatekeep their calls, the stats have changed. Cold texting is illegal until you get explicit permission from your prospect, and robodiallers will get you into a lot of hot water. 

But when you need calls on the board, you’ll do whatever it takes to get appointments. Let’s go over what you need to know to make it work legally. 

What is Cold Calling?

Cold calling is the unsolicited initiation of contact, usually by phone, with someone who has not previously expressed interest in your product, service, or business, with the goal of starting a sales conversation, gathering information, or setting a meeting.

Key points that make it cold:

• No prior relationship: The prospect hasn’t opted in, requested info, or engaged with you before.
• Intrusive by nature: You’re entering their world uninvited, which means you’re starting at -1 trust.
• Intentional prospecting: The primary aim is to move the prospect closer to a buying decision or next step.

What it’s not:

• Calling a current or past customer (that’s warm calling).
• Returning an inbound inquiry (that’s follow-up).
• Outreach to a referral (that’s referral-based prospecting).

Done poorly, cold calling is telemarketing’s loud, obnoxious cousin. Done well, it’s a high-effort, high-focus form of direct outreach that wins precisely because most competitors won’t do it well (or at all).

Is Cold Calling Legal in the US in 2025?

Yes, cold calling is legal in the US, but it’s wrapped in enough regulation to get the careless into hot water.

If you’re calling cold prospects in 2025, you need to navigate federal, state, and sometimes industry-specific rules.

Federal Rules That Matter for Cold Calling

1. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

• What it does: Restricts telemarketing calls, auto-dialers, prerecorded messages, and texts.
• Key takeaways for cold calling:
  
  • No robodialing or prerecorded voice messages without prior consent, especially to cell phones.
  • Must display a valid caller ID.
  • Must maintain an internal Do Not Call (DNC) list and honor opt-outs immediately.
  • Calling hours: 8 am to 9 pm local time in the prospect’s time zone.

2. National Do Not Call Registry (DNC)

• What it does: Let consumers opt out of unsolicited sales calls.
• Key takeaways:
  
  • You must scrub your list against the DNC before calling.
  • Fines can hit $51,744 per violation.
    Exemptions:
    
    • Business-to-business calls.
    • Existing business relationship, within the last 18 months.
    • Calls to people who gave prior written consent.

3. FTC & FCC Enforcement

• Both agencies can enforce TCPA and DNC rules.
• Lawsuits are common, especially from “professional plaintiffs” who know the system.

State-Level Rules for Cold Calling

• Some states go further with stricter call time limits, licensing, or mandatory disclosures. For example:
  
  • Florida (FTSA) has expanded restrictions on autodialing and even certain text messages.
  • Oklahoma & Washington have similar “mini-TCPA” state laws with higher penalties.

The bottom line is, cold calling is still legal, but you must have a compliance process like DNC scrubbing, opt-out tracking, and time-zone checks.

Train your team to open calls with the right disclosures and document everything in case you get audited or sued.

What Does a Cold Call Sound Like in 2025?

Here is the modern cold call formula that blends old-school grit with new-school personality. This strategy is the difference between being hung up on in 5 seconds and booking an appointment in less than 60 seconds.

1. First Contact

Job one: kill the “sales call” vibe instantly. While all the typical call centers are chasing the yes to get the customer in a “positive mood,” it’s actually a fool's errand. No cold call in history has earned that right. So take FBI Negotiator, Chris Voss’s advice and go for the “no.” 

“Hi [first name], I know you weren’t expecting me. Would it be crazy to think I'm calling for a good reason? 

The key to an effective cold call is maintaining pace. Once you’ve received a quick no, move right along with a sense of urgency for respecting their time. 

2. The Hype Hook

There is literally only one reason a person would give you their money, effort, or time. You have something of value that they need, and you’re ready to give it to them in exchange for something logical.  

The four ingredients of hype include the following: 

1. An intrusive method of communication (like a cold call)
2. An offer too good to be true. 
3. A distinctly logical anchor.
4. A profound sense of urgency. 

You’ve got about 4 seconds to pull this off with confidence and class. For example:

“We’re a new Veteran-owned AC repair company in [specific neighborhood], and we are out looking to make a good first impression. We’re offering our fellow neighbors a $29 tune-up and donating 100% of proceeds to Veterans in need. Would it be too much to ask to count on you for an appointment today?” 

Now, don’t be a liar. That’ll come back to haunt you. Find your authentic offer that is too good to be true, and then anchor it with something that just makes sense. 

3. The Closing ARC

Almost everyone is going to find a reason to resist you. So spend less time on the offer and more time on the benefits of the offer. No one cares about your tune-up, but an awful lot more people care about Veterans, as in the earlier example. 

“[First name], I totally agree with you that you don’t know us, and maybe you even have a guy that you use already, but every 29 dollars goes a long way in helping a veteran in need get essential food and medicine. We want to do our part by doing what we’re good at, AC maintenance and repairs. Let us give you a great experience. It wouldn’t hurt to give your AC a little extra TLC, would it?”

Anytime you’re faced with resistance, recognize that you need to do three things instantly: 

1. Agree with the person no matter what they say. 
2. Rebuttal it with something that speaks to their most likely objection. In this case, it’s the lack of urgency. 
3. Close the sale by asking them to buy again. 

Repeat this Closing ARC process until they book a call or get off the call you’re on. Always make it super friendly, but be tenacious. You have one goal. Close the appointment. 

