Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo Roy H. Williams

You see a lot of crap during 40 years as an ad writer.You see big, steaming piles of predictable ads written by amateurs who assume the audience is required to listen.
You see frozen piles of heartless ads that speak to ideas rather than to people.
You see the scattered shrapnel of ads written by highly creative but trigger-happy typists who don’t understand the necessity of strategy.
Amateur ad writers believe in creativity. Accomplished ad writers believe in strategy.Good ad copy flows from strategy.
Strategy flows from whatever is in the pantry of the advertiser.
You must begin by prowling through that pantry. Take inventory of all the unused story elements you will find hiding there.
Bad strategy is usually the result of someone’s ego.A business owner wants to hire you. When you meet with that person, you realize that they want to be perceived in a certain way. They usually call this fantasy their “brand essence,” and if you do not indulge them in their fantasy, they will accuse you of not understanding their brand.
They want you to continue doing what they have done in the past, but make it work this time. If you disagree with their strategy, they will say, “You don’t understand who we are.”
You will say, “No, that is not who you are. That’s just who you want to be. But you don’t have the ingredients to bake that cake.”
This is always an unproductive argument, so when a business owner who wants to hire you says, “This is what I want you to do and this is how I want you to do it,” the best answer is to say, “It sounds to me like you’ve got things under control. Great idea! Follow your dream. God be with you. Stay in touch! Goodbye.”
If you employ the same strategy they have used in the past, it’s not going to work any better than it did in the past.
You will be tempted to do what your prospective client is asking you to do. “After all, it’s their company, right?”Your reason for thinking these thoughts will be that you need the money. But if you do what your prospective client tells you to do, this is what will happen:
Your ad campaign will underperform.Your client will blame you.You will be fired.You will have a record of failure.You will lose confidence in yourself.
Find your money elsewhere.
Before you accept a client, ask yourself, “Am I willing to give this person a place in my life?”Consider that question carefully, because your client will certainly occupy your thoughts. Will you look forward to speaking with them, or will you dread it?
Even the best clients will occasionally ask you to do something that you believe is a bad idea. This is when you will need to do the opposite of what I told you a moment ago. When you have accepted the job, you can no longer say, “It sounds to me like you’ve got things under control. Great idea. Follow your dream. God be with you. Stay in touch. Goodbye.”
You have given this client a place in your life. You have accepted the role of being their ad writer. You have an ongoing relationship. This is when you have to remember that they did not hire you to be CEO.
Tell them that you will definitely do what they say.Then tell them why you think it is a bad idea.When they have heard you, and understood you, and asked that you do it anyway, make it a point of honor to figure out how to make their bad idea work.Take ownership of the idea. Put everything you have into it. Be proud that you were able to make it work.When you have an ongoing relationship, you no longer have the option to say, “You’re on your own.”
Most ads are not written to persuade. They are written not to offend.The power of an ad can be measured by the strength of the backlash against it.
Backlash doesn’t mean the ad is good; it...

As you increase your words, you decrease their impact.Communicate your thoughts in short sentences. Those thoughts will be remembered, and you will, too.
Shorter hits harder.
I read a book by a man who is a deep thinker, a great strategist, and a good writer. His strengths are that he can identify, organize, and communicate key ideas.
But those ideas would hit harder if the man could write tighter.
Tight writers1. reject unnecessary modifiers.
2. reduce the word count.
3. prove what they say.
4. use active voice.
Modifiers:Adjectives and adverbs are fatty foods. They give energy to your story when used sparingly but cause your sentences to feel bloated, sluggish and fat if you overindulge. Adjectives are less dangerous like good cholesterol, and adverbs are more dangerous like bad cholesterol, but a steady diet of these modifiers will clog the arteries of your story and slow it down until your audience falls asleep.
Word count:Editing will reduce your word count, but it is hard to edit what is freshly written. Look at it the next day and your mistakes will become obvious to you. Rearrange, reduce, and eliminate elements until your story is woven tightly and shines brightly.
You can communicate twice as much by using half as many words.
Willie Shakespeare taught us, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”1
Blaise Pascal and Benjamin Franklin are remembered for their wit. This is why both of them apologized in writing when they took too long to say too little.
Blaise Pascal in his Lettres Provinciales of 1657, wrote, “The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.”
