Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Most businesses know why they sell what they sell...

They love the craft. They believe in the product. They built the business around it. And then they build their advertising around it too, which is exactly where the money starts disappearing.

Because why you sell is never why they buy.

Coke doesn't advertise sugar water. Porsche doesn't advertise engineering specs. Life insurance companies don't sell financial instruments. And if you're in home services, you are not selling wrench-turning, roof nails, or refrigerant. You're selling certainty. You're selling the feeling that someone capable is handling something that was making life worse.

The gap between why you sell and why they buy is where most advertising fails and most businesses never find it because they're too close to what they sell to see what their customers are actually reaching for.

In this episode, Chris, Mick, and Ryan dismantle one of the most expensive misconceptions in advertising: that your product is the thing worth selling. They walk through the gap between what you offer and what your customer actually votes for with their wallet, why going "one level deeper" than your product still leaves you short, and how the best campaigns in history earned loyalty without ever mentioning the thing they were supposedly selling.

Mick's home healthcare client said she was in the "peace of mind business." Mick pushed back. The business she was actually in? Not going to a nursing home. That distinction is the difference between an ad that moves product and a campaign that moves people.

Episode Highlights

• Don't Advertise the Category: Why spending ad money on what every competitor can also claim is money you're giving away.
• The Literal vs. The Ethereal: Why the greatest ad campaigns in history don't spend a second talking about the product.
• The Co-Op Dollars Trap: Why accepting Goodyear's money to mention Goodyear in your ad means you just paid for half a Goodyear commercial.
• The Nursing Home Campaign: How "live where you want to live" defeated every stair-lift competitor in a single tagline.
• New Coke Proves Everything: People preferred the new formula in blind taste tests and rejected it anyway. Feelings beat facts. Every time.
• The Quarter-Inch Upgrade: Levitt said don't sell the drill, sell the hole. But it's not the hole either. It's the picture. It's getting your spouse off your back about the picture for six months.
• The Swap Test: Cover your logo. Replace it with your biggest competitor's name. If the ad still makes sense. Congratulations, you've been advertising for them.
• Attract Some, Repel Others: Why a campaign that speaks to everyone belongs to nobody and why that's exactly right.
• Captain Confusion Is the Villain: The emotional enemy in home services and the story that defeats it.

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🎧 Hit play if you've ever run an ad and wondered why it didn't move the needle. The answer is probably in the first three minutes.

👉 Does your ad still make sense with your biggest competitor's name on it?

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On this episode of Advertising in America, I got to admit, I thought this was going to be the easy one.

These days, you can't hardly walk past a marketing guy without hearing the term ROAS, return on ad spend. First of all, if something has the word ass in the name, you've got to wonder if they're talking about you.

Business owners not knowing what business they're in is actually a tremendous opportunity for you because your competitor probably doesn't know what business he's in either.

If you're advertising beer, I already know how to use it. I already know what's in it. None of your ads should tell me about the beer. Now, your advertising has to tell me why you're the beer for me.

So, if everyone else is advertising facts, features, or benefits, you've just won the lottery because you're going to advertise feelings. You're not going to advertise why you sell it. You're going to advertise why they buy it. And if you're not sure what the difference is, don't advertise at all because you don't know what business you're in, which means you don't know what the fuck  you're doing.

Ryan Chute: On this episode of Advertising in America, I going to admit, I thought this was going to be the easy one. What are we advertising? You sell pizza, you advertise pizza. You sell trucks, you advertise trucks. Ain't that the game?

Computer says no.

Ryan Chute: Apparently, the greatest ads aren't really about the thing you sell at all, which is going to require some explaining. What you talking about, Chris?

Chris Torbay: Isn't it funny how sometimes the best ads out there, the most successful ad campaigns you can remember, don't really advertise the things they're supposedly advertising? Coca-Cola is a sweet, caramel-tasting cold drink in a cool-looking bottle with fizzy bubbles. They mention that exactly never in their ads. The sweet, fizzy, caramel-tasting cold drink is 100% of why people love it, and they mention it 0% of the time. Coke spends all their effort just trying to be the brand you like. These days, you can't hardly walk past a marketing guy without hearing the term ROAS, return on ad spend. First of all, when something has the word ASS in the name, you're going to wonder if they're talking about you.

But second, when you're trying to figure out if you're getting the right ROAS, maybe your ad spend is advertising the wrong thing to generate your return. I recently bought one of these things on the internet. I'll pull it out of my pocket. It's a little credit card-sized thingy, and if you fold it this way and fold it this way, it turns into a little tripod you can stick your phone into. Now, if you're going to try and sell me one of these, which they do all over social media, you've got to tell me how it works. You're going to show me how easy it is to set up, and you've got to tell me that it's made out of strong materials that aren't going to break, and it's light enough to carry, and it's exactly the size of a credit card, so I already have a place to put it. And then you can tell me all the times it'd be great to use this to hold my camera instead of going like this all the time when I want to take a selfie.

You need an ad that is all product information, design specs, and usage cases. If you're advertising beer, I already know how to use it. I already know what's in it. None of your ads should tell me about the beer. Now your advertising has to tell me why you're the beer for me. If you're advertising diamonds, you don't have to educate me on cut, color, clarity, and carat weight. I don't even care about your expertise except insofar as it will help me. You have to tell me why I will be better served or reach a better outcome when I buy them from you.

If you're a plumber, you don't have to tell me how intricate it turns out your job really is. You just have to tell me that your work will give me a shower that will be awesome. Advertise the things that are going to make you the brand for me. Why are you over your competitors? Don't use any of your ad spend to tell me things that are true across the category. And yes, quality, great service, wide selection, competitive prices, convenient location, and a qualified staff who really care about your needs are claims made by everyone, so they can't be the thing that you advertise to make me choose you, even if they're true. If other people say it, it cannot be your differentiator.

Don't use any of your ad spend to grow the category unless you are by far the category leader. Even Heinz Ketchup doesn't spend much time telling you new, fascinating potential uses for ketchup. They tell you when you should choose Heinz. And don't devote any of your ad spend to the brands that you sell. People can get those brands somewhere else, too, so you should be spending your money on why they should be getting them from you. Co-op dollars might not be as good a deal as you think if the message ends up being about that brand and not about yours. Don't advertise the literal. Advertise the ethereal.

On the surface, Porsche and Kia advertise largely the same way: cool cars, fun to drive. Even though one of them is actually a German-engineered race car. The trick is that something about the Kia campaign makes Kia drivers think that's the car for them, and something about the Porsche campaign reaches Porsche drivers right in that secret spot that makes them go, "Oh, yeah. Right there."

Advertise that thing. That's the kind of advertising that gets you RO in your ass.

Ryan Chute: Chris just spent 45 minutes describing his thingy. A thingy. Wouldn't tell us what it was, just kept calling a thingy. God bless your wife for staying with you all these years. How long did it take you to sell her on your thingy? Never mind, no. I don't want to know. Mick, please take it away.

Mick Torbay: I've mentioned this before on this program. I'm convinced that fully half the time people don't know what business they're in. Chris phrases it differently. He says they're advertising the wrong thing. I say they don't know what business they're in.

As long as Porsche thinks they're in the transportation business, they don't stand a chance. Thankfully, they're one of the few businesses that understand what they're really selling. They're selling the opportunity to feel like a race car driver, and that's something that people, mostly men, have been yearning for since they were five years old. We've always wanted to feel like a race car driver. Porsche gives us this feeling by making an actual race car and then putting enough technology into it so that we don't actually kill ourselves whilst driving it to work.

Here's the giveaway. They put about as much effort into making the engine sound like a race car as they do into making the engine perform like a race car.

That's how I know I'm right. Business owners not knowing what business they're in is actually a tremendous opportunity for you because your competitor probably doesn't know what business he's in either. Plumbers think they're in the wrench-turning business. Roofers think they're in the business of nailing shingles to the top of houses, and that's great. Keep it up, guys. My clients know better, or at least their ad guy knows better.

Rule of thumb: look at what everybody else is advertising. What is their pitch? What business do they appear to be in? Great. Let them own that. Don't try and beat them at that game. It's probably the wrong game anyway. Your job, or if you work with us, my job, is to find out what game you should have been playing all along, the game you play better than anyone else, the game the consumer is playing.

And the consumer is motivated by feelings. Remember what I said? Porsche is in the business of letting you feel like a race car driver. Feelings are much more powerful than facts, features, or benefits. Life insurance companies understand this. Life insurance is a very practical thing. It allows you to solve financial problems when the primary earner is no longer generating revenue. That's what it is, but that's not how they advertise it. Note how quickly they pivot to protecting your family. That's about feelings, friend. So if everyone else is advertising facts, features, or benefits, you've just won the lottery because you're going to advertise feelings. You're not going to advertise why you sell it.

You're going to advertise why they buy it, and those things are almost definitely not the same. And if you're not sure what the difference is, don't advertise at all because you don't know what business you're in, which means you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

Ryan Chute: Mick said plumbers think that they're in the wrench-turning business. I got to admit, the last time I called my plumber, I did not want a wrench turner. I wanted a hot shower. Not with the plumber, of course, just, like, in general. There were no wrenches on my mind. We'll be right back.

Ryan Chute: Okay, we're back. Did you notice the twins said pretty much the same thing? Chris says, "Don't advertise the literal." Mick asked, "Do you even know what business you're in?" Either way, same answer. The thing you think you sell isn't the thing the customer's buying. Let's pull this mess all apart. So let's start off with Ryan's fun fact. The quote that everyone in marketing has heard, one that I personally disagree with,

"People don't want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole."

This was popularized by Theodore Levitt, originally Leo Geneva, it's the whole notion of don't sell the feature, sell the benefit. And the reason why I disagree with this, which alludes back to Mick's point about you, you do not sell what you think you sell, is we think we're selling benefits. We think that when we sell a mattress, we're selling a better night's sleep. The fact is, we're not selling a better night's sleep, and we're not selling a mattress; we're selling a better waking day the next day. So it's the advantage that the better night's sleep gives you; it's the advantage of the benefit. And this is where most marketers make the mistake. They're only taking it to the next step; they're not taking it to the step that the customer actually cares about.

Chris Torbay: I think that's the important part is people have gone through this exercise a number of times, and they always get to the first level away, and they think they've accomplished it. That's not... “That's right. We don't sell widgets, we sell peace of mind.” And you go, “Yeah, peace of mind." That, you are only one step in. You are still nebulous; you're still not changing my life.

Mick Torbay: And I guess when you,  the good part about that story is that at least you're thinking about it. We know it's not the drill, it's the hole. Is it the hole, or is it actually, I'm trying to hang a picture?

Is it I'm trying to hang a picture, or is it I'm trying to get my wife off my back for she's been telling me to hang that picture for six months? At least you're going down the right path. But the danger that can come up when you're trying to figure out what business you're in is that I find out, I find very often when I say to somebody, “Have you thought about what business you're in? Because it might not be the business you, you're specifically in," is that they tend to want to get more broad in it. “We're in the people business. We're in the solutions business,” which is so broad that now it includes fricking everything.

Chris Torbay: Every company is a solutions company, and you have no idea what it is they actually make or do.

Mick Torbay: So what I try to remind them is that when you're talking about what business are you really in, it is in fact a very specific business; it's just, and probably narrower than you think, but it might not be the one that you think of every day. And the best example of this is a company that I used to work with that was in what they would call the “home healthcare business”. So they sold scooters and wheelchairs and stair lifts and devices that would go in your bathroom, so you could hold onto the tub and get in and out. And this is specifically for people who identify with disability or might be older and are not quite a- as safe, feel as safe as they once were.