4. The Next Step

You don’t have an appointment until you have a specific day and time. Not a window. Not a general commitment. Not a day….or a time. All you have is a fake commitment that will fail to get the technician in the door. Here’s how you get a next step solidified.  

• Confirm a specific day and time for the appointment. 
• Get permission to text them before the appointment. 
• Text them a summary of the appointment after your call. 
• Text them the evening prior to the appointment.
• Text them the day of the appointment. 
• Text them 45 minutes before the appointment. 

If they are open, also collect their email and ask permission to send them a little info about your company. Everything you do from here on in is relationship building. We want them to feel really good about their decision and about you coming. 

5. The Referral 

Now that you’ve landed the appointment, here’s a litmus test for the truly brave. It’ll teach you how solid your actual appointment is, and how much value the prospect sees in your offer. Ask: 

“[First name], just before I let you go, would I be crazy to ask you to do me a tiny favor? [wait on no response] 

Would you know one other person who would love to get a $29 tune-up to support a Veteran today?”

The people who feel good about you enough to book a sincere appointment would feel even better paying it forward. 

A ballsy move, but one that will truly pay off once you’ve mastered the cold call. 

For those that want to get permission to share their loved one's info, have a text message standing by ready to send to your first appointment to share with your second opportunity. 

Some Phone Psychology for Cold-Calling in 2025

Be their friendly neighborhood repair guy. People like knowing you’re local. There’s a safety in that. Be ready to mention nearby streets, landmarks, or recent weather events to spike familiarity and engagement.

Use your late-night FM DJ voice. A warm, steady, and confident tone will make you sound more like a neighbor than a telemarketer.

The less cold you can make it, the better. Boost your answer rates by up to 30% by first hitting the call list with a direct mail piece if at all possible. 

Relentlessness is essential today. You’re not going to get away with 3 attempts at calling anymore. The average outbounder has to make 12 attempts at reaching a cold lead. 

Get a verbal commitment on the next step. People are more likely to protect their self-image by doing what they say they will do out loud. 

Use authentic scarcity. No one will believe you if you say we’re doing this as a limited-time offer. Base your limited offers on authentic reasons, such as limited appointment slots. 

Leverage unity as a means of connection. People want to do business with people who share the same values and elevate their own identity. 

Want more deals? Get dialling. 

Need help? This is what I do. Pick up the phone and call me. 

‍

What happens when you think you're selling diamonds, but your customers are actually buying a moment?

In this tell-it-like-it-is episode, Ryan Chute sits down with Ad Wizards Mick Torbay and Chris Torbay to dismantle one of the most common—and costly—mistakes in business: confusing what you do with what you really sell.

From jewellers obsessed with gemology to plumbers keeping “No Poop on the Floor,” they unpack why clarity beats cleverness, why over-educating your customers is killing your ads, and how identity—not features—drives buying decisions. Along the way, you’ll get stories that will make you laugh, cringe, and rethink every line of copy you’ve ever written.

The boys trade jabs over the fine line between selling the emotional moment and telling people exactly what you can do for them. And they’ll show you how to strike that balance so your ads actually connect—and convert.

Episode Highlights

• Why customers aren't buying your product—they’re buying the moment it creates.
• The danger of "educating" instead of persuading.
• How to balance emotional storytelling with clear, literal offers.
• Real-world examples: from garage doors that sell saftey to drain company that sell relief.
• The "inside the bottle" trap that keeps business owners from seeing their true message.

Whether you’re a brand-builder, marketer, or business owner, this episode will sharpen your instincts, simplify your message, and help you sell the thing your customers actually want.

▶️ Tap in for the truth bomb—then decide: are you selling the thing, or the moment?

📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

💬 What’s the real business you’re in—and is it the same thing your customers think you’re in?

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads® for Essential Services

In today's episode of Advertising in America, we're going to debate what you think you sell versus what you actually sell.

Talk to a jeweller and ask what they do, and they'll tell you they deal in diamonds, gold, precious metals and gemstones. They can explain why a ruby can be blue and a sapphire can be red.

It's true, but the more you know about something, the more disconnected you become from those people who don't know anything about that something.

Stop trying so hard to sound smart. Advertising is about clarity. I say, be clear. Tell me one thing. What do you do? How can you help me? Too many companies try too hard to be too philosophical about what they do, rather than just telling me they're good at the one thing I need done.

You wanna have people agonizing over the ad and whatnot, then there are solutions. But at the end of the day, do what's right for you. Do it in a way that makes people feel something about you, not just know that you exist.

Ryan Chute: Let's get past the plastic surface and talk about what your customers really want from you to fight for what's right, not right in front of you. Here's Mick.

Mick Torbay: One of the things I agonize over, especially when I first meet a client, is determining what business they're really in. Sometimes I ask them, here's the funny part, you'd be amazed at how often the client does not know what business they're actually in.

Now, how is that possible? You'll find out right after this.

Nah, I'm just fucking with you.

Talk to a jeweller and ask what they do, and they'll tell you. They deal in diamonds, gold, precious metals and gemstones. Ask for their credentials, and they'll show you a diploma from the American Institute of Gemology.

They can explain why a ruby can be blue and a sapphire can be red. It's true, but the more you know about something, the more disconnected you become from those people who don't know anything about that something. So if you ask what business the jeweller is in, he'll give you an answer that's wrong. He thinks he's in the jewelry business, and he's not. And this is the danger of the jeweller. I remember when I was a young copywriter and I was meeting a client for the first time. He was a jeweller and a very experienced one. He was in his sixties, and it was a family business. This guy knew jewelry. And he says to me, “I know what we need to talk about in our commercials.”

