Dear Reader,

Stephen looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m not sure I can tell that story.”

“Stephen, you are the only person who can tell that story.” I knew this was a pivotal moment. Stephen had to make the very real and very difficult choice of deciding what type of marketing he would embrace.

His marketing options were:

A. Direct Response Marketing: Direct response depends on urgency, discount-driven ads, sales, and is hooked on the rising cost of pay-per-click.

B. Relationship-based Marketing: relationship marketing depends on vulnerability, story telling, strategy, and winning the heart of your client.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Direct Response is like crack cocaine. It works fast. It hits hard. The first high is the cheapest. It loses its effectiveness over time. You become addicted to an expensive habit.

Relationship-based Marketing is like committing to exercise. It works slowly. It gains traction slowly. The beginning is the most expensive part. It gains effectiveness over time. You get massive results that grow in impact and decrease in cost the longer you do it.

Patient people who can see the future choose Relationship-based Marketing.

Watch / listen above or read below.

Announcer: Welcome to Todd Liles and the Wizard of Ads, a podcast for business owners who want to become remarkable.

Todd Liles: All right, Roy, as I go through your materials, inside of the Monday Morning Memos, inside of your books, I find occasionally there will be things identified as what you might refer to as a law. Sometimes that’s my words. Sometimes it’s literally written as laws. And today I want to focus on seven of those.

But before I jump into those seven laws, I want to know, how long have you actually been writing, especially the Monday Morning Memo?

Roy Williams: I started the Monday Morning Memos in 1994, so it’s been 31 years that I’ve been writing the Monday Morning Memo every week. And then I was writing, actually, I’ve been writing since I was like, 13 and so writing ads starting when I was 19. So I’m 66 now, about to be 67. So been writing for a very long time.

Todd Liles: That’s awesome. Well, we’re going to have some really robust show notes for the people that want to go over to toddliles.com and find the Todd Liles and Wizard of Ads section. I’m just going to read off just a few of these laws that I have documented. I’ll give the definitions and where you can find them. I’m not going to read all 20 of them. And then we’re going to focus in on seven.

Law of Clarity. By the way, check out episode one if you haven’t. The Law of Relevance, Law of Emotional Support, Surprise, Storytelling, Repetition, Call to action, Familiarity, Anchoring, Emotion over logic, Identity, Senses, Differentiation, Ownability, Tribal marketing, Time and consistency, Cumulative effect, Contrast, Resonance, and so many.

And there’s probably many that I’ve not caught because you’ve just been so prolific as a writer. So before I jump into these seven laws, I know that you and I have had conversations about the real legitimate power that comes when you find an idea and you can codify it, you can give it a name. So part of what I want to do is explore you. Where did this understanding that when you have a concept and you go, “Okay, you know what, I’m going to name this”, that you possess a level of ownership and control over it come from?

Roy Williams: Oh, wow. Let me begin by saying most misunderstandings are the result of a lack of definition of terms. When you use a word and it has a meaning to you, but the other person to whom you speak that word, that word has a totally different meaning. You can have an unbelievable argument and a person will say, “You’re both kind of saying the same thing. You actually are agreeing.”

But no, we’re not. And what happens is it’s actually, whenever you see that happening, if you say, “Hey, whenever I say the word conservative, here’s what I mean by the word conservative. Here’s my definition of that word.” And they go, the other person will usually go, “Oh, based on that definition, I agree with everything you said.”

And then you say, “Well, see, my definition of that word is this.” And then the other person will go, “Oh yeah, based on your definition, I agree with what you said.” But they just had two different definitions. Now here’s what’s crazy. When you control the definition of a word, you own the category. And so the Gemological Institute of America did that.

Now I’m going to make this brief. Of the four Cs, one of those is color, another one is clarity. And then there’s cut and carat weight. But 100 years ago, when you walked into a jewelry store anywhere in America and you asked to see diamonds, jeweler would say, well, let’s have A grade, B grade and C grade. And he’d show you the A grade diamonds, the B grade diamonds, the C grade diamonds, and you’re looking at the A grade. And you’re, “What’s the price of a one carat A grade diamond?”

Then you go down the street to this other jeweler and you said, “I want a one carat A grade diamond.” And he shows you one, and it’s a lot less expensive. Now what’s interesting is all diamonds look good under bright lights and you can’t really tell them apart until you hold them side by side. So remember, you left the other guy’s diamond in that store and you come to this other store and he shows you his A grade diamond. It looks great, it’s a lot cheaper.

The thing is, he has a double A and triple A. And so at the second store, A is his worst diamond. And at the first store, A was his best diamond. So the Gemological Institute of America comes along and says, we need to standardize the terminology of diamonds.

And then they said D, since A, B and C are completely bastardized. And you can’t use those words because they have too many meanings. So D is utterly colorless. So a colorless diamond is a D. And then the only thing more valuable than a D is a Z. Vivid color, because color is not a function of beauty, it’s not a measurement of beauty. Color is a measurement of rarity. And once you understand it’s a measurement of rarity and that D means colorless.