Likewise, Benjamin Franklin concluded his 1750 Letter to the Royal Society in London by saying, “I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.”
Prove what you say:A rainbow of people across the internet report that Martin Luther, Mark Twain, and Cicero of Rome made statements similar to the statements made by Blaise Pascal and Benjamin Franklin, but none of those colorful people can offer meaningful documentation.
Martin Luther died in 1546. A biography of Luther published 300 years later – in 1846 –quotes Luther as having said he “didn’t have time to make it shorter,” but the biographer could cite no text left behind by Martin Luther to support that quote.
Mark Twain died in 1910. In 1975 an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune attributed a version of the “didn’t have time to make it shorter” statement to Twain, but the journalist could offer no text, no chapter, no page number, no contemporaneous witness as proof.
The person claiming that Cicero said he “didn’t have time to make it shorter” cites a book of quotes published in 1824 as “proof” of what Cicero supposedly said 1,800 years before that book of quotes was published. Cicero left behind no writings that contain that quote.
“Do not believe what you read on the internet.” – Albert Einstein
Use active voice:Passive voice:
“The sword is carried by me,” is passive because the subject – “The sword” – is acted upon by the verb.
Active voice:
“I carry the sword,” is active because the subject – “I” – takes the action.
Sentences spoken in active voice command attention.
Sentences spoken in passive voice are easily ignored.
A child becomes an adult when they say, “I broke the cookie jar,” instead of, “The cookie jar got broken.”
Don’t speak like a child. Let the subject take the action in every sentence you speak and write.
Here’s an Example:Like the man I mentioned earlier, Matt Willis is a deep thinker, a great strategist, and a good writer. But...

Kings and pirates both wear swords, but for different reasons.A king wears his sword as a symbol of the army he commands. A pirate wears his sword so that it will be at hand when he needs it.
Pirates have a high tolerance for risk because they have nothing to lose. Kings have a low tolerance for risk because they have everything to lose.
A pirate says, “No pain, no gain.” A king says, “No pain, no pain.”
A king is the establishment, the ultimate insider, the protector of the status quo. A pirate is an anti-establishment outsider looking for an opportunity.
I was 10 years old and my father was 30 when he took me with him to visit an important old man. After we left, I said, “He was really nice. I like him a lot.”
My Dad answered, “Yes, he is really nice, and I like him a lot, too. But old men like him always keep a sword in the closet.”
Confused, I asked, “What do you mean?”
Dad said, “If you crowd him, cross him, or attempt to ambush him, that nice old man is going to pull his sword from that closet and run it through your guts.”
It’s been more than 50 years since I met that old man, but I’ve never forgotten the encounter.
I know a lot of old pirates today who became kings just like that old man. With clenched teeth they built castles in their minds, then brought those castles into physical existence using their own hands to stack bricks they made by mixing their blood and sweat with the dirt they stood upon.
Pirates are the founders of empires, not the inheritors of them, and I am honored to count pirates among my friends.
Rich people raise their children to be kings. But poor boys like me raise their children to be pirates.When our sons were very young – perhaps 4 or 5 years old – I said to them, “Your mother and I will give you gifts on your birthday and at Christmas and at other times, but you can never ask for a gift. When you see a toy, you cannot ask us to buy it for you. You have to buy it yourself. And to make that possible, we will pay you as though you are adults so that you can afford to buy whatever you want. But you won’t get any money for cleaning your room or for any of the other things you do in our home. You will do those things because you are a member of this family. And I will never give you an allowance. But if you ever want to make some money, just tell me and I will drive you to the office and give you work to do.”
If you pay a child the wages of a child, it is impossible for them to ever buy anything for themselves or for the people they care about.
Our boys began their careers by gathering the trash from all the offices and then tossing it into the dumpster in the parking lot. This might take 20 minutes and earn them 20 dollars each, but now they had money of their own. If they wanted to make more money, they had to gather all the gum wrappers and cigarette butts and debris from the parking lot and put that in the dumpster as well. This might earn them another 15 or 20 dollars each.
If a 5-year-old child will push themselves to the realistic limits of a 5-year-old (which is usually 20 or 30 minutes) they should be able to make enough money to buy themselves the kinds of toys that all the other kids have.
When our sons wanted to buy something, they would ask Pennie and I to drive them to the store where we would watch them choose what they wanted, carry it to the cash register, pull their own money from their pocket, and then buy it.
