Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Every good story – and every good ad – begins with a statement that triggers more questions than it answers.

“I do not like to turn left when leaving my neighborhood…”

“I was a 10-year-old boy holding a flashlight for my father…”

“You are sitting in a candlelit restaurant when you hear a strange noise…”

The second line of your story is where the narrative arc begins. The narrative arc is the sequence of events, the plot. [In a radio ad, sfx means sound effect]

You are sitting in a candlelit restaurant when you hear a strange noise
[sfx-open] and the walls are instantly covered with jagged shards of golden light.
You hear another strange noise
[sfx-close] and the jagged shards of light are gone.
Murmurs of wonder flood the candlelit restaurant.
[sfx-open] The jagged shards appear on the walls again, dancing in unison to some silent music that only they can hear.
[sfx-close] And now they are gone.
The crowd applauds this unexpected delight. Smiles are beaming. Teeth are bright.
[sfx-open] More jagged shards. More golden light.
[sfx-close] No one notices the man at the table in the middle of the room, staring at his tablecloth, lost in thought. A woman emerges from the shadows behind him. Startled, he looks up, drops to one knee,
[sfx-open] and the golden shards of light dance fast and bright across his face and hers.
And then they kiss.
And the candlelit restaurant explodes in applause.
[sfx-close]  A tiny little box sits empty on the table.
Flickering Firelight™ diamonds, available exclusively at Morgan Jewelers.

Begin your ad with a statement that triggers more questions than it answers! If your opening line reveals what is to come, change the opening line.

“Guidomeyer’s Furniture is having a sale!”

When an ad begins with a sentence like that, you can be sure it was written by someone who follows the 5 W’s of journalism: Who, What, When, Where and Why.

Ads written by journalists are why most people hate advertising.

Guidomeyer’s Furniture is having a sale!
This week, Guidomeyer’s is having a sale
at 1715 Barkmaster Avenue! Save! Save!
Save up to 50% this week at Guidomeyer’s
annual clearance sale! Guidomeyer’s has been
serving the needs of Pottersville for 71 years,
so come to Guidomeyer’s and shop local
for all your furniture needs! We have recliners,
coffee tables, end tables, nightstands, TV trays
and financing will be available! Guidomeyer’s
Annual Clearance Sale! This week! 1715 Barkmaster!
Hurry, hurry, hurry before all the good stuff is gone!
Guidomeyer’s!

1. Guidomeyer is who.
2. A Sale is what.
3. This Week is when.
4. 1715 Barkmaster is where.
5. Annual Clearance is why.

That formula is so simple an idiot could use it. And idiots often do.

No, I don’t mean that. Words have meanings, so let me be accurate. I don’t think such a person is an ‘idiot.’ ‘Moron’ would be the accurate term. Technically, a moron is an adult with the mental age of 7-10. Morons are more intelligent than idiots and imbeciles, but they are an especially troublesome group because they are not aware of their shortcomings.

Don’t be a moron.

Getting the listener’s attention is easy, but holding that attention requires skill.

1. Open with a statement that triggers more questions than it answers.
2. Bridge quickly into the narrative arc, the plot.
3. When your listener thinks they know where you are headed, take them somewhere else.
4. Introduce divergent elements that don’t belong together,
5. then make them converge, add up, and make sense.
6. Lead your listener to the conclusion, then allow them to discover it on their own. Don’t tell them the answer. Let them hear it in their mind.
7. Leave out the irrelevant, the predictable, and anything that makes your ad sound like an ad.

Poetic meter makes words musical.

To achieve it, arrange the drumbeats of the stressed and unstressed syllables of your words so that they create a percussive rhythm in the mind. There are a couple of dozen rhythms that are easily achievable in English.

The simplest of those – anapestic meter – is two light stresses followed by a heavy third stress.

pum-pum-PUM-pum-pum-PUM- pum-pum-PUM-pum-pum-PUM

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn has blown,
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And so there lay the rider distorted and grey,
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
So I walk by the edge of a lake in my dream.

It is easy to become a musical writer. All you have to do is spend time reading the words of the great ones.

Don’t read ads. Read the poems, short stories and novels written by the winners of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes in Literature.