And you’re thinking, “Why D? ” Because they were trying to solve a problem. A, B, and C no longer meant anything. So I noticed one of the laws. I glanced at your thing, I’m sorry. And I saw call to action. I don’t use that phrase anymore. I’ll tell you why when we get there. So let’s go down the list, and I’ll tell you what I was thinking when I wrote it.

Todd Liles: All right, awesome. So let’s go through that. We touched on the first one, which was the law of clarity, which was episode one. So if you haven’t checked out episode one, absolutely go back. But I think the essence of the law of clarity is that vague messages don’t sell. You need to be unmistakable and super clear. So what I want to do is I want to go to number two, which is relevance. Speak to your audience’s needs, not your own ego. Unpack that for us.

Roy Williams: Okay, now, super briefly, there’s a part of your brain, just forward of your left ear, called Broca’s area. Now, aside from that being where verbs, action word, are interpreted and then broadcast, if you will, on what’s called the Visuospatial sketchpad of working memory. Call that the movie screen of the mind, okay? Call it your mind’s eye.

So your mind’s eye has this gateway, this portal, and the primary function of this portal is for sounds. These sounds that are actually verbs, they’re action words. That’s where you interpret the sound of the word kick, leap, dance, wiggle. Those are verbs. And whenever you see those actions in your mind, in your imagination, that’s called the Visuospatial sketchpad of working memory.

And to get past Broca’s area, okay, you have to do something new, surprising, or different. It is also the filter that decides. It rejects the predictable. And so anything that’s predictable never makes it into consciousness. It never makes it to the prefrontal cortex, which is right behind your forehead. So right behind your forehead is the center of decisions, plans, and judgments. Decisions, plans, judgments come from the prefrontal cortex.

So it’s a primary somatosensory cortex right by in your left ear is where the sight, sound, and touch come together. It’s three separate organs. Those senses are stored, processed, and retrieved from memory in three separate parts of your brain, but they’re gathered right back here. Then they flow through the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area, where everything that was predictable and anticipated is rejected, and only the new, surprising, and different gets through into working memory.

Now, working memory is going to carry a message to the big boss, but there’s three functions inside working memory. One is called the Visuospatial sketchpad, which we mentioned the mind’s eye. The other one’s what’s called the articulatory loop. And this is whenever, the average American can sing along, Todd, with about 2,000 songs they never intended to learn. And that’s because of what’s called the articulatory loop, sometimes called the phonological loop. And this is where sounds are rehearsed in the mind.

And if you can remember how it begins, you can recite the whole thing. If you just remember the opening line, you just, even if you didn’t try to memorize it, it’s just music in your head. So that’s the difference between iconic memory, which is visual memory, and echoic memory, which is the memory of sound. Echoic memory is actually far, far, far more deeply ingrained and more long term memory than visual things. That’s been proven in countless clinical studies.

Now, the last one and the one we’re after right now, we’re talking about relevance, okay? It’s called the central executive of working memory. Now remember, to get past Broca’s area, to get past the guy with the velvet rope that’s guarding the nightclub, and he has to decide if he’s going to let you in or not. You have to be new, surprising, or different to get past the guy with the velvet rope into the nightclub. In the nightclub is the central executive.

You still don’t get to see the big boss. Yeah, you got in because you are new, surprising or different. The message didn’t see it coming. It was interesting. But now the new question is, is it relevant? Do we care? Does it matter to us? And so the final guard at the gate before you make it into the part of the brain that makes decisions, makes plans and comes to judgment about things. Decisions, plans and judgments. The final guard is relevance. Does it matter? Do we care?

And so whenever you’re presenting something, this is why I told my friend in the last episode who sent the 20,000 postcards. You were answering a question that no one was asking. Your message failed. The direct mail didn’t fail. Postcards work. If you have a message that moves the needle on the “who gives a crap” meter, and if your message doesn’t move the needle on the “who gives a crap” meter, then guess what? No one gives a crap. And so relevance. Does it matter? Do I care? Does it affect me?

Which is why bad advertising is about you, your company, your product or service. Hey, here’s a quarter. Find an old payphone, call your mom, maybe she cares. Nobody else does. And then whenever you say, “Huh! So if bad advertising is about me, my company, or my product, my service, what’s good advertising about?”

Ah, good advertising is always about the customer and what your product or service will do to change their condition, to change their future, to make tomorrow better than yesterday, to make the future better than the past. How will you increase their happiness? And so good ads are about the customer. Bad ads are about you.

And the same is true with dating. You and Shannon would not be married today if you would have spent the first date telling her how awesome you are. She would have never given you a second date. And most ads tell you how awesome the company is. Am I right?

Todd Liles: Well, that’s why she made me wait four years before we actually dated. I tried the surprising approach, and, yeah, I got through the front door, but then the next line that came out of my mouth didn’t work, so I got pushed out the door.

Roy Williams: We’ll talk about that another day.

Todd Liles: Yeah, that’s not for this show. You know it. But that’s not for this show. Which you’re moving into law three, Emotional impact. People make decisions emotionally. And I didn’t know the science behind that like you knew the science. I just knew it to be true. Because of my history of sales, I have always found that when someone is emotionally attached to something, it’s interesting.