By the time they were 9 or 10 they were puzzled to see their friends pick up something in a store and ask their parents, “Can I have this?” The idea of asking for something was foreign to them.
Pennie and I raised our boys to be pirates and my grandsons became pirates as well, making their first money as groundskeepers and later as construction workers under the watchful eye of Joe Davis, a pirate of the highest order. Those grandchildren are now 17

Every time you make a declarative statement, you choose one of only 9 sentence structures.You have been doing this unconsciously for as long as you have been able to speak and write. Today I am going to teach you how to do it consciously.
Ten minutes from now, you will be able to speak and write with greater impact.
You must first choose a perspective. First person perspective is when you are speaking for yourself, or as the spokesperson for a group: 
(I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours)
Second person perspective describes the experience of your reader, listener, or viewer individually or collectively: 
 (you, your, yours, yourself, yourselves)
Third person perspective is then you are speaking not of yourself, or of your audience, but of some other individual or group: 
(he, she, him, her, they, them,)
After you have chosen a perspective,you must choose a verb tense that frames the action of your sentence 
in the past (was), the present (am), or the future (will be.)
That much has been known and taught for decades if not centuries.
This next part is astoundingly useful and absolutely new, so if you quote it or teach it to someone else, be sure to spell my name right, okay? “Roy H. Williams”The Wizard of Ads® is now going to teach you: 
(A) the specific voice of each of the 9 declarative sentences, 
(B) how the addition of a status, a mood, or an emotion allows you to 
determine the intention and the impact of your sentence before it has even been created.
First person, past tense, is the voice of personal MEMORY.“I was standing in the snow…”First person, present tense, is the voice of ANNOUNCEMENT.“I am standing in the snow…”First person, future tense, is the voice of PREDICTION.“I will be standing in the snow…”Second person, past tense, is the voice of WITNESS.“You were standing in the snow…”Second person, present tense, is the voice of reader/listener/viewer INVOLVEMENT or ENGAGEMENT.“You are standing in the snow…”Second person, future tense, is the voice of FORESEEING. (Fortune telling)“You will be standing in the snow.”Third person, past tense, is the voice of HISTORY.“They were standing in the snow…”Third person, present tense, is the voice of NEWS REPORTING.“They are standing in the snow…”Third person, future tense, is the voice of PROPHECY.“They will be standing in the snow.”REVIEW
First person, past tense, is the voice of personal MEMORY.First person, present tense, is the voice of ANNOUNCEMENT.First person, future tense, is the voice of PREDICTION.
The addition of a status, a mood, or an emotion allows you to 
determine the intention and the impact of your sentence before it has even been created.
First person, past tense = MEMORY + humility = confession 
“I was hoping to be finished in one hour, but I wasn’t able.”
First person, present tense = ANNOUNCEMENT + humility = vulnerability 
“I am self-aware enough to know that I am more lucky...

The tectonic plates of America are shifting beneath our feet. Can you feel the tremors?I’m not talking about the foundations of our continent. I’m talking about the foundations our nation.
Our continent is rock, soil, and water; mountains and prairies and oceans white with foam.
Our nation is a people; a family that we love.
And if I might continue quoting Kate Smith for a moment, we would be wise to ask God to, “stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above.”
We feel the tremors of our unsteady family – our nation – not in our soles, but in our souls.I felt the tremors of the waning “Me” generation shift into the groupthink perspective of the “We” in 2003. To read my nascent ramblings about it, just go to MondayMorningMemo.com and type “1963 All Over Again” into the website search block. This will take you to my MondayMorningMemo for December 15, 2003.
These are the important paragraphs:
“AOL and Google.com are the Kerouac and Salinger of the new generation that will soon pry the torch from the hands of Boomers reluctant to let it go. Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley have become Tupac Shakur and Eminem, and the Baby Boomers’ reaction to them is much like their own parents’ reaction to Chuck and Elvis. But instead of saying, ‘Take a bath, cut your hair and get a job,’ we’re saying, ‘Pull those pants up, spin that cap around and wash your mouth out with soap.’
“At the peak of the Baby Boom there were 74 million teenagers in America and radio carried a generation on its shoulders. Today there are 72 million teenagers that are about to take over the world. Do you understand what fuels their passions? Can you see the technological bonds that bind them?”