And I said, "Do you know what business you're in?" And she said, "Oh, yeah, I'm in the home healthcare business."

“No. I don't think you're quite onto it." And she said, “We're in the feeling comfortable, peace of mind business." There you go.

Chris Torbay: The first level away

Mick Torbay: The first level. But it's "No, you're in a very specific business, and once we nail that down, I think we can make a very powerful campaign."

And I made her work at it a little bit, but what I said was, "The business you're in is in, you are in the business of not going to a nursing home." And that's very powerful, because that's emotional, right? Nobody wants to go into a nursing home. So I built everything, the entire campaign, around staying in your home longer. Because the reason why people go into a nursing home is that they don't want to climb the stairs anymore. Because they feel uncomfortable in the bathroom or falling in the bathtub. They're going to fall down.

It's all those things. It's you can solve all those problems by going to a nursing home, or you can just fix the problem. And then you get to stay at home longer. And I can't seem to chase my grandkids around. It's like if you had a scooter, you could. And even the tagline that I wrote for them was, "Live where you want to live, and live with confidence." It's about not going to a nursing home.

So all of their competitors are offering, are talking about the stair climber 5000 with the six horsepower motor and the racing stripes and the cup holders. The features, the benefits the brands were telling them to advertise, because that was what made that product a particularly good product. It's fuck all of that, and actually speak to the consumer about what matters to the consumer in the language of the consumer, and you won't be surprised that those ads really move the needle.

Ryan Chute: Not surprisingly, most of the consumer behavior, behavioral sciences from the 1950s has been lost in a sea of distraction, shiny objects, and nonsense.

But back then, when David Ogilvy and Eugene Schwartz were talking about product awareness, situation awareness, the sophistication of the market, all of these things were helping us clarify.

In home services, if somebody doesn't have a problem with their air conditioner or hot water tank, they're not product aware, they're not problem aware, they're not situation aware, but they're sophisticated about hot water tanks in so much as they know that hot water tanks make my water hot, and there's a million choices out there. So advertising to that person who doesn't care is hard. But when something breaks, it's way easier to speak to that customer. The fact of it is that we're not speaking to them when it breaks. We're speaking to them before it breaks, if we're doing it well, or at the moment it breaks, and hoping to compete in that world, in that realm with everyone else.

And this is where we're going with it, if we're really going to connect with the customer, we have to choose when we're going to connect, but we also have to choose how we're going to connect with the messaging that we use. And the messages change. Before, they didn't care about your name, they didn't care about your brand, they didn't care about your products, they didn't care about the features, they didn't care about the benefits.

They care about themselves. They care about their life going on as it always has. So let's use the most valuable currency we have, and that's entertainment, until such time. Now we're entertaining them about the salient product of what we sell. But we have to pay attention to that throughout this whole process of if we're going to advertise, what the heck are we going to say that actually makes a difference?

Coca-Cola sells happiness, friendship, and connection using polar bears. They haven't advertised cocaine sugar water since 1868.

Mick Torbay: And they're not even in the polar bear business.

Ryan Chute: No.

Mick Torbay: To Chris's point, regarding my brother's thingy, I think there's a really interesting point in the home services world. Plumbing, HVAC, roofing, garage doors any of those sort of essential services for somebody's home.

In every example, the consumer, the homeowner, understands those things completely. We do not have to explain what replacing your broken water heater is all about. We don't have to explain the concept of “You're too hot, we're going to replace your air conditioner, and then it'll be the right temperature.”

This is a wonderful opportunity from a messaging perspective, because we don't have to do any of that. We can simply just have you feel good about this brand, think of it first, like it the best, have a good internal feeling about it, and we can spend 98% of our time just making you feel good about this brand, and then all we have to do is, "You know we fix air conditioners when they break, right?" That's it. That's it. It's done.

Ryan Chute: Which is sales activation. That is a call to action, right? And a lot of people lose sight that it is as much of a call to action as anything else, right? You don't have to have "It's 29 bucks. If you don't buy it today, it's going to be gone forever," no nonsense. You can actually just say, "Hey, we sell this thing. Just so you know, if you need that thing, we sell it."

Chris Torbay: And that's the misconception there that what business people think you're in is the low-price business or something like that. And that's not the aspect of it, and that's where, again, erroneously, a lot of companies use the power of the brand name of the thing they sell as a reinforcement of what their brand must be like or what, what they must be like as a company.

You and I worked on a company that was a Goodyear Tire retailer. I talked about the idea of co-op dollars, right? Where you think, "Hey, if I mention Goodyear three times in a commercial, the Goodyear company will pay half of the thing." This seems like a good idea, except that what's happening is you are now not telling me why you are the person I should get those Goodyear tires from. You're telling me why Goodyear is awesome, which people already know. And so you are advertising the wrong thing. You should be spending all of your money on why I should get them from you, because I can get them from somewhere else. And using someone else's brand to have a rub-off effect on why you are the brand is a tough leap to get the consumer to make.

Mick Torbay: I think a lot of the time people think of it in terms of, "Hey, Goodyear's going to pay for half of my ad." And I'm always thinking, "You just paid for half of a Goodyear ad." Because you can buy tires a lot of different places. And if you're paying for Goodyear, that's good for Goodyear. I'm not 100% sure that's going to give you ROAS.

Ryan Chute: There we go. But leading into this, Ryan's fun fact: Theodore Levitt, 1960, guys. This is not new information.

Mick Torbay: Even before Chris was born.

Chris Torbay: I think so.

Ryan Chute: I don't think so. Harvard Business Review number one most downloaded article ever in the history.

Chris Torbay: In 1960, they were downloading this article. They had to go to Harvard. You had to take a stone rubbing of it.

Ryan Chute: Most reprinted, and it still continues to be downloaded. You can actually, I looked it up. All right. You can actually download this article. Marketing Myopia is the name of it, and Levitt's argument is that companies fail because they define themselves by the product they sell instead of the customer they need to serve.

And this is exactly it. When you're advertising Goodyear, you've defined yourself as Goodyear and by Goodyear, not by the customer and their needs. And what this alludes to is that we already know that this is a mistake, yet we continue to do it because somebody who doesn't know anything about marketing is giving you supposed marketing advice.

Chris Torbay: And they think they're in the wrong business. "I think I'm in the business of selling Goodyear tires." Yes, but no, what business are you actually in?

Mick Torbay: And this is client-focused thinking. And given no other input, what is the client naturally going to do? If you own a Goodyear store and you sell a lot of tires, what are you going to? What is going to be the first thing in your mind?

By the way, today you just bought $100,000 worth of tires. Probably from Goodyear. And you're thinking to yourself, "Holy crap, I'm going to sell a whole lot of tires over the next six months. I should tell people because I just bought a bunch of these that I'm in the business.

Chris Torbay: Goodyear tire

Mick Torbay: So what is that business owner going to be thinking that they need to do? You’ve got to give the business owner a bit of a pass for getting that wrong. It's not their fault. But a kind advertising person will say, "I know you, you feel like..." And I had the same conversation with my home healthcare person, who had just spent $100,000 on scooters and was like, "I'm going to sell some scooters." It's like, "You need to sell not going to a nursing home, and the scooters will go." The stair lifts will go. You need to be the place that people think of when someone, when their deadbeat son-in-law says, "We should just put Grandma in a home." It's like, "No, I should fix my bathroom. That’s what I should do, and I've got some money."

Ryan Chute: Which requires them to stay in their home, which means that they need a scooter to get down to the mail.

Chris Torbay: We need a stairlift to get them upstairs. And they'll figure out that when I go to this store, who's going to help me with this? I might buy a scooter, I might buy a handle, I might buy a stairlift. They're

Ryan Chute: Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School, Jobs to Be Done Framework. This was back in 2016. He's written earlier articles on it, but the customers don't buy products. They hire products to do a job in their life. Understand the job, and you'll understand the brand.

I think that's a very interesting article that I read, and it was really instilling the idea that not everything that we buy is to tell the world who we are, and we're a part of the world. So it tells us who we are. It tells our inner circle, our outer circles who we are, what our status, what our rank is, what we see as valuable, important, and true. And it's tapping into that chemistry that's going to get us the result.

Mick Torbay: It's amazing how many products or categories you can connect with identity, which shouldn't be connected.

Chris Torbay: There's some that you expect and then others that you don't.

Mick Torbay: Yeah, clothing, you get it. Okay. You wear this ridiculous shirt all the time. We're not sure what you're trying to prove with that. But the point is that, for whatever reason, that's your identity. Computers should not be part of your identity, and yet some people buy Apple and some people won't. And why is it that I keep buying these stupid overpriced Apple products? Why? It's because that is part of my identity. I am the sort of person who buys a MacBook Pro and not a Dell. I cannot parse it out why I do that. It makes no sense. It's not what the computer looks like shouldn't matter. It's the thing that comes up on the screen, and that should matter, and that's all the same, but it does, and that applies to cars.

Chris Torbay: Yeah, I was going to say, automobiles, it's weird because of how much we talk as if we are buying them for technical reasons. We buy a pickup truck because of its towing capacity

Mick Tobray: How often are you towing shit with that?

Chris Torbay: Because of the size of the engine. It's no, you just want to be the guy who owns the Dodge Ram. Come on.

Mick Torbay: So far, too many things are connected with identity, which makes me think maybe it's everything. Maybe the roofer you call defines who you are. And therefore, if you are the roofer who somehow portrays yourself as this kind of person, and thus this kind of brand, then people will say, "That's the kind of roofer I would hire." It shouldn't work, but I think it does.

Chris Torbay: Yeah. Think about coffee shops, right? Coffee is coffee. You can argue the different places make it different ways. But coffee shops very much align with the kind of person you are. Are you a Starbucks person? Are you a Dunkin' person? And both of them will say, "Ah, that place isn't right for me. This place is right for me."

Ryan Chute: And they're both a badge of honor too. I mean, in a weird way, at the end of the day the Dunkin' person looks at the Starbucks person and says they're a bunch of pretentious twats, and then the Starbucks person looks at "Oh, you're a Dunkin' person?"

Mick Torbay: And then if someone goes to the local craft coffee shop and says both of those.

Ryan Chute: Exactly. Gets offended when they actually sell milk from a cow. So I watch a lot of Brooklyn coffee shop on TikTok. Very funny. I recommend. Let's think about it. Plumbers don't sell wrench turning. What do they sell? Are they selling the hot shower? Are they selling?

Mick Torbay: You're asking too big a question. This would vary client to client. When we're working with a client, the idea that any good, strong marketing idea is interchangeable with another client, I would submit, is either the wrong idea or not a particularly good one. SoI'm going to question the premise of your supposition. In the home healthcare business, I think it's clear. But that's a niche category. Plumbers, people understand it. I think it would come back to what does this plumber stand for?  And thus, what do I, as a consumer, how would I relate to that guy?

Chris Torbay: Well, because, and again, your first inclination to say they sell confidence or they sell, that your water heater's going to last or that your toilet's not going to leak, or they sell competence, they sell confidence.

But then, I agree. I would put it back to the person and say, "How are you going to do that in a way that your competitor, who is also taking that first leap away from I sell toilets to I sell plumbing confidence?"

I've got an electrician client in Chicago who is 100% electrician. Against many of his competitors, what he can sell is the expertise of being a guy who does that and that only, as opposed to other people who may do a bunch of things half-assed and yet he does this 100%. But it has to come then from the brand that when you sell that confidence, you sell it from a perspective that is unique, too.

Ryan Chute: Both of you holding those positions, what it seems like I'm hearing is that you're selling certainty more than anything else, which is probably the biggest culprit that we deal with against. Now, how we show up in uncertainty and solving for certainty is what the home services space fights against- the villains that we fight against and all of the different iterations and variations, which is where the story becomes unique.