Whether they’re going with you or they’re not going with you, they’ll come up with the oddest logic. Whether it’s factually true or not, they’ll come up with logic. So let’s talk about that. Why people buy emotionally. And then they find justifications with logic after the emotion.

Roy Williams: Okay. In every media, there’s going to be an environment on a radio station or certain radio stations or TV stations in a show. Maybe the show has a huge audience, and maybe the audience is the right age and gender and income bracket that you’re trying to target, okay? Assuming that targeting was the right thing to do, it can be the right customer, but the wrong emotional environment.

And so when a person hears about you, how were they feeling at the time? Where was their head? And if they were frightened, angry, frustrated, and this show just keeps them worked up and frustrated and angry. And you come along, you’re part of that, and you’re colored by that. And so anytime they think of you, they have these feelings associated with you. So emotional environment of your ad makes a difference. When is it going to be shown?

And who are the neighbors in the commercial break? You don’t want to be surrounded by people that aren’t at your level. You want to be surrounded by the big boys. You want to be the smallest dog in the pack of the big dogs. And so whenever you, when you’re talking about emotions, you’re talking about winning the heart.

And as I said in the last episode, if you win the heart, the mind will follow. If you win the emotions, if you win the heart, if you win the gut, feel, instinct. I like this person. I like this company. I feel the way he feels. I believe what he believes or she believes. When you win the heart, the mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided. And so there’s a book, I think, written by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking, Fast and Slow.

And according to Les Binet, who is a data scientist and I heard him say this recently, he said, yeah, about 95% of all our decisions are the intuitive pattern recognizing, spontaneous gut feeling response. 95% of all decisions. We like to believe that we think logically and intellectually. We don’t. Most of our decisions are just that first reaction, how does this hit us? Does it feel right? And he said, yeah, that’s what advertising is all about. Did it hit you right? Did it make, did it give you, did you relate to it? Was it relevant? Did it make you feel attracted to it and connected to it or not?

And so whenever you understand, most ads are written to give you features and benefits. Features and benefits are information. When a person is looking for information, they’re probably in transactional shopping mode.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And everybody in the category is equal. So listen, if you think all plumbers are equal, then you go to Google and you type in “hot water heater replacement.” You don’t name a company, you just name what it is you need done and a bunch of names pop up. Well, everybody in that category is going to get a click. They’re just shopping for the lowest price, okay? And so it’s going to be low conversion, low average sale, low profit margin.

But if they type in your name, if they type in “Todd Liles Plumbing”, high conversion, high average sale, high profit margin, because they’ve already chosen you, they’re looking for you. And so I always tell clients, and I’m telling the audience, measure your unbranded keywords separately from your branded keywords.

And you know your brand is growing and becoming stronger by the percentage of people that are typing your name into the search engine. And so this idea of winning the heart, making them like you, making them choose you before they need the hot water heater replaced, before they need somebody to come out and fix the dripping faucet, that’s how you grow a business. That’s how you create a brand.

Most people don’t get that. It’s an emotional relationship. It is relational advertising, connecting with the customers, instead of informational or transactional advertising. People lean towards information. It’s a mistake. A little bit information is all that you need. And when people say, “Oh, no, we got to give them all these reasons to buy from us”, yeah, that’s an ad about you. Remember, here’s the quarter. Call your mom, she cares.

It shouldn’t be about you, it should be about the customer. And so when you say “I, me, my, we or our”, you’re talking about you and your company. When you say “you” in an ad, you’re talking to the reader, the listener, the viewer. The more times you say the word you or your, you, your life, your wife, your children, your future, your day, okay, people are interested and they feel like you care about them.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And so again, I’m wandering, but you trigger something. I apologize for getting off track.

Todd Liles: No, it’s wonderful. Stephen Moore owns a company called Comfort Masters in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And Stephen’s been a great friend and client for years. And I just know him as just a stand up human, very kind, very gentle, centered on his people. And he had approached and was asking about wanting to take his business to the next level. And was originally the conversation was mostly about rebrand and he’s thinking visual.

And I said, “Hang on a second, there’s a lot more than just the visual aspect.” So we got into a really personal conversation that we haven’t had before about the reasons why. And he talks about his daughters. And I said, “Tell me about your daughters.” And I’m sure his day-to-day coach knew this. I’m not his day-to-day coach, but he raised his daughters. The mom is not in the picture and he’s telling me this story and why he does these things for his children. And I said, “When you become a client, you need to make sure that you tell your strategist that.” Well, earlier in the week I got his first ad produced. I received it, I didn’t produce it, I received it.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: And I clicked on it and listened to it. And I didn’t know the direction that they were going, I trust the strategist to do their work. But you hear Stephen and he’s talking to his daughters. It’s him and his daughters. And there’s a line in there where an interviewer asked, “Did you miss your mom? ”

Roy Williams: Wow.

Todd Liles: And the daughter goes, she said, “I did miss my mom, but anytime I was feeling sad or depressed, my dad comforted me.”

Roy Williams: Yeah, I remember.