Okay, that's kind of my job, but let's run with this. And what he said was, “I believe we need to educate the consumer.” Sidebar. This is a tremendous red flag business owners.

If you ever tell someone you need to educate the consumer, you're just about to make a horrible mistake. Consumers are not looking to be educated. If they want to be educated, they'll take a course, not watch TV, or listen to the radio to be educated by a commercial.

But back to the story, “what we need to do is educate the consumer on gemology, because if people knew more about gemology, they'd make better decisions in the jewelry store.” Now what he said was 100% true. If we knew more about gemology, we would make better decisions in the jewelry store. However, just because it's true doesn't mean it's relevant. When you work at a jewelry store every day and you buy and sell jewelry as your life's work, you begin to forget what it's like to not know a damn thing about jewelry, and that's the world you and I live in.

To operate a jewelry store, you need to run your business based on the quality and value of the product you're selling. Quality and value. Now, how often do you hear ads about that? Huh? But when you or I walk into a jewelry store, we're looking for something quite different. The fact that we know nothing about diamonds is completely irrelevant. We're here for one reason only. We want the love of our life to open up a box and say, “Oh my God, what have you done?” That's what we're buying. We're buying a moment. Remember the jeweller isn't even there when the moment takes place. He doesn't see that. My jeweller wants people to think of jewelry like he does, and we don't.

If we knew as much about jewelry as he does, we wouldn't buy it because we realize that golden gemstones are commodities, and we are not commodities brokers; we're entirely out of our league when it comes to the quality and value of jewelry. So the smart jeweller never brings it up. Buying jewelry is never a good financial decision.

Remember, a jeweller is a guy who will sell you something that costs $10,000, and all it does is tell fucking time. It doesn't even tell the time as well as a $50 quartz watch. Quality and value, are you insane? We go to the jewelry store because we want to buy the moment, not the thing.

Most jewellers don't know what business they're in. It's not about the gold or the diamonds or the watch. It's about the moment. It's about the story. It's about the love of your life. A good ad will speak to those things. A shitty ad will talk about the jewelry, the quality, and the value. As a business owner, you need to acknowledge that it is impossible to think like someone who doesn't know all the stuff you know. You can't turn off expertise. You can't say, “How would I feel if I didn't have decades of experience in this field?” Thinking like a customer is not something that's available to the business owner. It's a nice catchphrase, but it can't be done, not by you.

Knowing what business you're really in is the first step to creating a message that beats the hell out of everyone else's ad. But you need someone from outside of your organization to do it for you.

Ryan Chute: I'm buying jewelry for the blowjob. I don't know about you, but I know if I do it right, I know, you know.

And for the fellow with the beautiful new tennis bracelet, here's Chris Torbey to educate us on.

Chris Torbay: I'm honestly gonna take the other side on this because the woke politically correct strategy, savvy insights, we hear from all the high-priced gurus, is always “No man. The trick is to find out what business you're really in. Ooh.”

Stop trying so hard to sound smart. Advertising is about clarity. I say, be clear. Tell me one thing. What do you do? How can you help me? And yeah. Yeah. I've heard all the strategy. Guru bunk dentists aren't in the cavity-filling business. They're in the business of you having a confident smile, or we don't fix air conditioners in the home comfort business.

Sure, there's an undercurrent of truth to all that, and that should guide you in the creative ways you distinguish yourself in your marketing. But don't skip the part where you tell people specifically what you can do to help them. Too many companies try too hard to be too philosophical about what they do, rather than just telling me, they're good at the one thing I need done.

Trucking companies that are in the logistics business, truckers are logicians now. They gotta stay in the middle of their lane. They're literally about to be replaced by Tesla self-driving rigs. For every moving company that says they're actually in the home relocation business. There is another company called Two Guys and a Truck, because that's what I need. Two guys and a truck.

Anything that's a solutions company. Lots of health companies. Fuck it. What do you make? Health services, integrated communication, wealth management. You're not an intimacy solutions company. You make lube. Home services and home comfort companies.

The broader your umbrella gets, the less I know you're right for the problem I have today, which is a backed-up toilet. In an effort to cast a wide net, you've made a net so full of holes that it isn't a net anymore. When I see the Lego store, boy, I know what they sell. I know what problem of the mind they solve.

And a lot of the time, people use this pseudo-psychiatry to get out of any responsibility for the things that they do going bad. Whenever there's societal pushback on Uber for killing the taxi industry, they insist they're a software company, not a transportation business. When someone loses their house and their kids' college money at the blackjack tables, the gaming industry insists they're in the entertainment business.

We all know what you do. Don't pretend you do something more profound. You know what I do? I write ads. I mean, I write good ones and I do it strategically, and I understand a lot about communication, but “strategic communications expert” doesn't help you understand what I can do for you. Copywriter does.

What I can do for you is write some really good ads. David Abbott, a legendary named partner and CEO of Abbott Mead Vickers, had the title copywriter on his business card until the day he died. David Ogilvy of Ogilvy and Mayer was the same chairman of the board and Creative Director Emeritus doesn't tell you anything.

If my tooth hurts, I need a dentist. If I need to move something, I need a shipping company. If my car breaks down, I need a mechanic. If your advertising positions you as a transportation certainty solutions provider. I don't think you're gonna get my call.