Who's the hero? Here's the guide. Who's the villain, how are we fighting the villain in all of those, in those framings? But it's not unlike jewelry. We're not selling jewelry per se; we're selling the look on the woman's face, or to be said more directly, we're selling blow jobs.

Mick Torbay: You're not even allowed to sell that in a lot of places.

Ryan Chute: No, this is it. But if you sell jewelry, here we go. It ends up being this really interesting decision of what is it that we're trying to achieve here, and it goes back to this whole stuff that we see from Ogilvy & Mather about how sophisticated the market is. What is it that they feel as the real pain at different stages, and how can we lean into that in a very broad storytelling way?

Many angles of approach, as Roy would say, to get in and get the customer to pay attention in an entertaining way.

Mick Torbay: If you're doing it well, it should attract some, and it should repel others. With that, that's going to scare people right from the beginning. It should attract everyone. You cannot be all things to all people. If you're all things to all people, you're nothing, and you're nobody, and you can be ignored.

I've got a client on the West Coast that has a family-owned, female-owned business, and we built a whole campaign around how it's this very motherly type person who looks after her staff the way a mother does. And she speaks to them like a mother, and she jokes with them like a mother, and they joke back as they would with their mother, and you get this, and we never say family-owned, and we never say female-owned.  But we show it rather than telling it.

And I've got another client on the East Coast where the company is owned by former Marine Corps officers, and he tells the story about how he was trained as a Marine Corps officer. He's a true leader, and he has tremendous respect for the people who work for him, and he runs his company with military precision, and he has specialists who, just like the military does, they operate like specialists, and they take things seriously. It is not; there's nothing joking in his. There's nothing fun about that campaign. It is about taking things seriously and translating a life where things used to be life or death, and then saying, "We take it that seriously when we're fixing your water heater." Not interchangeable at all. That campaign, some people will be very attracted to that campaign, some people will find that off-putting. That's okay.

We are not for everybody, but there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say, "I like the kind of guy he would hire is going to be incredibly good at their job, because if they're not good at their job, he would be repulsed by that.” Again, this is a good example of why a good campaign can only work for this client. If you think you can rip off someone's idea and say, "I'm going to do that," good luck. It will not work. The consumer will smell that pretense so far away, and it will die quickly.

Ryan Chute: Even if you're a Marine, frankly, because the disposition of these gentlemen is very different than the disposition of other Marines that I've met. And, jokes aside, being a Canadian military myself…

Mick Torbay: You can’t help yourself ...

Ryan Chute: I really can't. Just so many crayons. This guy didn't have a single crayon in his office...

Mick Torbay: Say nice things about Marines.

Ryan Chute: But what it circles back to me in this conversation is advertising why they buy, not why you sell, right?

So Simon Sinek came up with this whole notion of start with why. What most people took from that is, what do I believe in, and all of this context, the Golden Circle and the whole thing, great. I love Simon Sinek, and his notion is right.

But where it leads astray when we get into marketing is that we're talking about ourselves and what we sell. Why do we sell it? Why we sell it is only the first part, just like we talked about with features, benefits, and advantages. The why we sell it is the benefit. The advantage to the customer is why the customer would buy it in the first place. They don't care about us. They care about what's going to solve their problem. This is the thing that we, as creatives, strategic creative writers, and strategists, are coming up with individually for each client, to your earlier point. Yes, everybody is defending and fighting uncertainty in their own ways with their own stories, their own messages. They're bridging the gap of trust with empathy and competence. But without that understanding that we have to go one step past what you sell into why they would buy, we miss this whole point.

Chris Torbay: Why is the why that you have for selling it important to me as the buyer?

Mick Torbay: I think Simon Sinek does a good job of at least breaking out of the original thing, which is, "Here's what we do. Here's who we are, here's what we sell." And that's what we have to remember the bar is tremendously low. In marketing, regardless of category, it doesn't really matter, regardless of market, it doesn't matter. Most advertising, television, radio, digital, "Here's who we are, here's what we sell," which is, of course, answering two questions that nobody is asking. Who are you? Who are you? What do you sell? And what do you sell? So he did the right thing by saying, "For God's sake, stop talking about who you are and what you sell,” because nobody gives a shit. And that's a start, but you're right, he doesn't go far enough, and that's why Roy, in his books, Roy Williams, goes farther along saying, "Speak to the consumer in the language of the consumer about what matters to the consumer.” Stop talking about your fertilizer. Talk to me about my lawn. That's the next stage. But frankly, just to get to where Simon Sinek got is already like miles ahead.

Chris Torbay: You're 85% of the way there.

Mick Torbay: We're talking about the last 15 here.

Ryan Chute: That's it. Fun, Ryan's fun fact: Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, brilliant book, Oxford University Press, 2010, and the ongoing peer-reviewed work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Brands don't grow by being different. They grow by being mentally available and emotionally distinctive at the moment of decision. Features blur, feelings stick.

Powerful statement, and that's really what we're trying to get to here in this conversation is understanding the nuance of those differences.

Mick Torbay: I think Coca-Cola proved that in the '80s when they changed their formula to something that, in focus groups, consumers preferred. They focus-grouped the hell out of that formula change. They focus-grouped that to the ends of the earth. People preferred the new taste of Coke, absolutely 100% in blind taste tests. The new taste of Coke tasted better. But people didn't feel good about it. They liked the slightly shittier flavor because they had grown up with it their entire lives, and they were repelled by the idea, "I can't have that anymore." It's "You don't like it." "I don't care if I don't like it." It's, "

Chris Torbay: “Give me more of that cod liver oil."

Mick Torbay: It's insane. But it just goes to prove we, we make our decisions based on emotion. And when we have to remember that, what business are we in? We're in the emotion-creating business. We create feelings. That's what we, that's what we do for a living. We make people feel things that they shouldn't. They shouldn't have a feeling about an air conditioning company. They shouldn't.

Ryan Chute: In 2003, Gerald Zaltman said that exact same thing in Harvard Business School: How Customers Think. He was using neuroimaging and metaphor elicitation research. Zaltman found that roughly 95% of purchase decisions are made unconsciously, driven by emotional associations the buyer can't even articulate.

Mick Torbay: “I know I'm going to buy that thing; I just have to spend a couple of days figuring out how I'm going to explain it to my wife. I’m going to go and cherry-pick some facts and figures so that I can buy that thing that I am going to have.”

Ryan Chute: And that shows up in Daniel Kahneman's work Thinking Fast and Slow. We've certainly been talking about it with Wizard of Ads for eons. It is the precipice of this.

People aren't buying with reasoning, they're buying with emotion. And it goes into the brain emotionally, goes over to the rational side for reasoning, and then the rational side kicks it back to the emotion to make sure that it feels right before they tip the scales, break the seal, and step into the sale.

Mick Torbay: So, as a business owner, I would say you almost certainly can't do this exercise by yourself. You almost certainly can't figure out what business you're in as long as you're in it. As long as you're sitting in your office and you're doing the thing that you do all the time, you're kinda going to land in the same place that everybody else who sits in your chair lands in. So wherever you naturally feel that's who you are, and that's what makes you distinctive and what makes you who you are, all your competitors are going to land in the same place. And if you're wondering why all ads sound the same, that's why. It's that client-based perspective. And so if you want to break out of that, you really do need professional help. You need someone outside who will dare to tell you you're not in the business you think you're in, and won't get beat up for that.

Ryan Chute: Look, I see it as three layers to start, one is the features. Family-owned, and we do this, we have people care, and all the blah, blah, blah. Then we have the layer number two, the benefits. We fight uncertainty in home services. But that's where most people stop when they're doing a better job than most. The whole Simon Sinek notion here of start with why. But then there's the next layer beyond that is how are we fighting uncertainty? What is it that we do?  

Mick Torbay: Prove it. Prove that you're fighting uncertainty.

Ryan Chute: And the problem in that layer is that even if you're really good at figuring out the uncertainty part, you're probably not going to tell the how and what of the golden circle of your why that the customer cares about in an entertaining way.

Mick Torbay: Probably not.

Ryan Chute: So great, you've just told them in an incredibly boring way how and what you do to fight uncertainty, and no one cares.

Mick Torbay: It's hard. It's harder than it looks.

Ryan Chute: It's way harder than it looks. That, listen, the first time I stepped into the very first partners meeting in 2017, by the time the first day ended, I was like “I'm not going to write a damn thing for anyone ever."

This way beyond my scope of ability, and I would have had to have started 30 years ago, like you guys did, what, I think, 30 years ago.

Mick Torbay: 75 years ago for Chris.

Ryan Chute: 75 for Chris.

Mick Torbay: I mean, it's coming up to

Ryan Chute: It's more than 30 years. We'll just say that. That's yeah, so we're just celebrating anniversaries at this point.

Mick Torbay: It was the cotton gin you were first working on.

Chris Torbay: Yes. The cotton gin, yes. I think it's really going to take off.

Ryan Chute: He helped Jim Beam with his first run.

Let's do the swap test. Take your last three ads, cover up your company's name, replace it with your biggest competitor's name. Does the ad still make sense?

Mick Torbay: Or is it absolutely impossible? Would it be absolute gibberish?

Ryan Chute: If the ad still works word for word with a different company name on it, congratulations, you're not advertising for yourself anyway. You're advertising for the industry. A real brand ad would feel completely wrong when somebody else's name was on it, to your point, Mick. That's the bar that you need to set as a minimum bar. Yeah. And it's through entertaining storytelling where you're coming up with, based on a true story, characterizations that speak into the customer's why, not your own. This has been a fantastic conversation, guys. I look forward to us getting onto the next episode.

Ryan Chute: Here's the thing. If you're running a business in America, here's what I'd want you walking out the door with. One, stop selling the little purple pill. Sell the gleeful stroll to work the next morning. Your customer isn't calling you for your thingy.

They're calling you for what your thingy gives them. Two, the biggest feeling to overcome is uncertainty. People buy what you have to sell when you make them feel better than your competitor does. Three, forget different. Be distinct. All your competitors look exactly like you. Find a way to show up in a distinct way.

Pull every competitor ad in your zip code, then refuse to advertise the same thing. Everyone says quality service, 24-hour emergency, family-owned since whenever. Cool. Let them have that. Go tell a crazy story that takes the emotional high ground they were all too scared to or too incompetent to claim. If you don't hear anything else, hear this.

You are not in the home service business. You are in the feelings business, and your greatest villain is Captain Confusion. Kill the bad guy and win the sale. Go tell that story. Until next time, this is Advertising in America. Thanks for tuning in.

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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 Ryan Chute today.

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

For many, ad writing can be intimidating. There are so many elements that go into good ad copy, from the creativity needed to come up with an attention-grabbing headline, to the knowledge of how to target your audience and craft a message that speaks to them. Achieving this part is half the battle, so how do we follow these strategies and get the results we want? When writing ads, your target audience needs to feel like they are at the center of your world. You must know who they are, what they want and how to speak their language. And the best fool-proof way to do that is by using the word "you."

In this article, we will show you how to write compelling ads that your target audience can't resist — from the basics of ad writing to the very principles that make "you" a moneymaking word in advertising.

How do you Write an Ad?