Todd Liles: And then she goes, “I guess you could say he’s the comfort master.”

Roy Williams: Oh, wow. So in the previous episode, we talked about vulnerability is the currency that purchases trust and relationship and his willingness to be vulnerable, to show a tender side, and to talk about a personal thing like his family. Whenever you see inside a person a little bit and you kind of know what makes them tick, beyond just, “Hey, I’m in business and I would like you to give me your money. I promise to do a good job.” Nope.

If you feel like you know them as a human being, not just as a business owner. Okay? And I’m going to say something really harsh, but again, in the first episode we talked about the risk of insult is the price of clarity. Right? Too many advertisers want to be admired. I say they want to be worshiped. They want to just be, “Look at me. Don’t you wish you were like me? I’m a strong leader and I’m a pillar of the community, and I have white teeth and good hair.”

And so I’m saying that never works. That only works if you’re trying to be a Kardashian. And if you’re not trying to be a Kardashian, then, yeah, just be an actual human being that has actual feelings and a tender side, and you’re vulnerable, and there’s things that you worry about and there’s things that you feel confident about, and people go, “I don’t know. I just like this guy. I just like this guy. He’s going to be hugely successful.”

You know why? Because he is willing to let people see him real. When people are allowed to see you real, they will make allowances for your shortcomings. They make allowances for the shortcomings of all their friends. Right?

Todd Liles: Absolutely. You had already shared with us in what I consider to be great detail about surprise and the unexpected gets remembered. So thank you for that. So I want to move into one of your other laws, which is centered around this concept of storytelling. I’m paraphrasing here, but you have said in paraphrased terms, facts tell and stories sell.

Roy Williams: I’m not the first person to say that, by the way. Yeah.

Todd Liles: Yeah. Well, I’m going to give you credit for it because you’re the first one I heard it from. But someone else said it, I’m sure, too. Right. But talk to us about that. Why does storytelling work so well? What’s the root of this in the human psyche?

Roy Williams: Jonathan Gottschall wrote a book called The Storytelling Animal, or something like that. I forget what it’s called, but he says humans are the storytelling animal. And he actually proves scientifically that the human brain is wired for story.

And so stories communicate motives, they communicate belief systems, they communicate values. And they are recognizable because a story always represents a sequence of events that we recognize as a common pattern. This is a pattern common to human existence. And so this is why you can tell a story and it’s a metaphor for every other story like that story.

The pattern of this story is a pattern you relate to, and you identify with it. It says, “Yes, I have experienced that. I know this is true. That exact series of events hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve had a series of events identical in structure and sequence to that series of events. And so I know that’s true. I know that’s real.”

Todd Liles: Relational.

Roy Williams: And so stories, again, when you’re telling a story that other people can relate to, and it’s like you were talking about your friend in Dallas who had to deal with grief and loss, and he had to compensate to raise his daughters and bring them up healthy and strong emotionally, and that’s hard work.

Everybody can relate to that. Everybody knows. In your life you have had people close to you that were going through that or you’ve been through it personally, and everybody goes, “Yeah, that’s a thing! ” And the fact that this guy did that and it shaped who he is, and it’s kind of like now I think I know him a little better than I know any other what business you say he was in?

Todd Liles: Heating, air conditioning.

Roy Williams: I think I know him a little better than the owner of any other heating and air conditioning company. Therefore, I feel kind of a connection to him. That’s called relational marketing. You create a relationship, and you don’t just give them features and benefits. You also give them a little piece of your heart and then look into your mind, who you are and how you think.

Todd Liles: One day I got this text message from Ken Goodrich and said, I’m going to be going down to the Wizard’s campus, and I’m going to sit with this very wise, sometimes, gnarly old man. And…

Roy Williams: Worse than gnarly, I’m afraid. Yeah.

Todd Liles: He said, “I want to invite you to come, but you need to be quiet. And he might be rough on you, he might not be, I don’t know. But hey, you need to fill out this form because he wants to know more about you. He doesn’t want a rando in his canoe.” And I received this form. There was…

Roy Williams: You have to explain that.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: No randos in our canoe.

Todd Liles: Yes. Well, we want like minded people.

Roy Williams: Yes.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Todd Liles: So there were several questions on it and I’m sitting here going, I know of you from legend, but I don’t know your book so well consciously that I’m going to write something that I now realize connect with you, but for whatever reason, call it a spiritual connection.

I told you about the fact that I didn’t always feel like I was worthy and that my father didn’t know if I was his and he treated me very differently and how that sort of created a desire to have mentors and learn and grow. And I think that was part of the reason that our friendship developed. But I’ve never asked you that directly, but I wanted to ask you that now.

Roy Williams: Now listen, it shouldn’t surprise any of the viewers because, I mean, we’re talking about this openly. The fact that we always try to work with clients who are really willing to tell the truth about themselves to the world and let, not unconditional truths, not like things that nobody needs to know, but let people get to know you a little bit, who you really are.