“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
– Ernest Hemingway, the opening lines of A Farewell to Arms

“I read that paragraph and I want to cry. It’s incredibly beautiful. He broke every rule. All the repetition! In four sentences the word ‘and’ appears 15 times. What’s going on is just an unforgettable display of rhythmic mastery. There’s a kind of, almost a kind of hypnosis, an incantation that is about the frame of mind you’re going into the war with.”
– Stephen Cushman, Literary Scholar

“Listening to Bach – and recognizing the repetition of particular notes in Bach – inspired Hemingway to write A Farewell to Arms.”
– Miriam Mandel, Literary Scholar

Take another look at Hemingway’s opening sentence and notice the questions it raises: “In the late summer of that year (What year?) we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. (Where are we?)”

You can do this. None of it is beyond you. Morons will tell you that you’re doing it wrong, but your ads will take your listeners on a marvelous journey, and your clients to heights that no other ad writer can take them.

Unless you work with seasoned marketers with rich experience writing irresistible advertising, like Ryan Chute’s teams at Wizard of Ads®. Book a call.

Rugged individualism is the essence of America.

It is also the reason that we, as a people, feel isolated and lonely.

Our focus on personal, individual success is the reason we feel disconnected from one another. This is happening even in our marriages according to Ian Kerner, author of the book, So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex, and Terrence Real, author of Us: Getting Past Me and You.

“Individualism is not a natural fact; it has a history. In American Colonial days, society was communalism on a small scale. It was about farms and small towns and small villages. When you lived face to face with your neighbor, it was a palpable reality that the good of all was the good for each of us. Civic virtue was the force that went beyond individual gratification. It was part of being a civilized person that you had a sense of civic virtue. With the Industrial Revolution, and the myth of the self-made man, all of that went by the wayside and it was each man for himself.”
– Terrence Real

We are living in a very conflicted time because most of us hold two conflicting beliefs. (1.) We believe in a culture of individual achievement, “ME”, (2.) but as we approach the zenith of a societal “WE”, there is a desire to find our tribe, to join, to belong, to work as a group for the common good.

Next year is the zenith of our current “WE.” It happens once every 80 years.

The previous “WE” zenithed in 1943 when America was united against Hitler. We threw ourselves into something bigger than ourselves; something we believed in, something that satisfied our need to belong and make a difference.

And now you know why we see all those deeply impassioned splinter groups in the news each week.

Here’s the good news: you can harness that same “need to belong” to recruit and retain good employees.

Good employees are attracted to companies with a strong culture. They are looking for a company they can believe in, a place where they can belong and make a difference.

When you want to strengthen your company culture, you need to publish your Unifying Principles. I have previously called these your “We Believe” statements.

Publishing them is the easy part. The difficult part is that you have to live them.

About eight minutes into his famous TED-X talk at Puget Sound, Simon Sinek says,

“The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

We learn more from our failures than we learn from our successes. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.

My friend is forever shouting about his Freedom. It is the only song he sings.

Freedom is a good thing, but our love of freedom is why family sizes are shrinking. Children are a responsibility.

Freedom and Responsibility are paired opposites, a duality. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

I had written only those few words when I received a request from the American Small Business Institute to answer a question from Glenn in Calgary; he wanted me to predict the Top Five Qualities of an Advertising Consultant in 2023.

I had the Freedom to answer however I wanted. I could be flip, funny, cute, self-serving, dismissive, scholarly, insulting, pedantic, or predictable. My Freedom was unrestrained. But I also had the Responsibility to give Glenn a list of five specific, attainable goals that would make him and his clients more successful.

I told Glenn the Top Five Qualities for 2023 would be these:

1. Ability to write good ads. I’ve never seen a business fail due to “reaching the wrong people.” Businesses fail because they say the wrong thing.
2. Knowledge of how to differentiate a business from its category. You must make your client’s business distinctive and memorable.
3. Honesty. You must be willing to accept responsibility for the failure of your ad campaign.
4. Courage to say what needs to be said to the business owner. This is how you avoid campaigns that fail.
5. Wisdom to know that good advertising will not fix a broken business. Choose your clients carefully, Glenn.

Depression and Joy are another duality. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

Pride – the inability to feel grateful – is what keeps us from feeling joy. The disembodied voice that tells us we need to be “proud, self-made men and women,” is the devil who robs us of our joy.

Depression is unfocused anger. Joy is unfocused gratitude. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

If you look for reasons to be angry, you will find them. If you look for reasons to be grateful, you will find them.

Don’t be angry. Be grateful.

Justice and Mercy are a third duality. And the tug-of-war between them is intense.

The only hard choices in life are the choices between two good things.

Justice and Mercy are both good things. When you encounter the tug-of-war between them, which one do you favor?

Opportunity and Security, a fourth duality.