Ryan Chute: All I wanted was two guys in a truck, and all I got was these two in a Tesla with a five-gallon vat of intimacy solution. After the break, we'll see if we can make sense of all this nonsense.

Ryan Chute: Mick, what you were talking about was business owners often misunderstanding their true business message or their core message value. What is it about that matters so much when you're trying to get your message out there?

Mick Torbay: I think it comes down to the business owners, very often, very deep into their business. And they tend to focus on the day-to-day things that they are managing.

When you're managing inventory, you're buying products, and then you're selling them, or you're managing a staff that does particular things, it's very easy to sort of get kinda laser-focused on that because that's how you run a business in a responsible way. But what you're selling and what the consumer is buying don't always perfectly align. And I guess that was the point I was trying to make.

Now you can take that too far, and I think Chris's points are all valid. If you start pretending that you're too far away from that, then the message can become confusing. But I think it is important to take a step back, especially at the beginning of the relationship, between the ad person and the client, to step out of the client's happy place or the place where they exist and try and take a position of the consumer and what it the problem you're trying to solve for that.

Chris Torbay: Yeah, I think that's a good point. But it is, I think it's something that guides your creativity. That was the point I was making, which is you need to know that, you need to understand, as you said about jewelry, right? It's about the moment. But what happens is people get into this sort of higher-order benefit perspective, and they forget to come back to telling you literally what it is they do.

And you know it's true, it happens in naming and stuff like that. And that's where you get companies like Kitchen Stuff Plus, or Bed Bath & Beyond, where it's “Oh no, we're all kinds of things.” But then, when you say all kinds of things, it's “okay, I need a coffee maker. Is that Beyond Beds and Bath? I don't know.” Those are the ones that you haven't told me anymore.

Mick Torbay: Those are the ones that bother me the most because they've added another word and two more syllables and have given you no more data.

Chris Torbay: Exactly. So I think we have to remember, yes, you're in the business of bringing people joy, or you're in the business of making people healthy, or you're in the business of having people be confident about their money. That should inform how the creativity works, or how your brand behaves. But in a commercial, you need to tell me why I should go to your bank and not the other bank, or why I should go to your store and not the other store.

Mick Torbay: But another way of looking at this because it, when we're in the ad business, our job is to differentiate our client from the other businesses in a category.

And I think it's especially useful if every other business in a category is basically saying the same things, which, by the way, happens a lot, almost all the time. Which puts our clients in such an excellent position to take a leadership role in that community is if everybody else is talking about the product or they're talking about the service. If you are to take a step back and at least think, I'm talking about thinking, I'm talking about strategy, creative strategy, not about copy. I'm talking about the way you plan your message and the way you're gonna deliver it to the consumer, and think in terms of is there a bigger thing that's happening here, and can you use that as a differentiator?

And maybe the consumer will look at that and say, “This guy really gets me. You know, the other guys are selling products, but this person really understands what my problem is.”

Ryan Chute: That was absolutely one of the biggest lessons that I had coming into the Wizard of Ads partnership. When I met you guys at the first meeting in 2017, I'm looking at it and going, “I thought I knew what I was doing when it came to marketing,” because I'd done all the standard pedantic things that you do as a business owner and running ads in the way that you run ads transactionally, for the most part, saying all the same pedestrian things that everyone says.

And what I realized was that there's just such a huge difference between what I do as a seller and what you do as a marketer. And while the two bridge beautifully together, they're completely different conversations and topics that are bringing a person in. You're becoming the story of the brand as opposed to me telling how that net's a result for them.

And there is a danger in expertise. I was inside the bottle, and I couldn't read the label on the outside of the bottle. That's what you guys are built for from a creative standpoint, and for me to recognize that and state the heck out of the way as a strategy.

Chris Torbay: And we've touched on this in another episode, that idea, what's the difference between sales and marketing?

Maybe some of that gemology comes out when the guy's at the counter trying to buy the engagement ring. You, as you say, focus on the moment. You know that you're gonna sell this guy a thing that's gonna make her swoon and say “yes,” and it's gonna be the greatest proposal of your time.

Mick Torbay: And that gets him to the store.

Chris Torbay: And he gets to the store. When you're there, you can tell him a little bit about cut and clarity and stuff like that, and it's “Oh, that's a go.” Okay. Now. And now he feels a little bit, educate the consumer. By all means, give 'em a little something, right? Once you go to the Apple store, they'll tell you a little bit about the chip, or they'll tell you a little bit about the camera, or they'll tell you a little bit about those things. But what they want you to do is have that awesome product and feel good about the product first. So yeah, there's a balance there, but there is sometimes it doesn't go in the advertising.

Ryan Chute: And there is a danger in sales to go too far with the four Cs of diamonds, and they say no one cares right about any of that stuff.

You know what they care about? The guy cares that he's making the right decision about the best choice of diamond for his loved one. That's the logic backfilling the emotion. A good salesperson is going to dust on the edges of that and then move on to reassurance.

Chris Torbay: Give him just enough to know that, “Okay, I know I’m not an idiot.”

Mick Torbay: That's right. You give him the data that justifies the decision that his emotions made an hour before. But you just don't want to feel stupid and make sure it's “No, you're actually making a good decision now. And I've proved it.” Good sale.

Ryan Chute: And the smart salesperson is going to focus on the moment, again, because it's an emotional buy in jewelry.