We do the same thing in our personal lives. And with me is if somebody is kind of strutting around wanting me to know how important they are. It’s like I’m sitting there going, “Okay, I need to figure out an excuse to leave because I need to go gag myself and throw up a little bit.” And so I’m always attracted to people who are willing to be a little bit vulnerable and who are on a journey of self-discovery and they recognize the areas where they are a little bit broken and they’re willing to admit it. And I know all the ways in which I’m broken and I’m not ashamed of it. And people say, “Well, why don’t you improve? ” And I’m going, “Because I don’t want to. And you can’t make me.”

It’s like I’m okay with how I am and if you can’t live with it, then go away because this is just how I am and it’s not going to change. And it’s like when I see somebody else who understands who they are and why they are the way they are. And they’re just saying, “Hey, I need you to make allowances for this.” And I’m like, “I get it.” And so what you were describing, it’s a very famous thing.

As a matter of fact, Todd, most successful people struggle with what’s known as imposter syndrome. Okay? And the most successful people, no matter who they are, have a tiny little voice inside them that whispers, “If other people knew you the way that I know you, they would know what a phony you are.” And so that idea of not feeling worthy feel like, man, you know, I’ve got everybody fooled, and I hope I don’t get caught because I’m not nearly as good as I pretend to be.

I’m going, every really successful person has that feeling down inside. And when somebody admits too that they have that, it’s kind of like, I think we can be friends. Why? This person will tell me the truth. And there’s a bond that is formed there.

So the exact same thing that happened with me and you that day, and there were a bunch of people in the room, the only two that walked out of there kind of connected was me and you. Okay? I liked all of them. I didn’t dislike anybody, but I didn’t really feel like I knew any of them except you. And so that’s been an easy relationship to keep going.

I want to make this point. When you do that in media, you win the hearts of the public. And there will be some knuckleheads that say, “Oh, it’s not real professional, and you shouldn’t share those kinds of things. And everybody’s laughing at you, and they hate your ads and they’re not going to buy from you, and they’re going to tell their friends to not buy from you. And everybody thinks you’re making a horrible mistake.”

And it’s like, no, no, no. If you’re not getting blowback, if you’re not getting negative reactions to your ads, you’re not moving the needle. You’re being ignored. There are plenty of people that want nothing more than to be able to ignore ads. And when they can’t ignore your ads, it makes them angry and critical.

And I’m saying, I’ve got… We’re not going to do it right now. But I’ve got lots and lots and lots of hysterically funny stories about just vicious, vicious hate mail and emails and voicemails and just this outraged. And the people that get the most of that are the ones that are upwards and to the right. I mean, the companies growing by the biggest percentages are the companies that get the most criticism about their ads.

Todd Liles: Yes, I’ve seen that.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: So all of these things accumulate into the first time someone hears it. And in most cases, the first time’s not enough. One of the laws is the law of repetition. So let’s dive into the science of repetition. How often does someone need to hear it? When does it begin to sink in? Assuming that they have a beautiful message that’s already created for them?

Roy Williams: Okay, okay. Every time I say this, I always preface it by saying, this is not a rule. This is not like, write this down and it has to be done exactly this way. It is an approximation. It’s like when the judges hold up the scores on people jumping off the high dive at the Olympics and everybody says, you know, they give it a 9.1, or, you know, they give it a 9, this person gave it a 7, this person gave it an 8, and I’m going. And then the average of scores together and they come up with what, a 8.6 or something? I don’t know.

Well, this is one of those kinds of things to where it’s like, it’s just like, this is kind of where you have to be. But too many people write it down and think that it’s an unbreakable law. Please don’t do that. Sleep erases advertising. Sleep is God’s gift to humanity to wash and purge and cleanse the mind of all the noise of the day. And that’s why we say, let me sleep on it. And that’s why we say things always look better in the morning.

So repetition is a function of how many times does the same person experience your ad within seven nights sleep? So the first thing you’re going to have to measure when you measure repetition is what’s the window we’re measuring? Because when I say you need to have a three frequency, which means a repetition of three, well, every person selling media can get you a three frequency. See, I got you the three frequency, but then you look over here and it’s a three frequency each month. No, no, no, no. Has to be a three frequency every week.

Todd Liles: And ideally not on the same day?

Roy Williams: No, no, no. The same day’s fine.

Todd Liles: Same day’s fine?

Roy Williams: Same day’s fine. Repetition of three within seven nights sleep.

Todd Liles: Got you.

Roy Williams: Now, if you’re looking for immediate reaction, then you literally run an ad per hour on the same channel. In other words, the more often you hit them before they go to sleep, the deeper you drive the nail into the board. Tap, tap, tap. Think of repetitions as the tap of a hammer. And the message is a nail. And this hard piece of lumber is the human mind. Tap, tap, tap. But then out comes the claw at night and pulls the nail back out.

So the next day you have a little hole that you got started the previous day. You put the nail in the hole, tap, tap, tap. You go to sleep, the claw comes out and lifts the nail up. Now, after a while, the nail gets deep enough, it doesn’t pull it all the way back out, but it pulls it partway back out. The claw of sleep on this claw hammer.

And so what you’re actually dealing with is when you’re trying to create unaided recall, when you’re trying to create a brand which is automatic involuntary recall, you name a category and they name the company, okay? When your company is the one they name first, they think of it first, feel the best about it. You name the problem, they name the company. Boom. This is who I would call.