When Opportunity increases, Security declines. This sounds like Risk and Reward, but it’s not. If Risk and Reward were a duality, increasing your risk would decrease your reward. But increased risk of failure increases potential reward. This makes Risk and Reward a synchronous potentiality contained entirely within the realm of Opportunity.

Ultimately, it all comes down to Choices.

Our plan is always to make good choices, not bad choices. But most choices are neither good nor bad in the moment we make them. They become good or bad in hindsight. They become good or bad due to consequences. The outcome is never clear until after the show is over.

We learn more from our failures than we learn from our successes. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.

You cannot judge a person’s experience by their age. You can judge it only by what they have experienced. A person can have 30 years of experience, or they can 1 year of experience 30 times.

Which will you have? Will you choose to embrace risk and take your beatings when you fail and learn hard lessons and win great victories? Opportunity is a good thing.

But then again, so is Security.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.

Eighty-eight percent of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1955 are gone. Poof.

Half of them withered because they had a manager in the role of CEO when they desperately needed a leader. The other half were destroyed by a leader when a manager could have held the company together and grown it incrementally.

The most important role of a board of directors is to know when their company needs a leader and when it needs a manager.

Managers prefer incremental change, evolution.
Leaders prefer exponential change, revolution.

Managers guard the status quo. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Leaders invent new ways of thinking. “If it ain’t broke, break it, so we can create something new.”

Managers prefer a map and a path.
Leaders prefer unexplored territory.

Managers say, “Ready, Aim, Fire.”
Leaders say “Ready, Fire, Aim.” But this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. When shooting a cannon, this is called finding your range.

Managers focus on planning and execution.
Leaders focus on improvisation and innovation.

Managers make organizational charts.
Leaders make messes.

Managers are given authority over others.
Leaders are voluntarily followed by others.

Kodak, Blockbuster, MySpace, General Motors, and General Electric were overwhelmingly dominant in their categories until their Manager-CEO’s fell asleep while guarding the status quo.

Do not think the internet killed K-Mart, Montgomery Wards, Sears, J.C. Penney, or Bed Bath & Beyond. Walmart sells all those same products and they’re still doing fine because they saw the marketplace rapidly changing in August, 2016 and responded by putting visionary leader Marc Lore in charge of Walmart’s US e-commerce operations.

Amazon did $398.8 billion in 2021.
Walmart did $488 billion.

Managers mistakenly think they can lead.
Leaders mistakenly think they can manage.

I know only two men who can perform both functions. Dewey Jenkins is one of them.

If I had written those words during the 10 years Dewey and I worked together, it would have sounded like flattery. But now that he is retired and I have stepped away, I am free to speak the truth.

Good mothers can also perform both functions. Every good mother is a miraculous manager and a visionary leader.

I was raised by an extremely good mother and my sons were raised by another.

Good managers know what to “protect at all costs.” They know what not to change.

Bad managers look only for compliance and conformity, blind to the special abilities that hide within their employees. But good managers see those special abilities and call them to the surface where they can sparkle. A good manager encourages your special ability and uses it to maximum effect, while partnering you with someone who sparkles in the area where you are weak.

When you see a legendary duo, you can be sure that a brilliant manager put them together.

The genius of visionary leaders is that they charge full speed ahead when they see opportunity on the horizon. When they see a storm coming, they steer around it.

Visionary leaders recognize what is no longer working and do not hesitate to change it. Bang. Gone.

If you want to listen to the inner thoughts of visionary leaders and understand how their minds work, there are only two books you need to read.

1. Sam Walton: Made in America (John Huey and Sam Walton)
2. Iacocca: An Autobiography (Lee Iacocca and William Novak)

As a special bonus to yourself, take a look at – Where Have All the Leaders Gone? – a slim volume written by Lee Iacocca when he was 82 years old.

I love that book.

And I love you, too.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

If you need new branding guidance, book a call with no other than Wizard of Ads®. We'll help you figure out what new perspective on branding can work for your business.

Authority can be given to a person. Leadership cannot.

People with authority often have no followers.
People with followers often have no authority.

Leaders require no authority. They say, ‘This is what I’ve decided to do.’ And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.

On Tuesday I was on the phone to my friend Manley Miller in New Orleans when he said,

“No one wants to be a leader anymore. Everyone wants to be a commentator. You want to know how to identify a leader? Just took for the person who’s making the decisions.”