I think of our two clients, one in Florida who sells garage doors. And remember when we were there and she was like, “Guys, I just gotta do this thing for a few minutes.” And she goes up in front of the whole apprentice room and says, “I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about us. You guys think you're here and we're selling garage doors, and I want you to know that we're here selling safety. We're selling security. We're selling what the customer cares most about. Now, yes, we can make it pretty, but more importantly, we can make sure that during a hurricane, the roof's not gonna blow off their house and that the door isn't going to become sort of some sort of weaponized sail cutting through half of the neighbourhood. We're selling you the safety of getting in and out of your home comfortably and safely, and protecting your home as the home's largest entrance.”

So, recognizing her genius in understanding what she's truly selling put a sentiment in the heart of the new technician, certainly, but also informed us as to what we're doing.

And then I think about our guy up in Pennsylvania, who has a drain company and used to be called East Coast Trenchless. It's just an absolutely tragic name that no one understands, and they weren't doing any real revenue, and it was really quite a struggle. And what we recognized through the conversations of the naming exercise, we were presented with some names that were tragic as well. And then we said, “Look, what is the real thing here? What is the moment that we’re addressing?” The moment is the pain at the drain.

That's where the customer sees the pain. That's where the customer, there's nothing worse than poop on the floor.

Mick Torbay: So we called the company, No Poop on the Floor.

Ryan Chute: No Poop on The Floor Plumbing, no, they're not a plumbing company. But we recognize that, and we brought the name back up to now, what's called Drain Magic. Why? Because we make the pain go away at the drain. That's where the customer sees the problem. That's when the call is going to be triggered. So it's about recognizing the moment.

Chris Torbay: But I would also argue that name worked because it did both. It's Drain Magic. It's not Home Magic.

It's not Carefree Home INC, it's Carefree Home INC when it comes to your drain potentially backing up, like the whole message is there. And that's the part that gets me, is the number of companies that in an effort to leave the door open for being something more than what they do with 80% of their business, but they don't wanna accidentally let 10% of potential business not come in. They create a less defined presence. And I don't know that they do the thing that generates 90% of their income. I mean, Drain Magic boy, I know they're a drain company.

Ryan Chute: So we're finding this very tenuous edge, and this is why you guys are agonizing over every single word between clarity and cleverness. There is that balance that needs to be struck in having the clear point that draws to the trigger moment, you know, the look on her face, the fear of stuff coming up, bubbling up from your sewer, the garage door opening up without recourse every single day, or protecting you during a hurricane.

Mick Torbay: And you bring up agonizing. We absolutely get, as copywriters agonize over the words, but we also agonize over the importance of the difference between the timing. When we're talking about marketing, we're talking about getting someone to make that call, walk through the door of a store, go to a website, take a deeper dive, get closer to this brand somehow, and the things that we do to accomplish that are not the same as the things you do to get someone to buy the thing.

And it's very easy to sort of think that's one idea, I want more people to buy, so I have to market to them and I have to sell them. You have to market to them, and then later you have to sell them. Using the techniques from one is usually not particularly effective in the other.

The four C's are absolute. You can't close the deal in selling the engagement ring until you explain that the cut is ideal and that the color is excellent, and when you're spending $8,000, it can't just be, “Look, it's pretty.”

Chris Torbay: You have to give some explanation as to why this one's 8,000 and this one's $4,000.

Mick Torbay: You need to give them the data. But again, it's permission to do the thing you already want. It's legit. It's not bullshit. You do have to be able to prove that this is a better diamond, and that’s why you're gonna spend $8,000 instead of $4,000. But when you put that in the ad, because that's what matters to the jeweller.

Because he's “look, this is a bet, is a better diamond. And I can prove it.”

Stop that. That's not, we're trying to get them to walk through your door instead of somebody else's door. And right now they're not thinking about the four C's. They're thinking, I just hope she says yes.

Ryan Chute: Think of it like, think of it like a yogurt container.

You know how you have the yogurt and you pop the lid off, right? And that's your marketing. And then you have a seal. You have that plastic-like seal holding in the yogurt. Until you break the seal, you're not eating the yogurt. You can't get to the yogurt until you break the seal. So we have to create transition moments from marketing to stepping in and engaging.

From stepping in and engaging, there's another seal that's going to happen when you get from convincing the person that this is the right solution, to actually committing to buying it, and giving you their money and breaking the seal is a big transition point. This is a portal symbolically of communication.

We have to be looking at ways that we're transitioning from the feeling of marketing, getting them to take the first action, the hardest action, which is to break the seal of stepping into a sales engagement of some sort, making the decision to talk to you, and then it's the sales person's job in whatever form to break the second seal of the close, after they've landed on the thing that matters most.

Mick Torbay: But when you're talking about what business you're really in, which I think is very hard for business owners to examine because they obviously can't drive to work every day and say, “What business am I in?” I'm a frigging plumber. You know? They got bigger things to do, but I believe the ad person can only truly serve his client by digging in a little deeper, taking the time to ask what might be an obvious question, not because the client is wrong or doesn't know that he's a plumber, it's not that. It's possible that there might be a way to differentiate this brand from another brand by speaking to a need that exists at the customer level that might not have been acknowledged.

I'll give you an example. I had a client many years ago who was in what they would call the home healthcare business. So they sold wheelchairs, stair lifts, things for your handles that go around your toilets,  your shower stuff, scooters and all those things.