That’s an unconscious thing. That’s automatic, involuntary unconscious memory. Boom. It’s just there. You can only get that with repetition. The impact of the ad multiplied by how often they’ve experienced is what creates what’s called procedural memory. Procedural memory is involuntary, unaided recall. There’s physical procedural memory. Like when you touch the brakes on a car, okay? Now remember, a dog runs out in front of the car, you hit the brakes, you don’t think about it, you automatically do it. It’s unconscious, involuntary. You hit the brake.

Why? Because the number of times you’ve touched the brake and the car slowed down or stopped, and you’ve done it so many times, the repetition of it suddenly becomes automatic, involuntary. Okay? And so it takes repetition to make a name, a household word, to put a name, to drive the nail through the board and clench it on the other side, bend it over, that nail’s never coming out. You can do that with enough repetition.

How much repetition does it take? Depends upon the power of the message. So that’s the crazy part here. I’ll go with the 2.5 frequency on radio per week, 52 weeks in a row, but nothing less.

Todd Liles: Got it.

Roy Williams: Okay? Now, on television, you don’t need as much repetition. I’ll go with the 1.5 per week on television. That means every week for the number of people I’m reaching, and that’s called Net Reach. Net Reach is the number of different people you’re reaching. If it was online, they would call it unique visitors.

So Net Reach. I’m looking for a 2.5 on radio per week. Every week. 52 weeks in a row. Or I’ll settle for a 1.5 on TV. More is better always. But I won’t let it go beyond 1.5. So what does a 1.5 mean? Everybody doesn’t hear it one and a half times. That’s not what it means. It means half the people heard it once that week. The other half heard it twice that week.

And so if you hear it once this week and twice next week and twice the week after that and once the week after that, you’ll get there. You’ll drive the nail through the board and clench it on the other side. But not in the first year.

Todd Liles: Got it.

Roy Williams: You’re going to get increasingly good retention as the months go by. But the first six months when you’re trying to build a brand are just absolute hell. The second six months you’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and you’re feeling like maybe this has a chance to work after all. The second year is when they start to get a little bit excited.

When you have a good message and you’re consistently advertising it every week. Never, never, never, never, never reach more people than you can afford to own and carry around in your pocket. Most advertisers are reaching too many people with too little repetition and too weak of a message.

And so if you strengthen the message and then limit the number of people you’re reaching so that you’re reaching that number with appropriate repetition, it’s called frequency, then you’re going to get infinitely better results from your advertising. And so that’s the media buying strategy that you have to have. But you have to be looking at the right reports. You want to see net reach and repetition for one week.

Todd Liles: Got you.

Roy Williams: A one week schedule. And so how many people can you afford to reach? Depends on how much money you have. And never reach more people than you can afford to own.

Todd Liles: Wonderful.

Roy Williams: 2.5 frequency measured by Nielsen on radio and a 1.5 measured by Nielsen on television. And then billboards have a different thing and direct mail has a different thing. But we don’t have time to go into that.

Todd Liles: Yeah. The great news is that “How do I know if my marketing is working?” will be coming up soon. The last law here, and you’re going to correct me on here, was the Call to Action, in other words, every ad should have a next step. Emotionally or logically. So a logical step. There we go. I’m getting it out eventually. So correct my verbiage. Teach me here. What should I have called this?

Roy Williams: Not that many years ago, probably 20 years ago, I used the word call to action, and I always use the word branding a lot. And I don’t use either one of those as much anymore. Here’s why. First, I’ll tell you about branding.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: Over the years, branding has come to mean too often a color palette, a logo, a special font that you use, a typeface, a particular layout style on the page. And what that actually is is a visual style guide. If you have a visual style guide, that’s not a brand. A visual style guide is 2 or 3% at most of your brand.

But yet graphic artists too often say, “I’m going to give you a branding package.” And I’m going, “It’s a visual style guide, dude. It’s a logo and a color palette. Calm down.” Whenever a person says call to action, that basically has come to mean, act now! Operators are standing by. And if you call now, wait, there’s more. We’ll also give you greatest hits of the Beach Boys if you’re one of the first 10 callers. It’s a $30 value.

And so call to action is trying to hustle people to make a decision, et cetera. And I’m going, that’s not necessarily what it used to mean. So when I talk about what people call a brand, I talk about customer bonding.

I want to form a bond with the customer. So customer bonding is what I use instead of the word branding. And again, taking ownership of the word and being able to define what you mean by the word. So I don’t use branding because it’s like the A, B and C grade diamond. It’s just fuzzy. It doesn’t have a clear definition for me. Likewise, call to action no longer has a clear definition.

But if you talk about first mental image and the last mental image. First mental image in any ad, what’s the first thing you see in your imagination? What is it that you remember? And what’s the last mental image? What is it you walk away from that ad is this thing that’s stuck in your head. First mental image, last mental image.