The notorious billionaire oil man and corporate raider, T. Boone Pickens passed along this advice at the end of his life,

“Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader: Avoid the ‘Ready-aim-aim-aim-aim’ syndrome. You have to be willing to fire. Learn from mistakes. That’s not just a cliché. I sure made my share. Remember the doors that smashed your fingers the first time and be more careful the next trip through. Be humble. I always believed the higher a monkey climbs in the tree, the more people below can see his ass. You don’t have to be that monkey.”

In his book, “Where Have all the Leaders Gone?” Lee Iacocca, that innovative leader who breathed new life into one of America’s most important corporations said,

“The most innovative research is often killed during the peer review process. Why? Well, let me put it to you simply: Imagine if every time Chrysler wanted to bring a new car to market, it had to depend on positive reviews from GM and Ford. Are you starting to get the picture?”

During his rant at a Wizard of Ads partner meeting a few years ago, the dazzling Mick Torbay said,

“You need to understand something: the committee is not evil. The committee doesn’t want you to fail. The committee has nothing but good intentions. But the committee can’t innovate. More than anything, the committee wants to look good to the rest of the committee… So don’t be surprised that when you present a really, really great idea to a committee, the only thing you’re gonna get is a reason why that idea won’t work; one reason for every member of the committee. The committee will always pull you to the center. The committee will help you avoid risk, but risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. If you avoid risk, then huge success is out of the question. Are you okay with that?”

As we approach the beginning of a brand-new year, let’s go back to what I said in the beginning:

Authority can be given to a person. Leadership cannot.
People with authority often have no followers.
People with followers often have no authority.

Leaders require no authority. They say, ‘This is what I’ve decided to do.’
And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.

What have you decided to do?

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

I want you to:
be more productive,
reduce your mistakes,
shorten your learning curve,
and elevate your success.

If I am going to help you do these things, we must first look at what’s hiding in your blind spot.

Are you ready?

Teamwork in Business is Highly Overrated.

Teamwork is never the answer.
Individual responsibility is the answer.

A relay race is really just a series of individual runners, three of whom begin their efforts with an advantage, or a deficit, handed to them by the previous runner. If a runner increases that advantage or shortens that deficit, he or she was successful.

When individuals are rewarded collectively, we create the illusion of a team.

1: Individual responsibility brings out the best in us.
2: You create a committee when you remove individual responsibility.
3: Every bureaucracy begins as a well-intentioned committee.

But we love to be members of a tribe. Being part of a team – a tribe – gives us a sense of identity, purpose, and adventure. These feelings help us to perform as individuals.

Americans love football. But it isn’t the teamwork that attracts us. It is the tribalism and the tribal leaders.

Quarterbacks, running backs and receivers – the tribal leaders who score the most points – are paid a lot more money than the rest of the team. So why do coaches tell players that every member of the team is “equally important”?

I can’t help but hear the “Animal Farm’ voice of George Orwell, his tongue about to punch a hole in his cheek,

“All animals are created equal. But some animals are more equal than others.”

The role of a tribal leader is to instill the values, beliefs, and culture of the tribe into each of its members and each of its fans.

Tribal leaders are different from tribal managers.

A Manager – a Coach – holds each individual responsible for delivering the outcome that he or she has been assigned.

Steve Jobs did not invent the Apple computer. Steve Wozniak invented the Apple computer.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were not a team. They were partners, each of whom had specific responsibilities.

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.” *

That is Steve Wozniak’s advice to you.

“Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy… Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

– John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Wozniak was the first runner in a relay race. He handed the baton to Steve Jobs. When Jobs was forced to hand that baton to John Sculley in 1985, Scully stumbled and handed the baton to Michael Spindler who stumbled and handed it to Gil Amelio who fell on his face and left a 20-foot skid mark on the track.

Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1996 and brought it back to life. After he died in 2011, tribal manager Tim Cook lifted Apple to a $1 trillion stock valuation, the first ever in history.

Professor Scott Galloway made a piercing comment about the power of tribal leaders when he was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour,

“As societies become wealthier and more educated, the reliance on a super-being and church attendance goes down, but they still look for idols. Into that void steps technology leaders because technology… …is the closest thing we have to magic. Our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs, and now Elon Musk has taken on that mantle.”

Although I admired the abilities of Steve Jobs, he was merely the popularizer, the face, the dynamic leader, the pitchman, the philosopher, the high priest of the Apple religion. Without Wozniak, Steve Jobs would likely have been just another California techie bouncing from company to company in blue jeans, a black turtleneck, and sneakers.

I will leave Elon Musk up to you.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.