Ad writing is different than any other type of writing. You have to be able to capture the reader's attention and convey a message in a short amount of time. To do this, you need to understand your audience and what they are looking for. Ad copywriting should be clear, concise and persuasive. It should also be free of any grammar or punctuation errors. The most integral part of ad writing is the headline. The headline is what grabs the reader's attention and urges them to read more. Then there are subheadlines, which elaborate on the main points of the ad. You also have the slogan, which is a short, catchy phrase that sums up the ad's message; the body copy, where you will deliver your persuasive message; and finally, the call-to-action, which gives the reader an action of to do next. Ad writing is a skill that takes practice to perfect, and it's important to remember to keep your audience in mind. Write ad copy that speaks to them directly and tells them what they want to hear. However, writing ads can take up a lot of time and effort. At Wizard of Ads for Essential Services, we can take on any and all of your advertising needs. We create ad campaigns that drive results, so you can focus on running your business. Contact us today to learn more!

What are the Key Components of an Ad?

An ad is made up of a few key components that work together to create a persuasive message. Here are some of the biggest key components of an ad that you should include in order to build a successful ad campaign.

Headline

The headline is one of the most important components in an advertising copy, as it is the first thing that people will see. It is crucial to ensure the headline is catchy and interesting to grab people's attention. The headline should also accurately reflect what the ad is about so that people know what they're getting themselves into. For example, a headline for an ad for a new car might be "Introducing the newest addition to our line-up: the 2017 Ford Mustang!" The ad writing for this headline is enticing and tells you exactly what the ad is about — a Ford Mustang. If the headline was something like "Looking for a new car? Look no further!", it would not be as accurate and would not reflect what the ad is selling. The reader would likely be misled and think that the ad is for a general car search, rather than a specific model. The headline is therefore an important part of an ad because it sets the tone and informs the reader of what to expect.

Sub-Headlines

Sub-headlines are the area of text that appears directly below the headline on an ad. They are there to draw attention to the most important points of the ad and can influence whether or not someone decides to read it. Good sub-headlines will:

Be relevant to the main headline: They should reinforce what the headline is saying and add additional information that will help persuade the reader.

Expand on the main message: They should provide more information about what the ad is offering and why it is beneficial.

Be interesting: They should be able to stand on their own and be something that would make someone want to read more.

Highlight key benefits: They should focus on the most important selling points and make it easy for people to see why they should be interested.

Contain important keywords: Including the right keywords in your sub-headlines can help improve your ad’s search engine ranking.

By using sub-headlines, you can make your ad writing more effective and increase the chances that people will take notice.

Slogan

Slogans are short, catchy phrases that serve as a call to action or summarize the main message of an ad. Slogans should be memorable and often used in marketing campaigns to create brand awareness or drive sales. Some famous ad copy examples of slogans include:

Just Do It (Nike)

Think Different (Apple)

I'm Lovin' It (McDonald's)

Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands (M&M's)

Slogans are effective because they are concise and easy to remember. They can also be powerful tools for creating an emotional connection with consumers. When choosing a slogan for your ad, it is important to consider what you want your ad writing to achieve. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive sales? Create an emotional connection? Once you know what you want your ad to do, you can craft a slogan that will help you achieve those goals.

Body

The body is responsible for delivering the message and convincing the reader to take action. This is where you include your persuasive arguments, statistics and testimonials. It's also important to make sure your body is well-written and error-free, as it can make or break an ad. To write great ad copy for the body of your ad, start by brainstorming what you want to say. Once you have a solid idea of your message, start drafting your ad copy using the following tips:

Keep it short and concise: You only have a few seconds to capture your reader's attention, so make sure your ad copy is easy to read and understand.

Use strong verbs: When writing ad copy, use powerful verbs to create an emotional connection with your reader. For example, "save," "enjoy," or "experience."

Use numbers and statistics: Numbers and statistics can be very persuasive, so be sure to include them in your ad copy if possible.

Use testimonials: Testimonials from real people are incredibly powerful and can be very convincing. If you have any testimonials from satisfied customers, be sure to include them in your ad copy.

Highlight the benefits: When writing ad copy, always focus on the value of your product or service rather than the features. Your readers will care more about how your offer can improve their lives than the technical details.

Visuals/Graphics

Including visuals and graphics in an ad is one of the greatest ways to ensure that it will be effective. Visuals and graphics help to convey the message of the ad by providing a visual representation of the information being advertised. They can help to grab attention, communicate complex ideas and make the ad more memorable. Visuals and graphics must be well-designed and correctly implemented to entice an audience, otherwise, they can detract from the ad's effectiveness. To implement eye-catching visuals and graphics in your ads, consider using images, infographics, videos and other multimedia. Be sure to choose something relevant to your product or service that will resonate with your target audience. Keep in mind the overall tone of the ad and make sure that the visuals support it. If you're not confident in your ability to create effective visuals yourself, consider hiring a professional designer to help you out. By including visuals in your ad, you can greatly improve its chances of success.

Lay-out

Ad layouts are important for a couple of reasons. For one, they help to ensure that the ad looks professional and appealing. Additionally, ad layouts can be used to strategically place key components of the ad, such as the headline and call to action, to maximize their impact. There are a few key components that all ads should have. The headline is one of the top key components of an ad, as it is what will catch people's attention and convince them to read further. The call-to-action is also critical, as it tells people what you want them to do after reading the ad. Finally, you'll also want to include some branding or contact information so people know who created the ad and how they can get in touch. With a flawless ad layout, you can create an ad that's both visually appealing and persuasive.

Why “You” is the Most Irresistible Word

As someone who works in or around marketing and advertising, you may have been told at one point or another that mentioning the name of the company at least seven times in your ad is the best way to reach customers. However, the word that’s the most irresistible in the English language only has three letters, and that powerful word is “you.” When your audience sees or hears the word “you,” they become immediately engaged. It puts your ad in the present tense, with the viewer as the main subject and protagonist. It will encourage the viewer to imagine their lives with your product or service, and that’s a powerful motivator. To make the most of this strategy, you need to ensure that every time you mention “you,” it’s accompanied by some sort of benefit. Whether that’s a lower price, a new feature or simply the peace of mind that comes with using a well-established brand, your ad needs to offer something that resonates with viewers on a personal level. Using the word "you" in your ad copy is an excellent way to create a personal connection with potential customers. By putting the viewer at the center of the ad, you encourage them to imagine how your product or service can improve their lives. Although crafting the perfect ad can be difficult, it’s well worth the effort. When you partner with an experienced and talented team of ad wizards, you can bypass all of that trial and error and create ads that are sure to grab attention and convert leads into customers. At Wizard of Ads for Essential Services, we are just the ad sorcerers you are looking for. If you’re ready to take your advertising to the next level, contact us today!

Mastering Ad Analysis: How to Make Every Dollar Count in Your Marketing

Let's talk about ad analysis. "Why should I care? I'm the business owner. I’ll leave that to my marketing department." Any home service business, whether you sell HVAC or do plumbing, relies on some form of advertising. Agree? Writing ad copy is more than just promoting your brand. Advertisements have been etched deeply in the culture of society, and we've become numb to them. Now, do you want ads that become your market's passing whim or ads that actually shatter the Sea of Sameness? Exactly. That's why ad analysis is essential, to know which works and which doesn't. Ad analysis is a powerful tool to improve your advertising messages and put you at the top. Otherwise, stop wondering why your ads have a negative ROI. Ad analysis is your friend, and it can boost your revenue when implemented correctly. You want that, right? If that's your stand, keep reading.

Saliency (Relevance of an Ad Copy)

Saliency in advertising refers to the degree to which an ad copy captures a viewer's attention and resonates with their needs or interests. In an increasingly crowded digital marketplace, where consumers are bombarded with countless messages every day, creating a salient ad isn't just a nice-to-have, it's essential for success. Relevant ad copy is crafted to speak directly to the target audience, addressing their pain points, desires, or aspirations in a way that feels immediately compelling. This relevance not only increases the likelihood of engagement but also fosters a deeper emotional connection between the brand and its audience.

Achieving saliency involves a careful balance of understanding market trends, consumer behavior, and the unique value proposition offered by the product or service. Effective ad copy often incorporates familiar language or relatable scenarios, making the message easy to digest while driving home the benefits of what is being advertised. When consumers perceive an ad as relevant, they are more inclined to take action—whether that means clicking through to learn more, sharing the content with their networks, or making a purchase decision. Ultimately, the key to successful ad copy lies in its ability to cut through the noise, capture attention, and create meaningful interactions that lead to conversion.

In the world of ad analysis, saliency refers to how relevant or appealing an ad is to its intended audience. Writing ad copy is not as easy as it seems. It should be framed from the angle of what your audiences want to hear, not what you want to say. To this end, advertisers often use various tactics, which include: ad relevance.

• Targeting specific demographics
• Incorporating popular cultural references
• Using persuasive language
• Employing attention-grabbing imagery

All of these techniques are used to increase the saliency of their ads. However, advertisers need to strike a balance. This means using these tactics while ensuring the relevance of the ad to the solution being promoted. Now that we’ve established what saliency is, the deeper question we must answer is: why is learning it important? The answer is simple. Whenever you publish ads, your focus should be making a mark on your audience. This is where ad analysis comes in. If your ads only become static in the background, then you're wasting valuable money. Capturing a space in your customer's long-term memory takes both saliency and repetition. In other words, you need to publish relevant ads that reach your target market repeatedly. That's what advertisement analysis steps aim to bring to the table. When you work with us, you can expect salient advertising that speaks the language of your target audience. If that's what you want, book a call with Wizard of Ads for Essential Services and we'll get you started.

Understanding "A Dollar A Person A Year" Concept

So salience and repetition are the two ingredients you need for successful ads. By success, we mean the ads actually sink into the psyche and subconscious of your audience. It's easy to wrap our heads around the salience part because that’s the exact reason for ad analysis. But how many repetitions exactly does it take to get a message across? Through his extensive experience in radio advertising, Roy H. Williams has an answer for that. He argues that the entire process takes a person about three times, within seven nights, every seven nights, for a year. That's equivalent to 156 times in 52 weeks. You’re probably thinking about the towering costs to cover your market, but Roy’s computation might surprise you. According to him, it would only cost a dollar per person, per year. Of course, there's a catch. Roy H. Williams emphasizes that the ads have to be well-crafted and audience-focused in order for them to work effectively. This is where ad analysis becomes even more relevant. Analyzing the performance of your ads helps you align the message with your audience. Here are 5 aspects you must keep in mind:

1. You will target the same person 156 times for a year, UNLESS the impact quotient of your ads is exemplary. This means that your ads exceed the relevance and credibility of your competitor's ads. Why? Because...
2. Increasing the saliency of your advertisements reduces the number of repetitions it takes to sink in. A healthy dose of ad analysis to see what works and what doesn't help in this regard.
3. Count every person you reach. As residential home service providers, you don't need a tightly targeted demographic. Keep in mind that all households and businesses experience household breakdowns ever so often. That’s why targeting a wide range of people is better – like casting a net for a huge number of fish.
4. This "one dollar one person one year" guideline will be rejected by most advertising professionals. They will crunch the numbers for its absurdity, without considering that it's possible, depending on the ad. Ad analysis enables campaigns to become successful – reaching a wide audience and generating sales leads.

In TV or radio advertising, never purchase a broad rotator (6 am to 11 pm). In Roy H. Williams' experience, you'll only reach 1/3 or 1/4 of the people you were promised.

A dollar a person a year is not a scientifically proven guideline for sure. However, it's the product of the experience of a radio ad-smith. Certainly, it will be different in the case of Facebook advertising or even PPC ads. The point is that salient ads have the capacity to penetrate your market's psyche with less cost. Ad analysis does that. So, next time you're planning a marketing campaign, consider doing ad analysis. Admittedly, it may not be glamorous or shiny. However, it's a reliable, tried-and-true method to ensure the success of your ad campaign, especially amidst today's number of ads.

Exposure Insights: How Many Ads Do We See Daily?