And sometimes in a really brilliant ad, you present the first mental image, even if you’re just using words, even if it’s a radio ad, and then you come back and you revisit it using those same words at the end of the ad. But at the end of the ad, those words have an altered meaning. They now have a new, richer, wider, broader meaning. And so people see that transformation in 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and it feels like, oh, there’s been a transformation here.

And did you know that that’s all you’re ever selling? Every business in the world, Todd, is in the same business. You know what it is?

Todd Liles: The transformation business.

Roy Williams: Transformation. Making someone happy. And no matter what you do, your job is to improve their condition. Your job is to make them happy. You’re just in the making people happy business. That’s all any business is doing. And so whenever I say call to action or first mental image or last mental image, I’m just talking about you have to cause a person to imagine themselves doing what you want them to do.

And you don’t get them to imagine that by telling them. Instead of assaulting them and giving them commands, “Okay, call now! ” You need to seduce them. You need to make them willingly choose to go there in their imagination, to go there in their mind. And whenever they do that and they imagine doing this thing that you want them to do, and you didn’t tell them to imagine it, they just did that on their own.

Now, all of a sudden, here’s the lesson. Here’s the whole pivot. This is the fulcrum of the teeter totter. A person can take no action they have not first seen in their mind. As a matter of fact, I heard this in church 20 years ago. The minister said, “Guard your thoughts.” “Okay, boss. Guarding my thoughts.” And then he repeated it, “Guard your thoughts.” I’m going, “Okay, thoughts being guarded. What’s your point? ”

And then he said, “No man commits adultery until he has first done it in his mind.” And I’m going, “Oh, that’s…” I said, what is the risk of insult? It’s the price of clarity. What is the price of clarity? Risk of insult. When I used that example just now, a lot of people going, “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that.”

Todd Liles: Because they’ve been imagining adultery in their mind.

Roy Williams: No, exactly. What I’m saying is… No, no. So what I’m saying is…

Todd Liles: Shame on you.

Roy Williams: Adultery is a very, very, very emotionally radioactive word. And I’m saying, but you know what? It’s a punch in the nose. And now people are paying attention. And I’m going, “Yeah, I’m sorry. I did that on purpose.” But that’s actually what the minister said. And I’m going, “Wow. And I don’t remember what the rest of the sermon was about”, because my mind took off going, “Wow, that’s true. Nobody does anything until they first seen it in their mind.”

My job is to make people see things in their mind that I want them to do. Because when they have imagined doing it over and over and over, you bring them precipitously close to doing it in physical reality. And I’m going, “Whoa! ” And so causing a person to see themselves doing the thing you want them to do. Give me 60 seconds.

You are standing in the snow 5 1/2 miles above sea level, gazing at a horizon hundreds of miles away. It occurs to you that life here is very simple. You live or you die. No compromises, no whining, no second chances. This is a place constantly ravaged by wind and storm, where every ragged breath is an accomplishment. You stand on the uppermost pinnacle of the earth. The this is the mountain they called Everest. Yesterday, it was considered unbeatable. But that was yesterday. As Edmund Hillary surveyed the horizon from the peak of Mount Everest, he monitored the time on a wristwatch that had been specifically designed to withstand the fury of the world’s most angry mountain. Rolex believes Sir Edmund would conquer the mountain. And especially for him, they created the Rolex Explorer. In every life, there’s a Mount Everest to be conquered. When you have conquered yours, you’ll find your Rolex waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up at Justice Jewelers. I’m Woody Justice, and I’ve got a Rolex for you.

Todd Liles: Very good.

Roy Williams: Now, here’s what’s interesting. When you go there in your mind and you’re not sure why I’m here or what’s happening, it’s new, surprising, and different. And it involves you. You, reader, listener, viewer, are standing, present tense verbs in the snow. What, what, what? Why is it snowing? How did it get here?

And so 60 seconds later, you find out there’s a watch waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up. You own a watch. It’s a Rolex. People come into the jewelry saying, “Which one is mine? ” And so here’s the point. Causing a person to imagine going into the store and picking out a Rolex, that was the whole goal of the ad. I didn’t say, “Come and buy a Rolex.” What did I say?

Todd Liles: You were standing on a mountain.

Roy Williams: And “In every life, there is a Mount Everest to be conquered.” I would tell your friend in Dallas, raising those two girls, being the dad and the mom, that was your role. That was your Everest. That was your Mount Everest. Congratulations. You made it to the top. It’s time for you to buy Rolex.

Todd Liles: I love that.

Roy Williams: Does that make sense?

Todd Liles: It’s totally great. Thank you for covering those seven laws and there are many more that we will unpack. Just as we go there are so many notes that I’m taking and I find myself going, “Don’t go there. We’re going to go there. I want to go there. But don’t go there yet.”

All right, before we show today’s national campaign, I have a very simple question for you. And I want to ask this question because there is a clouding of judgments. Technology is moving very fast. We know this. Platforms are moving very fast. They change. We all know this. TikTok, brand new, Facebook, all these things. So sometimes people get the fancy idea that these laws don’t work with new mediums, do they?

Roy Williams: Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, this has been coming up my entire career. People say, “Well, you know, technology is going to change… The internet. There’s change that’s going to happen faster on the internet.” And I’ve been telling people, literally the pace of the delivery of information, the speed of information delivery, okay, doesn’t change the speed of change in the human heart.