“Baby Boomer heroes were always bigger than life, perfect icons, brash and beautiful: Muhammad Ali… Elvis… James Bond. But the emerging generation holds a different view of what makes a hero.”
The only hard choice in life is the choice between two good things.Freedom and Responsibility are both good things. But like all dualities, they oppose each other. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.
All responsibility with no freedom makes you a slave. All freedom with no responsibility makes you a self-absorbed hedonist and an a*****e.
But I promised to tell you how to keep your balance during this earthquake, didn’t I?Here’s how to do it: remind yourself that different people perceive the world differently. They notice different things. They value different things. They live in their own private reality, and you live in yours.
You are acutely aware of what you see that they do not, and you want to open their eyes.
They are acutely aware of what they see that you do not, and they want to open your eyes.
Both of you feel you are being attacked.I have a question for you: do the two of you have the courage to shut up and listen? Really listen? Can you muster enough courtesy and grace and self-restraint to share why you value what you value without disparaging or attacking what they value and why they value it?
If both of you can do this, you will find your balance and quit hating each other.
The birds will start singing, the flowers will bloom, a rainbow will appear, and everyone will laugh in joyous relief that the ugliness is finally over.
As I look back on the events that have marked the previous 37 zeniths of the “We” generation that have occurred during the past 2,960 years (937 BC,) I realize that no one is likely to do this.
But I thought I would give it a shot.
Roy H. Williams
50,000 new restaurants open in the United States each year, and most of them are...

My reputation is built largely on the fact that I cheat.I openly admit my cheating, but no one cares, because the way that I cheat is not unethical, immoral, or illegal.
I realized in 2017 that Warren Buffet and I do exactly the same thing. Here is how he describes it:
“Ted Williams wrote a book called The Science of Hitting and in it he had a picture of himself at bat and the strike zone broken into, I think, 77 squares. And he said if he waited for the pitch that was really in his sweet spot he would bat .400 and if he had to swing at something on the lower corner he would probably bat .235. And in investing I’m in a ‘no called strike’ business which is the best business you can be in. I can look at a thousand different companies and I don’t have to be right on every one of them, or even fifty of them. So I can pick the ball I want to hit. And the trick in investing is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot. And if people are yelling, ‘Swing, you bum,’ ignore ’em. There’s a temptation for people to act far too frequently in stocks simply because they’re so liquid. Over the years you develop a lot of filters. But I do know what I call my ‘circle of competence’ so I stay within that circle and I don’t worry about things that are outside that circle. Defining what your game is – where you’re going to have an edge – is enormously important.” 
These have been my filters for the past 35 years:Do I believe in the business owner? And do I like them enough to give them a place in my life?Has their company been flat, or declining, for the past 3 years?Do I see a clear path to grow them a minimum of 4x in 4 years or less?If we focus 80% of their ad budget on a single media, will that number of dollars allow us to reach enough people with enough repetition to see significant growth in the second half of the first year?
These are the reasons behind those questions:If the business owner is incompetent, I cannot help them. If I do not like them, I do not want to help them. (Yes, I am tragically self-accommodating.)If the business owner has not been flat or down for at least 3 years, they won’t be willing to make the changes I need them to make.If they have no potential for massive growth, there is no potential for me to make massive money.When buying mass media, it takes more money to reach 20 percent of a large city than it does to reach 20 percent of a small one. Is the ad budget big enough to give us a fighting chance?
A business owner and his son spent a day with us in Austin last week. I like both of them and they are obviously good at everything except lead generation. They live in a large city and have been receiving horrifically bad marketing advice for the past 20 years.
They are doing $2 million/year in a town where $30 million would have been easily accomplished if they had started doing the right things just 9 or 10 years ago.
I am now going to share with you a formula that I trust, even though I have never tried to disprove it. (A real scientist would have tried to disprove his hypothesis. I am not a real scientist.)
I have observed this pattern for many years:Anything that works quickly will work less and less well the longer you keep doing it.Things that work better and better the longer you keep doing them always perform poorly in the early months.When you have discovered their untold story, and created a strategy that will work, and launched the right message to their city, the dollar growth you see in Year One will allow you to project with some accuracy the growth of that company for the next two years.At the end of 36 months, you will know if your business owner is tall enough to ride this...