Did you know that most people will have viewed two million TV commercials in a lifetime? That's a lot, those same ads will keep on playing for eternity even when you switch the TV off. Advertisements plague our entire existence. From TV cereals to billboards down to food wrappers, our world is surrounded by ads. Red Crow Marketing says the average American adult is exposed to around 4,000-10,000 advertisements per day. This includes not only TV ads, but also ads on websites, social media, billboards, and so much more. With all those ads constantly bombarding us, standing out and making an impact on viewers is nearly impossible. In fact, among those digits, people only "notice" fewer than a hundred ads a week. Take note of the keyword: notice. Not remember, not recall, only notice. Only a tiny fraction of these will be remembered in a week. For people in the advertising industry, this is a constant struggle. After all, what sort of ROI do you expect to receive without any sort of impact on the viewer? Advertisements are meant to grab attention, and yet we often don't even notice them. How can an ad stand out in a sea of five thousand others? Improve your advertising through ad analysis. This can help advertisers understand how their ads are being perceived and improve their saliency in a crowded marketplace. Now, let's get down to business. How should we analyze ads?

Key Questions to Enhance Your Ad Analysis

Advertisements are infused into every aspect of our lives. We're so used to advertising that it's no longer viewed today as a means to an end (purchase). Ads are no longer branches of entertainment; rather, we have reached a point where ads have become white noise. Ads attempt to become a projection of how our lives ‘should be’. For instance: advertising techniques...

• Sexy people in ads represent our sexiness
• Laughing people in ads represent our happiness
• Successful people in ads represent our success

In other words, ads hope to be a seductive mirror for people to view and interpret reality. Ads are a false misrepresentation of our ideal selves. As emphasized by Naomi Klein, a cultural critic: Powerful and influential brands attempt to develop relationships with consumers through advertising. A connection that resonates completely with people's sense of self, to the extent of slavery, for these brands. Advertising, therefore, is no longer a means to an end but a powerful force that molds our sense of self. That's why having a critical eye is necessary. In our topic’s context, your advertising should be impactful enough that you become the most desired brand in the industry. Pour in as much salience, reliability, and credibility all at once, so that your ads become irresistible. When people encounter a home service need, you become their gold standard. If your ads are not yet at that level, ad analysis could help. Here are some questions to ask when analyzing your ads:

Who is featured in the advertisement?

Consider whether the ad showcases a celebrity, the business owner, or other individuals. Featuring recognizable and relevant personalities can amplify the ad's influence. Also, pay attention to the expressions and emotions portrayed, as these can deeply affect how your message is received.

What environment or backdrop does the ad use?

The setting should complement the overall tone and message of the advertisement. Coherent visuals, music, and surroundings work together to reinforce the ad’s theme and captivate the audience.

Who is the intended audience for the ad?

While precise targeting is crucial for many businesses to optimize spending, residential home services benefit from broader reach, given that household issues can arise unexpectedly across varied demographics. Expanding your audience scope ensures maximum market coverage.

How is language employed within the ad's dialogue or copy?

The style and tone of the language should resonate with the target audience. For luxury services, elegant and refined language is fitting; for general services, straightforward and relatable language works best. Additionally, make sure your wording addresses the core concerns and desires of your customers.

In what way does the ad invoke emotions and appeals?

Emotional connection is key to motivating consumer action. Effective ads skillfully engage feelings such as desire, trust, happiness, or security, while staying true to the core message without overreaching.

Are aspects of identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, or sexuality represented?

Including diverse elements can add depth and relevance if aligned appropriately with your message. However, be cautious to avoid appearing insincere or as if you are merely performing virtue signalling; authenticity matters most.

Ad analysis is all about refining your advertisements to significantly spike their impact quotient. Salient ads are your best weapons if you want to drive sales and build a strong brand image. While you may not achieve "a dollar a person a year" in advertising, you make sure it's dang near close. The more salient the ads, the less you have to pay before it sinks in. The question is: are you up for analyzing your ads? If not, advertisement analysis can help you. We have been a part of refining the ad campaigns of countless residential home service businesses. That means we can also make sure your ads check out. Conversely, if you're entirely dissatisfied with your ads, our team is able to write your killer salient ads for you. All it takes is booking a call with Wizard of Ads for Essential Services.

You say you want something different.

You don't.

You want something different that looks like something that already worked. You want risk with a guarantee attached. You want a breakthrough idea that a focus group approves. That's not different. That's a polite version of what you've always done, wearing a new shirt.

In this episode of Advertising in America, Chris, Mick, and Ryan go after one of the most dangerous lies in marketing: that clients want to do something bold. The truth is, most of them have already had bold presented to them. They just didn't buy it. They bought the safe version that came before it on the deck. Or after it. The one that felt like advertising.

The conversation moves from Jack Nicholson improvising his way into movie history, to why The Sopranos cast assumed they'd never get a second season, to why the campaigns every business wishes they ran Old Spice, 1984, Got Milk, only look brilliant in hindsight.

Because breakthrough ideas don't look like winners when you're staring at them in a boardroom. It looks like getting fired in 4K.

Episode Highlights

• You Can't Handle Different: Why clients ask for it, reject it, and then applaud it when someone else pulls it off.
• The Staring Off the Cliff Feeling: What true breakthrough ideas actually look like when they hit the table and why they terrify everyone in the room.
• The Deck Order Truth: Why agencies present the safe idea first, the wild idea second, and expect you to run with number three.
• The Sopranos Problem: Why the people closest to the most revolutionary things are always convinced they won't work.
• Risk and Reward. Pick One: Why you can't live in both worlds at the same time, and what it actually costs to stand out.
• Mere Exposure Effect: The 1968 research that proves repetition isn't lazy, it's how people come to love what they feared.
• The Parasocial Brand: Why your customers call the same HVAC company every time—not because they know you, but because they feel like they do.
• Different is the Story, Not the Operation: Why the thing that separates you isn't your service model, it's the strange, specific way you tell your truth.
• You're Not the Hero: Why the home services company that leads with "we're here to save the day" has already lost the plot.

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🎧 Hit play for the most honest conversation in marketing you'll hear this year. If you've ever been in the room when the bold idea got watered down, this one will feel uncomfortably familiar.

👉 Are you actually ready for something different, or are you just ready to say you were?

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📱 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

💥 Brought to you by Wizard of Ads for Essential Services

📞 Book your complimentary 45-minute strategy session with Ryan Chute

On this episode of Advertising in America, I’m a little nervous.

In advertising, clients see great ads in the market, sometimes for their competitors, and they say, “We should do something like that. Something new and different, and that takes the world by storm, something that is unignorable and totally unique, something that is going to blow up on social media.”

Maybe you want something basically the same as everyone else’s marketing, that delivers basically the same results.

So different isn't about what you're doing. Different is about the story you tell, and how you tell the story.

If you want to absolutely take over your industry, playing it safe is not for you. But if you don't have the stomach for everything that comes from risk, be honest with your marketing people, play it safe, down the middle, don't offend people.  

You'll never be rich, but you’ll never be poor either.

Ryan Chute: The topic today is, “Don’t ask for something different.” And I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to ask for that. I think I’ve been asking for that for years. Nobody told me. I just thought I was being helpful. Anyway. Chris is gonna start. He knows stuff. I’m just gonna sit here and learn somethin’. Chris.

Chris Torbay: There’s a great behind-the-scenes story about the filming of A Few Good Men. We all know the pivotal scene: Jack Nicholson is playing a big, tough General being questioned in court by brainiac lawyer Tom Cruise, who’s trying to trip him up and catch him in a compromising position.

At some point, Cruise dramatically shouts, “I want the truth!” and Jack Nicholson snarls back, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Little-known fact: the line in Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant script was supposed to be “You already have the truth!” But Jack improvised in character and changed movie culture forever. Interestingly, though, both those answers are good.

In advertising, clients see great ads in the market, sometimes for their competitors or sometimes just other great advertising out there in the world, and they say, “We should do something like that!” Something new and different that takes the world by storm. Something unignorable and totally unique. Something that’s going to blow up on social media.

Then they challenge their agency: “Hey, why don’t you give us something new and different that people will stop and remember us forever for?”

And that’s my answer: Don’t ask for something “different.”

You can’t handle “different!” And also, most times you’ve already HAD “different!”

The hardest thing for clients to realize is that these great, new, breakthrough ideas they see and wish their agency was doing for them, they only see them when they’re done. And they’re out there in the world, making a splash. Sure, everyone wants one of those ideas … IN RETROSPECT.

But that’s not what those ideas look like when they get presented to you.

As the former CCO of Wieden+Kennedy said, “When you’re looking at a truly breakthrough idea for the first time, it doesn’t feel like looking at a winner. It feels like staring off the edge of a cliff. Your stomach drops. Your brain plays a montage of you getting fired in 4k. Every instinct screams, “Turn back, you idiot!”

Truly new ideas feel terribly wrong in the moment they’re presented to you. It doesn’t look like anything you’ve done, or anything your competitors have done, and so you have absolutely no yardstick by which to evaluate it. It doesn’t look like advertising or marketing as you’ve learned it in Community College or even in your years of experience that have finally put you in this nice cushy office, so you don’t buy it!

The truth is, your agency presents something like that to you every time they get a chance. It comes right after the “safe idea” they present first, but right before the last idea, which is less crazy than this one is, so maybe you’ll at least go for that. Everyone has a good laugh at the really out-of-the-box idea, and then buys the one they can get their head around.

You want a new idea that will really stand out? You need to be comfortable with discomfort. You need to surrender control to the “crazy new idea people” and sign the contract and write the cheque, even though everything inside you says this is crazy and shows no guarantee of working.

That’s what 1984 did for Apple, that’s what The Man Your Man Can Smell Like did for Old Spice, that’s what “Wassaaap” did for Budweiser Brewing Company APAC.

Don’t ask for ideas that are revolutionary. You’ve had them, and either you or your committee watered them down. Or we didn’t bring them, because we knew you couldn’t handle them.

Ryan Chute: Gettin’ fired in 4K, I appreciate the specificity, but I don’t need 4K. The whole point of imagining your career ending is that it’s supposed to be a little blurry. Let’s do montages on a VHS. Don't upgrade the resolution on that one. Mick. Whatcha got?

Mick Torbay: When a client brings in a new agency or a new ad guy, by definition, they’re looking for something different. We know this, of course. It’s why all agencies start the first meeting by saying that everything the last guy did was wrong. We know we’ll all be on the same page if we begin with that one.

I mean, if you don’t want something different, then why did you fire the last guy?

But there’s always going to be a conflict between wanting something different, which is a good and honorable thing, and wanting something proven, which is also good and honorable. And completely incompatible with “different.” So sit with that for a while.

How comfortable are you with saying to your marketing team, “Bring me something completely unproven. Something where nobody knows whether or not it’ll work. Let’s find out together if this is a complete waste of my money. It’ll probably take a year to know for sure. So I’ll write the checks, you write the copy, and we’ll meet again in twelve months and see if this was a good idea or not.”

Seriously. Sit with that awhile. Say that last bit out loud. Imagine yourself saying it with a straight face. Word for word. Because when you ask for something “different,” that’s what you’re asking for. Now, maybe you want that. And maybe you don’t. But for goodness sake, be honest with yourself. Maybe, just maybe, you don’t want something different. Maybe you want something basically the same as everyone else’s marketing that delivers basically the same results. It won’t make you stand out, but it won’t blow up in your face either.

Risk and reward. Pick one. Take no risk, and live in mediocrity. Take risks, and well, stay up nights worrying if you’ve screwed everything up because maybe you did. But don’t pretend you can live in both worlds at the same time.