So what they would do is they would run ads saying, “We've got the scoop Master 5000 with the 3.5X horsepower motor and the 10 amp battery. And you know, it's. $7,000, but this week it's on sale for only $4,000.” And that's what everybody in that business does because they just bought 45 of these scooters and dammit, we need to sell them, so we'd better run an ad about this scooter to sell it.

And I looked at this company and I said, you know, I don't think these people know what business they're really in. And I don't know if I've had this conversation with you guys, but I like to play this game and say, “Do you know what business they're in?”

And very often people will give me like lovey dovey stuff like they're in lifestyle and, you know, happiness and wellness, and it's like okay, that's not what I'm getting.

It's actually very specific, the business that they're in, and the business they're in is not going to a nursing home. And that's big.

Not going to a nursing home is big, and everything in that store is about living in your home for longer. So when you go to a nursing home, it's all on one floor or there's an elevator, right? If I ran ads that said, I'm paraphrasing my own ad here, but it basically said, you know, you might not feel that comfortable going up the stairs these days because you might feel a little bit wobbly. You know, there's no need to go and live somewhere without stairs. That's just a little problem. We could fix that. You know, we got this little gizmo, you just down there, takes you up to the top of the stairs, Bob's your uncle, you got half your house back. You haven't been using half your house because you don't feel confident doing it.

And the tagline that I created was “Live where you wanna live and live with confidence.”

So that was what we talked about. And when we talked about it, I didn't talk about the scooter. I didn't even mention it. I didn't mention the features or the benefits. I said, “Wouldn't it be fun to chase your grandkids around the park? We got this little thing. You sit down and away you go.”

Chris Torbay: I would argue you did, to me, that's the perfect balance. Your strategic perspective is live where you want. Live with confidence. Don't go to a nursing home.

All those sorts of things buy. Buying one of our stair lists. Boom. That's all I need to know. How are you gonna mention how to help those things happen? You always make it clear that the way you do that we've because a bank could do the same thing too. They would do it by organizing your finances, or a department store or a grocery store could say, "We can do it by doing your shopping for you or something."

What gets me is people who get so wrapped up in that it's like, how are they gonna help me live with confidence? Is that so many brands want me to live with confidence? What's, what was clear in those ads is that a higher order benefit, but grounded in by doing the things specifically that we do well.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. The advantage of the feature it's the advantage of the benefits that matter from the feature. The feature being whatever the thing that you're selling.

You know, Scotiabank says, you're richer than you think. Far more potent than any other banking campaign that is out there at all. It makes me think of the Simon Sinek Ted Talk that he did, and he talks about his why. And we all know that Simon Sinek, Start with Why concept, and we're so wrapped up in talking about the whats and the hows, but we're breaking the rules.

If we're talking about the what's and the how's, when we need to be talking about the why's, but the real why's, and it says start with why. Our why has to be aligned with what the customer actually cares about.

In your case, the customer really actually cares about not living somewhere other than their home. The thought of living in a group home with roommates and all the other grossness that comes along with that thought feels horrible.

Mick Torbay: Who doesn’t wanna live in their own home longer? And when my ads are talking about that, and everybody else is talking about the stair climber deluxe with the…

Chris Torbay: You know, you've given the reason why a stair climber is gonna make a difference, right? Oh, it's not just that it'll be cool, it'll let me stay here longer. There's a why that is immediately relevant to my life goals.

Ryan Chute: And I think it's important for us to recognize what Roy has always taught us, that people buy things to demonstrate to the world, including themselves, who they are. That everything is oriented to the motivation of identity. And in your example, autonomy, one of the core elements of identity. You have identity being the thing that is driving Mrs. Jones to not get in that thing. She doesn't want to be a feeble person. She doesn't want to have to live in the collaborative, closed-in space of a nursing home. She wants to live in her home. Where she has memories, happy thoughts and all of the things. So we are recognizing what it is that fits the identity. When we're marketing anything, the customer who wants to get the poop off their floor, their identity is, “I have a house that doesn't have poop on the floor.”

Chris Torbay: I have a lovely home.

Ryan Chute: I have solved the problem with the best possible solution that makes that go away fast.

Mick Torbay: I think what we're getting at is that the easiest thing in the world is to simply say to the client, “What do you want to do?”

And that's a little shortcut that a lot of people get to, because if you simply say that, you get a lot closer to an approved ad; you don't have to work so hard. I'm not afraid to work a little bit harder. I'm not afraid to ask a question that will slow the process down and maybe even make it not such a great meeting. But it's because I give a shit enough to say, “Is there something we're missing here? Is there an angle we can use? Is there a thing that the consumer might be thinking that no one is addressing, and might be, we might be able to integrate that into our message that will make our stuff sound completely unlike everybody else who's trying to sell what you sell?”

Ryan Chute: We'll wrap this up when we get back.

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Ryan Chute: Bottom line, great recruitment ads don't feel like recruitment ads. They tell a story. They reflect your brand's values. They speak to the kind of person who will thrive in your culture. And when done well, they don't just bring you employees, they bring you the right employees. Remember, recruitment isn't about filling seats. It's about building a team that will grow your business. Now go write some ads that just don't suck. Until next time, you've been listening to Advertising in America.

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Thank you for joining us on Advertising in America. We hope you enjoyed the show and captured a nugget of marketing magic.

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

Relational selling is the only thing that makes you different from your competition. They sell all the same stuff you do. You cannot compete on that unless you are the cheapest. 