Please find me the billionaire who says, “I always played it safe. Never really took any crazy chances.” If you want to absolutely take over your industry, playing it safe is not for you. But if you don’t have the stomach for everything that comes from risk, then be honest with your marketing people. Play it safe. Down the middle. Don’t offend people. You’ll never be rich. But you’ll never be poor either.

But please don’t call the Wizard of Ads people. Because we don’t play that shit.

Ryan Chute: Mick told us to say that whole thing out loud. The part about writing the check, handin' it over, and waitin' twelve months to find out if it worked. So I tried. Said it out loud in my kitchen. My wife walked in and asked if I was okay. I just said, “Nobody knows.” We'll be right back.

Ryan Chute: We’re back. Everybody keeps askin’, “How can we be different?” The more I think about it, I don’t think that’s the question. Maybe, instead, we ask, “How do we get prospects to love us long-term?” What do you say, soldier boy?

Chris Torbay: It's an interesting contrast because one of the things that we know is that, in fact, consistency is one of the strongest things in marketing.

I had an interesting challenge with a client a few months ago, in that I inherited it from another person, and they had been running pretty heavily in the market for a couple of years. And so on one hand, I'm coming in as the new guy, and I had been brought in to be the new guy, and obviously, do things in a better way. But if I completely threw out everything that had been done before, then all of that equity you've built up is gone, right?

So the question became, what can I keep from the previous campaign and just do it in a new and different or better way? And so in a sense, I was brought in to be different, but if I just came in with a completely different idea, that's actually going to negate 24 months of advertising.

Ryan Chute: You could lose something,

Chris Torbay: The client, the consumer's going to go, "What happened to this brand? Because I thought they were all about this kind of thing."

Ryan Chute: It's what's important to protect at all costs, that did have value and some echoic retention. One of the biggest challenges that Ken had at Gettle was that you have this decades-old brand that you just can't get rid of, even though no one knows how to spell it. It was associated with not the most exciting of news when he took it over, and he brought it back with his values, his virtues, his personal brand, bringing that brand back to life.  

Chris Torbay: But don't throw out everything.

Ryan Chute: But don't throw out the name. Don't throw out the patents. Don't throw out all the things that made it what it was.

Chris Torbay: Made it worth your purchasing in the first place or taking over in the first place. The other sort of big example from that from the big agency world is the number of times agencies, including Wieden+Kennedy, have tried to replace "Just do it" as the tagline for Nike.

It's been there, and every new creative director or every new copywriter who gets put on the brand goes, "You know what? Maybe it's time that we, it's been 20 years, it's been 25 years, it's been 35 years." Everyone is always trying to be the one who replaces "Just do it." And you know what? Keep "Just do it." It's there. Don't give me different. Give me more of that. Give it to me in a new way, maybe, put a new spin on it, but you don't throw everything out necessarily.

Ryan Chute: Baby in the bath, with the bath water.

Mick Torbay: It's almost never the consumer that's asking for the change, isn't it? And I think that also raises an interesting difference between the way the Wizard of Ads people work and the way the typical marketing world works, where the typical marketing agency charges based on the amount of time and work that they put into it, which encourages them to want to change more stuff.

We're paid on results, which means we're going to look at what you're doing right now that's working, and we're going to encourage you to keep whatever is valuable because why would you lose, why would we encourage you to take away something that's delivering results? We want to tighten things up, we want to fix what's broken, but we don't want to fix anything that isn't broken, because ultimately we only care about you selling more things, you making more money, increasing your revenue. Whereas at the agency, if they change everything, they get to bill more. And it, again, this is not evil, it's just simply the way the system is working. And it is the  rare large agency that dares to say, "Maybe the guy three agencies ago kinda had it." I mean, Budweiser went through this exact thing when they changed the tagline, because they thought that “This Bud's for you” had run its course. Because they had run it for 20 years, and then they tried this one, they tried that one, they tried that one, and..

Chris Torbay: “Proud to be Your Bud…Well, there was a bunch of them.

Mick Torbay: There was a shake hands with the long-neck Bud, which is a little dirty for me.  

Chris Torbay: There we go. But you can see why that one didn't work ...

Mick Torbay: But the point is, eventually they were like, and then they do focus groups and people are like, "Oh, yeah, Budweiser, yeah, this Bud's for you."

It's "Son of a bitch, we haven't said that for 15 fucking years." It's, yeah, but that's actually the one that's still resonating, and then eventually the marketing people have to be dragged into the reality of the consumer. It's "If this is what they're saying, why are we saying something else?"

Ryan Chute: Fun fact, guys, Robert Zajonc (1968), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The “mere exposure effect.” The more times your brain sees the same thing, the more you like it — even when you don’t consciously remember seein’ it. Repetition isn’t lazy. It’s how affection actually works.

Chris Torbay: So I guess there are two. Just before we continue, we're going to collide with when do you change your ads. A lot of what we're saying actually sounds like, “When you going to change your ads?”

I wonder if we come back to, when do you do something new and different? If you're a new brand, and I ask this question, you said something at the end of your rant, which is that if you do something similar to what's out there, you'll never be rich, but you'll never be poor. I challenge that. I wonder, depending on where you are, what kind of market, what kind of business you're in, if you don't do something different, are you in fact going to be poor? If you start a new cola today and you don't do something outrageous, I'm sorry, you're just going to... your business is gonna fold in 18 months.

Mick Torbay: Okay, you're not wrong. But I guess what I was getting at is that if you are… cola is probably not the best example of that because you're 100% right with that.

Ryan Chute: I don't think it's a bad example. Look at Liquid Death

Mick Torbay: But you're not going to be able to start a new cola without interesting advertising. And I think that's the point you were trying to make.

Chris Torbay: Jones Cola is doing all right because the packaging is different, and the label's always different every month,

Mick Torbay: I guess what I'm saying is if you wanted to start an air conditioning company, and you wanted to run, get yourself wrapped by the truck wrap guy and run those ads that look like all the other ads…

Chris Torbay: People shaking hands with a helpful homeowner at the front door. All those things.

Mick Torbay: We've seen it. You could do a lot worse, and as long as you're a good operator, you can do okay that way. You're not going to take over the world. You're not going to beat the leader, but you probably can do okay. You can probably not be the worst guy in town. You can probably be somewhere...

You could be the middle-est. Something that can feed your family and be okay. Are you going to, are you going to be the one that changes the world? Are you going to build an empire? No, you're not going to build an empire. That's all I was saying. If you're thinking of this as essential services, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and garage doors. In those worlds, if you kinda do close to what everybody else is doing, you'll pick up a few customers ... you can get by on that. Running advertising that is not going to scare people is not going to really be out there. You're not going to take any risks. You can do okay. You're not going to blow the doors off your industry. You're not gonna be Ken Goodrich doing that.

Chris Torbay: Yeah, I guess we're the first ones to say if there are four plumbers in town, and they're each splitting the business four ways, and you come and open a fifth plumber, you don't, by definition, you are not entitled to 20% of the business.

Now everybody else is gonna get 20% each, and you're gonna get your fair share of 20%. There is no reason for people to go to you unless you are doing something that says, "Why shouldn't I go to these four people? Why I should go to this one?"

Mick Torbay: But when people hire us, they're not asking, they're not looking to get their fair share. And that's what I was getting at the end of my rant, which is if you call us, you're not trying to divide it by, instead of by four, you want to divide it by five. You actually want more than your fair share. That's why you bring us in. And it's also important to note that, like you, I don't want this conversation to turn into you shouldn't do anything different. Absolutely you should do something different. That is exactly what we do. We build empires. We build leaders. You take a leadership position by doing something different. All we're saying is when you do something different, it requires risk. It requires consciously deciding that what we're going to do is go, may not work.

Why? Because it's different, because it's unproven, because it's not what everybody else is doing. It could blow the doors off the industry. It could blow up in your face. Now, you can mitigate that risk by hiring people who have done this sort of thing before.

Chris Torbay: So they've done different before. But they haven't done this different before.  

Mick Torbay: They haven't done this different before. Exactly.

Chris Torbay: But it also takes a certain constitution. We've got another client in Nashville where we've done that, where he said he wanted to do something completely different, and when we presented it, he had this moment where it's like, "Okay," and he, to his credit is 100% invested in it and went with it, but boy, you could see the pucker happening.

Mick Torbay: If it gave him pause, that's how you know it was different.

Chris Torbay: That's how you know. And at some point you have to just have the internal constitution to say, "I am going to take this on faith that if we are all in and all behind it, it will eventually work." But there is no reassurance at the beginning. And so if you ask for it, I guess this is the point of my rant, that if you're going to ask, be prepared to be freaked out. And we will get there, but it is not going to be an enjoyable ride. You're not going to know from first, from the first blush that this is going to be a hit record. We just got to get it out there and wait for it to build up. There's going to be a huge moment of uncertainty while you wait for it to freak the audience out, and have them go "This is weird. I wonder what this is."

Ryan Chute: And I think it's important for us to stop and reflect on the three inflection points that we're talking about here. Inflection point number one is you currently have a brand that is doing what it can do to capture the low-hanging fruit of existing demand and is looking to do this next thing.

Yes, that requires you having a different story than nothing.

Then there's the different story than the thing that's not working very great. That's different.

Then there's the “I'm new to market and I need to show up in a way  that interrupts the pattern.” Pattern interrupts.

So all of these things are different points of different or distinctions? But it all comes down to the likelihood of you doing something different operationally in home services is basically zero from the customer's perspective.

Mick Torbay: Or darn near zero ...

Ryan Chute: As far as perception in the public goes. So different isn't about what you're doing, different is about the story you tell and how you tell the story. This is a critical point to make is that this whole story is the distinction. You do the same things. How do we change that? We change that in a way that says mad scientist and British nanny, right? We talk about some crazy dynamic that, that makes sense but also gets noticed. That's the whole point of different. Without losing sight of the fact that if you've already done something that's gosh darn good, why not hang on to that thing? Because different for the sake of different isn't the mover, right? Mick, you regularly say capturing lightning in a bottle is hard. Why in the world are we trying to do that again and again?

Mick Torbay: And to Chris's point earlier in his rant, it's very easy to retroactively go back and say, "Yeah, that was a great idea."

I'm reading a book right now on The Sopranos, which we take for granted, so many of the parts of that program that were innovative at the time. The anti-hero really wasn't a thing on TV. Shooting a television show like they were an hour and 50-minute movie really wasn't done until they did it first. When they go when they had the pilot made the cast made that pilot, and then they were like, "Yeah, this is never gonna get picked up." There's no possible way."

And then it got picked up, and then they shot the entire season, 13 episodes, before they ran the first one. So they had an entire season in the can before it went on television for the first time. And at the end, when they had them all done, they were like, "There's no way we're getting a second season."

"There's no way they're gonna pick this up because it's just too fricking different."

Now, in hindsight, it's very easy to say, "Oh, no, it was brilliant. It was awesome. It did all these things differently. It broke all of these rules." And now these are rules that, that are routinely broken. They are now almost in fact rules.

That's why we have Breaking Bad. That's why we have all these other programs where we have. That's why we have Dexter. It's why we have programs where it's like, "That's a terrible person, and I kinda like him, and I wanna see what he's gonna do next." So, it's easy in hindsight to say, "Bring me something different."

But at the time, everyone involved in that program was like, "There is no possible way this is gonna, this is gonna get picked up." And for us now to look at that, it's "That's impossible." It's like, "No, it's completely possible."

Chris Torbay: And that's partly why both in Hollywood and in advertising, the decision-makers often try to compare it to something they can research. Show me another campaign that did this kind of thing, and how did it perform, and let me compare it to a bunch of benchmarks.

If you're asked for an idea that, that comes at it in a new way, there is not going to be anything else that you could compare it against to say, "If we do this crazy thing, there's a good chance it could actually work," because there isn't one of those and therefore, you're the guy who has to take that painful risk.

Mick Torbay: And what have we learned since that program ended in 2006? Fuck all, that's what. Because what kind of movies are they making now? Another fricking comic book movie. Why? because if we make yet another Deadpool movie, we know that it'll sell. That's not different. That's just another one of those. We're actually afraid to do anything new, even though what you really should be doing is "Let's make the next Sopranos." That is to say, something that's never been fucking done before and be the guy. But that's freaking terrifying.

Ryan Chute: It is. But, fun facts. Fun facts. Bient & Fields…

Mick Torbay: It better be fun by the way, or I’m going to be pissed. I didn't curse in my rant, so I have to curse now.

Ryan Chute: This is it. Binet & Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013). Campaigns that hold the line for three-plus years deliver roughly 2 to 3 times the profit growth of campaigns that “refresh” every year. The boredom is the discipline is the point of that of that research.

The whole point of “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ran for seven years. 66 spots. Two characters. Mac went from under 2% market share to over 10%. Big boys playing in the big boy fields, going 10%'s a lot of computers.

Mick Torbay: That’s a lot of copies.

Ryan Chute: They didn't get different every quarter. They got familiar. Familiarity is what breeds it. And that leads us to a fun fact. Another fun fact. Horton & Wohl (1956). We’re going back to the heyday, this is the golden era of behavorial science. Psychiatry, vol. 19, they coined the term “parasocial relationship.” It’s the real emotional bond audiences form with consistent characters they’ve never met.  It’s why you cried at the Friends finale. It’s also why your customer loyally calls the same HVAC company every time they don’t know you personally, but they feel like they do know you.

Mick Torbay: They feel like they do. And that's actually more important.

Ryan Chute: That's much more important. And it comes back to this whole idea of the story as the differentiator. And it's not the wrap, it's not the logo, it's not the five-star service guarantee, despite what people from stage might be beaking off about. Most of that stuff is nonsense. Real talk, your customers cannot tell your truck wrap apart from your competitor's truck. It's invisible. They've all got a smiling mascot holding a wrench on the side. The wraps just start to blur together when they all start to look the same. Your customer thinks every HVAC company is basically the same. Every plumber, every electrician, the same stock 1950s cartoon, same uniform, same speech about quality and service and family-owned heritage. None of it really matters because none of it actually makes people feel.

The only thing that we can actually tell apart is how you made them feel the last time you showed up. That's the brand. That's literally the message, the story. The weird way that it's told is what's actually moving the needle for you. It's not the generic nonsense that keeps coming out of your mouth on a radio ad or a billboard, or what's on the side of a truck. It's what you say that makes people move.

Fun fact. Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (1994), with follow-up peer-reviewed work in Cerebral Cortex (Bechara, Damasio & Damasio, 2000). I actually did do the research with actual real research. The somatic marker hypothesis: Patients with damage to their emotional centers literally cannot make decisions. Not even small ones. Because every decision is emotional first, rational second. This is actually tested in the brain. The “rational” part is the story we tell ourselves about a feeling we already had, which is really just storytelling inside our brain between the left and right hemispheres to get the part. Even when we actually make the decision on the rational side, the emotion has to make the choice.

So you have to be able to release yourself into the wild to feel right about the decision. People don't decide who to call when their AC dies. They ‘feel’ who to call.

Mick Torbay: They feel good about something.

Ryan Chute: They reach for the company they've had feelings about. Maya Angelou? Angelou. Angelou. Angelou said it better than anybody,

"People will forget what you said. People forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

One of the most brilliant points ever made in the history of storytelling.

Mick Torbay: I think what business owners really need to do is they need to decide which side of that line they're going to be on. Are you going to be one of many, or are you going to be the one that's gonna stand out? And it's very easy to say, "Oh, I wanna be the one that stands out." And I think what we're here at this table saying out loud, and almost nobody ever says it, is “No, seriously, this is a harder question to answer than you might think.”

Because if you want to be the one who stands out, that does carry with it some risk that you might not have considered. You, there is no easy way to say, "I am going to stand out." You're going to have to risk money. You're going to have to risk reputation. You're going to have to risk, you're going have to make sacrifices that the people who are going to head down the middle of the road won't have to make. And not everybody's cut out for that, and it's okay to say, "Hey that's not the, that's not the place for me."

One of the partners in my airplane, runs a $10 million business, and he has no desire for it to be any bigger. He's perfectly happy. He has lots of time. He's making some money. And he does not want to take over the world. And I respect him for that. He's not under any delusions.

A lot of business owners are under delusions. They think that something magical is gonna happen. It is not. If you want to become a leader, if you want to take over your industry, if you wanna be the one that everybody's paying attention to in your market, you have to do something big and different and scary. And if you want to do it, you can mitigate that by working with people who do big and different and scary for a living, the Wizard of Ads group being one of those outfits. But to some degree, you can do that with any marketing company. You just have to dare to say to them, "We're going to do the crazy shit."

We're not just gonna do the straight-ahead down the middle thing. We're actually going to have some fun.

Chris Torbay: We're not going to focus group it because the focus group's going to be in the same position where they go. They're going to tell you right to the set ... "I don't know about that ad, man. It doesn't look like any ad that I've seen on TV." And so they're going to inject even more uncertainty into the process. That’s if you ask them. At some point, you just have to say, "I'm going to go for this."

Mick Torbay: Part of this is asking yourself who you are. Like, what kind of person are you? And be okay with that.

It's not whether you're a good person or a bad person, it's just let's decide whether you're an empire builder or not.

Because not everybody is. Most people probably aren't.

Ryan Chute: And let's all stack hands, that different is by definition change, and change for most people is terrifying and very difficult to implement into their businesses. While so many of them say, "Say whatever you need to say to get the job done," we're saying, "Tell your true story in a unique way."

And there's a fundamental divide between those two concepts, if you're going to lie your way to success, guess what? You're going to go out of business because good advertising's only going to accelerate you into the thing that was already going to happen.

Mick Torbay: And people can see through that shit so easily.

Ryan Chute: It's superficial, but it's also contrived. As you said, people are gonna see through it. But then there's nobody that's going to back you up in, in your culture. It's "That's not us. That's not what we do. That's not what we say. You say all these funny things. They come here, and then they get a totally different experience." Guess what?

I have always said and will continue to always say that your operation and what you deliver, the experiences you deliver to the buyer, are going to be the number one branding exercise of your business. There is nothing else that does more branding than your own experience, and that's just a fact. No matter what we do.

Mick Torbay: Marketing needs to follow that, not the other way around.

Ryan Chute: That's right. That is marketing in so much as done right, your marketing becomes word of mouth through referral and repeat business, much more than it becomes acquisition of new customers. There's no city in America where there's an endless array of customers. So ultimately, it comes down to there's a certain amount of people who are going to want to do business with you the way you do business. How do you get them coming back and craving more and letting their friends know that you're only, that you're the only guy in town?

Mick Torbay: But you don't solve that problem by having marketing write checks that you can't, that your team can't cover.

Ryan Chute: Absolutely. Absolutely. And there are a lot of ways to tell really interesting stories. I think one of the biggest mistakes that's told in storytelling, for home services in particular, is the hero story where they assume that they're the hero.

They're not the hero, they're the guide.

Mick Torbay: I am terribly important.

Ryan Chute: Yes. And that they're coming to save the day when, in fact, what they are is the old man in the woods helping the hero, our customers get the result that they're looking for to overcome that villain, whatever it might be, the hot water being out, the Mother Nature, the whatever. All of these end up changing how stories are told. Good storytelling is hard. Good storytelling when you don't know what you're doing is-

Mick Torbay: Damn near impossible .

Ryan Chute: Well, it's embarrassing to see some of the stuff that we have seen.

Mick Torbay: Most people frankly don't even try, though. You're actually criticizing the people who are at least trying, and that's not most of them.

Most of them are quality, service, selection, price, convenient location, free parking, and we have professional staff who really care about your needs. My God.

Ryan Chute: So little bonus material here. Distinction's what gets you noticed. Familiarity is what gets you hired. Every campaign we still talk about, Old Spice 1984, Got Milk, Whasssup, Mac versus PC, ran long enough for the audience to fall in love. That's the broad strokes right there.

The brave idea is half the equation. The patience the patience is the other half.

Most folks quit before the patience part starts paying off. So these are the things that we want to start thinking about when we think about, how are we going to advertise our business?

It's going to be I need to tell a bold story. I need to say something that matters. I need to be okay with it being a different story. I don't need to run a different operation that I have to get my employees bought in, because if my culture doesn't deliver on what my brand promises, then the brand is going to be what your culture delivers.

Chris Torbay: Maybe that's an interesting, reassuring point to wrap it up for people, is if you take that approach that you just talked about with consistency and a long-running story, maybe that makes the initial freak-out a little easier to take.

You only have to throw yourself out of the airplane once every time you parachute, and that moment of "Am I going to throw myself out of this airplane or not?" only happens once. Once you do, and you pull the rip cord, and the chute opens, now it's actually a ride that you can stick with, and you're still up there, and there's still things to worry about. And it's fun.

But that moment of plummeting over the edge happens at the beginning when you call your ad guys, and they say, "Okay, here's this thing. We're going to have two penguins, and they're gonna be mud wrestling." And then you go, "Oh, my God, that does not look like anything that I've ever seen before."

You will have... That, that's the moment of throwing yourself out of the airplane. But then the more you stay with it, the more you are dedicated to it, the more other aspects of your business start to pick up on that idea, and it becomes the whole thing that you are known for, then it gets more and more tolerable as you move on.

And maybe that's the reassuring thing, "Don't worry, this is going to freak you out in this meeting, but it's going to get better from here. If you can get past this, if you can write the check this time, it's going to get better, and it's going to get better, and it's going to get better. This is not going to be what it is like to work with me for the next five years."

Mick Torbay: And if you're not good at this naturally, for goodness sake, don't do it yourself. Find somebody who's good at this.

Ryan Chute: It's the who not how concept. If you wanna get there fast, if you're looking to dominate your marketplace, you're not going to do it yourself.

You're going to do it with the help of others, the experts who know what they're talking about. If you try to do it yourself, bring it in-house, but even then, you have the danger of your in-house person getting infected with the curse of knowledge, and this becomes one of the big challenges that you have to consider when you're doing something different. It's so easy to fall into the trap of information. But information has never led to transformation, ever. It's always transformational storytelling that moves others to take action. Not even inspire them, not even get them excited about it, but to literally take the step that needs to be taken to get you to the next level of revenue.

Ryan Chute: So look. If you’re running an essential home service business in America, heating, air, plumbing, or electrical, here are the three things I’d want you to walk out the door with.

1. Stop chasing “different.” Create a unique story, not a unique value proposition. The best ad campaigns are like micro-sitcoms. Same characters. New situations. Month after month. Year after year. Pick truths about your business and stay married to it long after you get bored with it.
2. It’s never been your truck wrap. Or your logo. And nobody cares that you’ve been “family-owned since whenever.” You could replace your name with literally any competitor. The only thing your customer can actually tell you apart from the herd is the way you made ‘em feel. The feeling is your brand. Make somebody feel somethin’ real good, and anchor it to the pain they feel when something you can sell them breaks. They won’t call anyone else.
3. Tell your TRUE story. Not the one you wish you had. Are you funny? Earnest? A bit of a renegade? Are you the hero who shows up at 11 p.m. when the AC dies on the hottest night of the year? Find the authentic story, then figure out how to tell it in an entertaining way. Maybe you get a mad scientist and a British librarian to tell that story?