And we both know the biggest players aren’t the cheapest. So what is it that has them capture more money? More clients. More often? 

Selling relationally. And that means you’d better be damn good at making conversation. 

The relationships between businesses and customers are changing. In this fast-paced society, consumers expect companies to be uncomplicated and effortless to deal with. Like romantic partnerships, meaningful connections are a product of minimizing friction between the two parties.

How? Better conversations.

By engaging in actual conversations, you are providing immediate and personalized answers. This lets you establish trust by demonstrating your empathy and competence. If you want the “high-quality” customers, you want the people who are relational in nature, not transactional. That means doing relational stuff, like talking. 

Can you imagine trying to get a gal out on a first date without a bit of banter? Or your kids to do what you tell them to do, without understanding why. Even when you’re going shopping for a new mattress or Chesterfield, you have a gab with the salesperson. 

Conversations give you insight. They tug on your intuition. If I’m being frank, they are a test. A test to see if you’re trustworthy. 

Are you going to treat me with empathy?
Do you know your stuff?
Does the situation feel right? 

Conversations are human, and any chance to humanize your brand makes for a better buying experience. In a commoditized world where we all sell the same stuff, the way you make the buyer feel is your only differentiator.

What is a Conversational Strategy?

A conversational strategy is how your brand casually communicates with its audience. This can show up in customer service emails, phone calls, blog posts, social media, advertising, and (no surprise) in-person meetings. 

To make your conversational strategy effective, pay attention to the four elements that appear in casual conversation:

Making a Connection

The legend, Dale Carnegie, taught that the most interesting person in any room is the person who asks their audience about themselves. It’s truly amazing how interested Mrs. Customer is interested in Mrs. Customer.

The point of any conversation beyond the small talk is to forge a connection between you and your audience. Your aim is to deescalate the protective walls that people have built up to protect against the unknown. 

So you want to feel approachable. The faster you can make a connection, the faster you get past the resistance. You can do this by employing a couple of simple tactics. 

1. Ice Breakers. You know how much a polar bear weighs, right? Enough to break the ice. 
2. Stories. Cause my uncle’s friend’s sister's cousin had an old truck like that one you’ve got in the driveway, and it was the coolest thing ever. 
3. Compliments. Am I crazy to think someone who takes care of their home as much as you obviously do is probably looking for a long-lasting solution? 

Empathetic conversations become so obvious when you know what to look for. When you find ways to make people feel right about you, moving forward becomes a lot easier. 

The Value Vault

Prospects reach out to you because they hope you can deliver value for the pain they want to kill or the pleasure they seek to feel better. 

The simple ingredients of value? Offer people something worth more than their money, energy, or time investment before, during, and after the sale is made. 

• Do you make it easy to buy from? 
• Do you have no-brainer options? 
• Are you hard to get a hold of? 
• Do you have a good warranty? 
• Do you come across as competent? 
• Do you control the sale to convince someone to buy, or do you let your buyer feel in control and persuade them to buy? 
• Is the thing you sell worth more than their money, effort, and time, or less?
• Is what you're selling something that makes them feel better?

Value is a direct result of YOUR investment in THEIR value vault of precious resources. 

You earn interest on your investment in the relationship when you show your customers that you want them to be heard and understood. 

Want to make a deposit in their value vault? 

• Show them that you know you’re there to SAVE them money, not spend it. 
• Share how you will SAVE them time with fast, thorough service, generous warranty periods, and competent repairs. 
• Help them feel right about you with a humorous, yet respectful approach and confident encouragement that you will remove their stress and anxiety with a durable solution. 

The Ingredients of Trust

“Trust always begins with empathy, soon after followed by competence.
The buyer will decide to buy from you once you’ve earned their trust.
They will act on that decision when you deliver superior value than the alternatives.”

One-dimensional marketers follow the AIDA principle. Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. While fundamentally flawed, it served as a reasonable guideline for getting someone to do a thing. 

People tend to follow this familiar flow when having a conversation, although there is a better model to follow to create raving, loyal fans. For this, I created: 

AIDED: Attention, Interest, Decision, Engagement, and Delight. 

Where does trust begin? At the Interest Phase. 

With a display of empathy. In the words you choose, the experiences of others, and the way you show up to do business. 

Once you have established that you are non-threatening, you need to show your worth. This is demonstrated by your actions and behaviors. From the questions you ask and the context you provide, people will make the decision to trust you.  

This is why salespeople of trusted brands have an easier time selling. Their good advertising helped them establish empathy and trust before the appointment began. 

But that doesn’t mean they get off easy. Great salespeople are very effective at reestablishing empathy and competence in their sales approach, leveraging conversational strategy to put their prospect at ease and instill confidence in what is about to occur. 

Why A Conversational Strategy?

Well. Money. 

More specifically, if we are to reverse the equation and look at the money, energy, and time that we hope to optimize as sellers, conversational strategy simply makes sense in the most beautifully counterintuitive way. 

“So you want me to spend MORE TIME with the customer
before we even make any money with the hopes of making more money?” 

It amazes me how much of a struggle sellers have with this concept. I certainly appreciate how disingenuous people would see that as a waste of time, but most people get that trust takes time and a little more effort early on makes for much smoother sailing when it comes time to close the deal. 

If you think about it from the customer's perspective, what you’re really doing is selling feelings. They’re not going to buy until it feels right. So build on the foundation of that. 