If you don’t hear anything else, hear this. You do not have to be more clever than your competition. You don’t even have to outspend them. And you certainly don’t have to chase whatever shiny new platform showed up on Tuesday.

You just have to be more like yourself than your competitor could ever hope to be.

Then stick around long enough that folks can only imagine your truck pulling up their home. Go tell your story in a weird way. And do it long enough that you become the company they raise their kids on.

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

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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 Ryan Chute today.

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

For years, Cornerstone Garage Doors was a solid, dependable name in the Tennessee garage door market. So when the team behind Cornerstone decided it was time for a bold new chapter, they didn't just want a new name. They wanted a brand with a soul - one built to scale nationally, told as a story, and impossible to confuse with anyone else in the category. The result is Dad & Daughter Garage Door Service, an incredibly rewarding project for Elastic Studio.

A strategy worth building on

This rebrand started in exactly the right place: strategy. The Ryan Chute Group did the foundational work — the positioning, the market thinking, and the name itself - and it's a genuinely brilliant one. "Dad & Daughter" instantly does three things at once. It signals family-owned and trustworthy. It promises something warmer than the typical trades brand. And it sets up a story - a real, ongoing narrative about a father and daughter building something together - that can carry the company across radio, advertising, vehicles, uniforms, and community touchpoints for years to come.

Once that foundation was in place, Ryan Chute at Wizard of Ads for Essential Services brought Elastic Studio on board as their creative partner to bring it to life — to take that strategic platform and give it a face, a voice, and a visual system strong enough to carry the weight of that story. One that would work as well on a van in a driveway as it would on a billboard, a t-shirt, or a business card.

The "best of both" concept

The heart of the brand comes down to a simple but powerful idea: book smarts meets street smarts. Dad brings decades of hands-on, hard-earned installation expertise - the guy who leads a team that can can diagnose a garage door problem and delivers precision work. Daughter brings a university education and sharp business acumen — the person modernising operations, building the customer experience, and thinking about where the company goes next.

Crucially, this is a partnership of equals. One of the clearest creative briefs we worked from was an explicit rejection of the tired "dumb dad" trope so common in family-business branding. Neither character outshines the other. They stand back-to-back, arms crossed, equally confident - a visual handshake that says "we've got this, together."

"Tough and technical, but never flashy for its own sake."

To find the right tone, we looked at brands and cultural references that captured this dual identity: the rugged dependability of a Ford F-150, the understated sophistication of an Audi Q4, and the disciplined teamwork of a NASCAR pit crew — tough, technical, and tightly coordinated. That blend of toughness and intelligence, of blue-collar and white-collar, became the DNA of everything that followed.

Standing out in a crowded, colourful market

Before a single pixel of the new identity was designed, we did our homework. The residential garage door category in the region is dominated by two major players - and both of them lean hard into bold reds, oranges, and deep blues and greens.

We mapped out the colour territory these competitors already owned and made a deliberate decision to go somewhere else entirely. The result is a palette built around deep graphite and a confident, saturated magenta — a combination that simply doesn't exist anywhere else in this market. It's bold without being garish, premium without losing approachability, and — most importantly — it's instantly recognisable from a distance. In a category where visual space has been very well owned, Dad & Daughter looks like it belongs to a different, better-run business altogether.

Characters worth remembering

At the centre of the new identity are Dad and Elizabeth (Daughter) themselves, illustrated as a mascot pairing that's warm without being cartoonish, and professional without being stiff. We explored dozens of reference points — from classic American mascots to modern tech brand characters — before landing on a style that feels approachable, contemporary, and built to age well as the brand scales.

The badge-shaped icon nods to craftsmanship and structure — the kind of mark that feels at home on a uniform patch, a van door, or a hard hat sticker. Bold, uppercase "DAD" typography brings strength and durability, while "Daughter" is rendered in a confident retro script that adds warmth, personality, and a touch of nostalgia. Together, they create a logo that reads instantly, even at a glance from a moving car — which, for a brand whose vans are its biggest billboards, is exactly the point.

A system built to do the heavy lifting

A great logo is only the start. What makes a brand actually work in the real world is the system behind it — and that's where we spent much of our time. We developed a full identity architecture: primary and secondary logo lockups, a badge version, a circular "repair & care" stamp, social media avatars, and standalone character icons for messaging and community communications.

Then we put it to work. Full vehicle livery designs for a Ford Transit van and a RAM 1500 pickup bring the characters and colour palette to life on the road - bold enough to be seen from blocks away, but cohesive enough to feel like one unmistakable brand. Uniform designs carry the magenta-and-graphite palette through polos and caps, with the characters embroidered front and centre. Business cards, letterhead, and a full digital brand guideline round out a toolkit built so that — whether the company adds five vans or fifty - every new touchpoint looks like it was made by the same confident, considered hand.

This is the part of branding that doesn't always make it into the highlight reel, but it's the part that determines whether a rebrand actually sticks: a system robust enough that the brand stays consistent as it grows, scales, and reaches new markets.

A brand built to travel

What started as a local Tennessee garage door company rebrand has turned into something with genuinely national potential - a brand designed from day one to be "elastic" enough to grow, distinctive enough to be remembered, and warm enough to build real community loyalty along the way. That's exactly the kind of project we love: strategy, story, and design system working together, each making the other stronger.

We'd be glad to show you what's possible.

We've all heard the typical phrase "get your name out there" when it comes to enhancing your business' brand awareness. But what's in a name? Nothing, really; unless you have an image, a feeling, or a message attached to it. Your brand's name is what customers will use to identify your company, but brand recognition is so much more than that. It's what people think of when they hear or see your brand's name. Creating brand recognition requires strategic marketing and consistent, creative messaging that resonates with your audience. If you want to create impactful brand recognition for your business, stay tuned. In this article, we'll go over some key principles that will make you a master at building powerful brand recognition for your business.

Understanding Brand Recognition

Brand recognition is the most important aspect of branding. It's what allows customers to truly connect with a brand and understand what it represents. Brand recognition goes far beyond the slogan, logo, and color scheme. It's the intricate mental image that is associated with the brand name. This includes not only sight, but sound, smell, taste, touch, opinion, and emotion as well. For example, when you see the golden arches of McDonald's, you might think of happy childhood memories or the taste of a juicy Big Mac. Or when you see the Nike swoosh, you might think of feeling strong and accomplished. These brand recognition examples show how customers can connect with a brand on an emotional level, which is what creates brand loyalty. When your brand's essence is everything that it stands for in the hearts of your customers, that's when you know you've got brand recognition that will stand the test of time. At Wizard of Ads for Essential Services, we believe that your brand's essence is what makes it recognizable, relatable, and ultimately, unforgettable. We've seen first-hand how important brand recognition is to a business's bottom line. If you're looking to create a brand presence that will last, we can help. Our team of branding experts can work with you to build a brand that truly resonates with your target audience. Book a call with us today to learn more!

Brand Recognition vs. Brand Awareness: Key Differences

When it comes to marketing, there is a lot of talk about brand recognition and brand awareness. But what exactly is the difference between these two concepts? Brand recognition is when consumers can identify a brand based on its features or characteristics. This could be something like a logo, slogan, or the way the brand's products are packaged. And, to go even deeper than that, the way the brand makes consumers feel as well as its values and how it resonates with them. Brand awareness, on the other hand, is when consumers are familiar with a brand but may not be able to identify it based on its features. This is more of a top-of-mind awareness, where the brand is one of the first that comes to mind when thinking about a certain product or service. For example, when you think of motorcycles, Harley-Davidson is likely one of the first brands that come to mind. This is because they have such strong brand awareness. Now, if you saw a motorcycle with the same shape and design as a Harley-Davidson, you would still be able to identify it as a Harley, even if there was no logo or name on it. You might also be able to identify a Harley based on the feeling of freedom and rebelliousness that it gives off or the sound of its engine. This is brand recognition. So which is more important for businesses? Ideally, you want to have both brand awareness and brand recognition as strong as possible, but brand recognition is often seen as more important because it leads to brand loyalty. When customers have brand loyalty, they are much less likely to switch to a competitor, even if the competitor’s product is cheaper or better.

Core Elements That Shape Brand Recognition

The most important aspect of brand recognition is the core value that it represents. A brand should be more than just a name or logo — it should be a representation of what the company stands for. Customers should be able to identify the brand's core values and feel confident that they align with their own personal values. When customers feel confident in a brand's overarching message, they are much more likely to become returning customers and brand evangelists. This is because they know that they can trust the brand to deliver on its promises, and they feel good about supporting a company that shares their values. Furthermore, brand knowledge creates a sense of loyalty among customers, which can lead to long-term relationships and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Many other factors contribute to brand recognition, but some of the most important ones include strong brand identity, consistent exposure and positive brand associations.

• A strong brand identity: This includes elements like a recognizable logo, consistent branding across all touchpoints (including online and offline) and a clear brand message.
• Consistent exposure: If people don't see your brand regularly, they're less likely to remember it. Having consistent brand exposure through advertising, PR and other marketing efforts are crucial to drive awareness and brand recognition.
• Positive brand associations: If people associate your brand with positive experiences and attributes, they're more likely to remember it.

Above all else, your brand should resonate in the heart of your customers by delivering an experience that is unique, memorable and brings about positive emotions.

Defining What Your Brand Means to Your Customers

What does your Brand Stand for in the Heart of your Customer? Your brand is what your customers think of when they see or hear your company name. It's the promise you make to them about the quality of your products or services. And it's the emotional connection they feel when they interact with your company. When you're clear about what your brand stands for, it's easier to connect with customers and create a lasting relationship. After all, people buy from companies they know, like and trust. Here are a few questions to help you get started:

• What are your core values?
• What do you want to be known for?
• How do you want customers to feel when they interact with your company?
• What makes you different from your competitors?

Answering these questions will give you a good foundation for understanding what your brand stands for. From there, you can start to build a strategy for connecting with customers and creating meaningful relationships.

Aligning Your Brand with Core Values

Your brand is linked to a set of values that guide everything you do. These values shape how you interact with customers, what kind of products or services you offer and how you want to be perceived in the marketplace. Some common values that brands are linked to include: quality, innovation, customer service, integrity, social responsibility and community involvement. When customers know what your brand stands for, they are more likely to connect with you on a deeper level and become loyal advocates. So it's important to make sure your values are clear and easily communicated to everyone who comes into contact with your business. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you work on articulating your brand's values:

1. Keep it simple. You don't need to list out a laundry of values that your brand represents. In fact, too many values can actually be confusing and make it difficult for customers to understand what you stand for. Stick to one to three core values that you feel best represent your brand.
2. Be authentic. Your values should be an accurate reflection of what your brand is all about. Don't try to be something you're not just to appeal to a certain customer base or market segment. This will only backfire in the long run and damage your reputation.
3. Be consistent. Once you've settled on a few key values, make sure everyone in your organization is aligned with them and knows how to put them into practice. Consistency is key when it comes to values-based branding.
4. Be flexible. While it's important to be consistent, you also need to be flexible enough to adapt your values as your brand evolves over time. As your business grows and changes, so too should your values.
5. Be patient. Building a strong values-based brand takes time and commitment. It won't happen overnight, so be patient and stay the course.

Building a Brand That Inspires and Lasts

Brand recognition is the lifeblood of what makes a brand powerful in its influence. Name recognition is important, but without the image and feeling that comes with it, your brand will struggle to stand out. That’s where we come in — at Wizard of Ads for Essential Services , we help businesses build disruptive brands that become not only a household name, but a household philosophy. So if you want to increase brand awareness and create or update your brand image, story and presence, book a call with us today. We can’t wait to get started!