Get them feeling right. It’ll pay off. 

The ROI of Trust

You’re working for free until a sale is made. Investing your time and effort into a conversation will close more deals on the first visit. That’s money. And for less effort and time in the long run. 

Seriously, how often do you close a customer on the second attempt? Heck, most of the time, you don’t even get the chance for a second run. 

Great conversations pay off, putting more money in your pocket sooner. 

And not just today, but tomorrow too…

Build Lasting Relationships

I love Essential Home Services because you're building lasting relationships. It’s not a gross hit-and-quit-it sales model. Does it mean you’ve gotta put in more effort? Sure. But it also means getting more out of the effort, and for a whole lot less as the connection deepens. 

How much less money are you spending to contact your previous customer? 

How much effort does it really take to get them booked for a check-up? 

How much time do you need to take to set the expectation for the call and get them to accept your recommendations? 

Great conversations are ripe with context, nuance, and even unspoken permission to do things the way you agree they should be done. 

This isn’t entitlement. It’s earned privileges. 

When to Use A Conversational Strategy?

Conversational strategies aren’t just used during the sale. They can show up everywhere. 

• On social media
• In email campaigns
• In text messaging
• On phone calls

Take an interest outside your own self-interest. 

Strike up a conversation. Remind them you’re alright. 

Nobody likes the impetuous teen incessantly sticking their hand out, demanding you fund their youthful hijinks. 

“All things being equal, people do business with people they like.
All things being not so equal, people do business with people they like.”
—Jeffrey Gitomer, The King of Sales

Let’s Chat!

Conversational strategy is as natural as every conversation you have with your loved ones, employees, customers, or friends. 

What I’m saying is, you already know how to do it. 
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to get a conversational strategy together that you can replicate and deliver consistently with your team. These are the kinds of conversations I enjoy having with smart operators looking to stand out with their business. 

What to talk about it? Give me a dingle. We’ll have a gab. 

The greatest companies are the ones with the happiest customers.

To create happy customers, you need to be customer-centric.

Every company believes they are customer-centric. But while a great company keeps the happiness of their customer in the center of their thoughts, the average company puts their customer in the center of the cross-hairs of a rifle scope.

1. Great companies ask, “How can we give our customers the buying experience that they would prefer?” They work at removing the friction from the customer experience.
2. Average companies ask, “How can we get our customers to give us more money, more often?” Average companies tell their marketing teams, “Sales is just a numbers game. Bring us twice as many leads and we’ll make twice as many sales. You bring’em in. We’ll close’em.”

But no matter what those marketing teams do, a decreasing number of people will respond to their ads. A negative customer experience drives customers away faster than marketing can bring them in.

Do you want to see what real customer-centric thinking looks like?

A client of mine recently wrote this email and sent it to all the people who work in his company. He forwarded it to me only as an afterthought.

SUBJECT: Pricing Reflection — Serving the Everyday Working American

Team,

Today I had a realization around some of our pricing. I’m all for setting prices that protect our margins and keep the business strong – but I’m equally committed to making sure we have price point items that the everyday working American can actually afford.

Let’s take a simple example: a toilet. Right now, most of our toilet installs are priced over $1,000. If we assume the median household income is $85,000, divided over 26 pre-tax paychecks, that’s $3,269 per check. A $1,000 toilet install is over 30% of that paycheck. That’s significant.

We need to remember who we’re here to serve – the nurse, the police officer, the office worker, the firefighter. These are people raising families, keeping their homes together, and doing the best they can. We cannot price them out of basic service. If we do, we risk not only losing today’s job – but any future relationship with that customer.

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to run a low-margin business.

But I do want to make sure we have real options for real people. Today’s pricing structure on some of these essential services is a barrier – not just to customers, but to our own techs who are trying to present them.

Because of this realization, I immediately asked Jacob to find a toilet that we could install at a price point of $699. Well, guess what – we found one today. And we’re bringing it in and adding it to the price book at $649.

This one change will give our team more confidence to present a basic toilet option. What I’ve heard from Will – and it’s been consistent – is that this has been a never-ending battle. Technicians don’t feel comfortable presenting a $1,000 toilet to customers, especially when many of them wouldn’t pay that themselves. That lack of confidence translates to lower conversions and frustrated customers.

This reminds me of what we went through in HVAC when we had no system options below $15,000. We lost installs constantly – not because we weren’t good, but because we didn’t have a simple, no-frills option for people who just needed heating and air. Once we corrected that, we started closing more jobs and rebuilding our pipeline.

We need to apply that same logic here. During times like this, let’s price effectively so we can keep building our customer base and generate revenue day by day. When the tide turns – and it will – we can always maximize margin percentage where appropriate.

There’s an opportunity here. We can maintain strong margins where they make sense – but also have a few key products that are accessible. That builds trust, drives volume, and keeps us connected to the people we serve.

Let’s make sure we’re building a business that works for our margins and for our community.

The man who wrote that note to his employees owns a great company.

His current sales volume is more than 10 times the amount the average business owner in his category hopes to do “some day.”

The average company hunts for customers, targets customers, and closes customers.

Great companies use mass media to distribute the seeds of relationship far and wide. They continually shine the warm sunlight of humility and vulnerability on those seeds and water them with generosity. Great companies grow mighty orchards that produce happy fruit for generations.

Are you willing to work with a shovel, a rake, and a hoe?

Or do you prefer to carry a rifle?