The human heart changes at the pace of agriculture, okay? How long it takes for you to recover from the loss of someone close to you, whether it’s a divorce or the death of a child or even the loss of a dearly loved pet. Grief recovery at the speed of light is the time it takes the earth to make a circle around the sun. More often, it’s two full circles around the sun.

Three months later, you think you’re okay. You’re mostly over it. No, you’re not. Three months after that, you realize you were still screwed up three months ago, but now you think you’re over it. No, you’re not. Six months later, at the end of the first year, you realize you were screwed up six months ago when you thought you were over it. And recovering from grief will always take a year or two years, if you ever even recover fully.

And so this idea of information and if you give them counseling and give them books to read, it’s going to speed up that process. No, it absolutely isn’t. The pace of change of the human heart does not change with the advance of technology. The end. The speed of information delivery and the ease of information delivery changes nothing. The message matters and repetition matters and everything else is off the table. Shut up.

Todd Liles: Wonderful. Thank you so much. All right, Roy, we got a legendary ad here. We started off in episode one with “Think Different.” Today we’re going to “Think Small.” We’re going to think small, and it’s funny that you gave us the Rolex ad in your voice. I didn’t know you were going to do that because I was going to ask for the people that aren’t watching, if you would read this wonderful ad that I believe originally came out in 1959, and then we’ll visually describe it afterwards.

Roy Williams: “Think small. Our little car isn’t so much of a novelty anymore. A couple of dozen college kids don’t try to squeeze inside it. The guy at the gas station doesn’t ask where the gas goes. Nobody even stares at our shape. In fact, some people who drive our little fliver don’t even think 32 miles to the gallon is going any great guns. Or using five pints of oil instead of five quarts. Or never needing antifreeze or racking up 40,000 miles on a set of tires. That’s because once you get used to some of our economies, you don’t even think about them anymore. Except when you squeeze into a small parking spot or renew your small insurance or pay a small repair bill or trade in your old VW for a new one. Think it over.”

Todd Liles: All right, Roy, I think this first ad copy came out in print only with a small picture of a VW there in black and white. And this is another one that I didn’t pull the copy off on the side. If you’re looking online, that says Think Small, but they’ve always had just a simple black and white VW. This car that nobody wanted until everyone wanted. So how did they use this ad to grab the hearts? And what was different about this from your perspective that made it work so well?

Roy Williams: Okay, remember, it isn’t this way anymore. But in that day, 50s, 60s, and 70s, even into the 80s, think big. Think big. Think big. You heard think big constantly. Every motivational speaker, every coach, you know, think big. You know, you can do anything. Mind over matter. And to say think small was heresy. It was just absolute heresy. It was kind of like, what? What?

And it’s like, it was just like you talk about getting people’s attention. Think big was such a standard refrain that think small was like, “Oh”, and so now that we have your attention, how can we hold your attention? And by the way, the only purpose of an illustration is to get people to read the headline. The only purpose of a headline is to get them to read the first line of body copy. The job of the first line of body copy is to get them to read the second line. And if you leave out the parts that people skip, then they will read it all the way to the end. And so they did this in this ad.

And so graphically, they put the entire car on what looks like about 1/25th or 1/30th of the total space. And so let’s call it 29/30th. I’m trying to imagine how many Volkswagens would fit in there edge to edge, side by side, at least 30. I’m saying, so the car could be infinitely bigger and fill the space like all ads do. The product fills the frame, okay? They didn’t do that. They leave this unimaginable, I would say, white space, but it’s actually gray. They’re wanting to make it clear to you by giving you the gray box, the tiny percentage of space where the car is.

Todd Liles: Good.

Roy Williams: And so what happens is…

Todd Liles: I didn’t realize that till you just said that.

Roy Williams: And so whenever you visually look at it, you’re going, “The car is so tiny up in the corner of the page, and the rest of the page is blank.” Well, they reinforce the image by saying, “Think small.” Okay, now the headline startles you and is backwards to everything you’ve ever been told before. But the picture that caught your attention is reinforced by the idea they think small.

You have to start reading this ad. This makes no sense to you whatsoever. So when you start reading it, it goes, huh? And so they’re going through all the cliches of what people used to say about it and how people used to treat this car and all the misunderstandings about it and all of the goofy pranks that came with it. And now they’re saying, hey, you know, all of these things like 40,000 miles on a set of tires or not needing antifreeze.

People don’t relate to that today because cars are basically zero maintenance these days. Okay? I remember when a car had to have a tune up, like, every 25,000 miles. At 25,000 miles it had to be tuned up. It wasn’t running right. I think nobody even remembers those days anymore. And the thing about maintenance and miles per gallon, when they said 32 miles per gallon, that doesn’t sound impressive today. You know what the average car got back then? Like, between 9 and 14.

Todd Liles: Wow.

Roy Williams: I mean, these were big motors, heavy cars, and 9 to 14 miles per gallon, when it’s 30 cents a gallon, who cares? And it was literally 30 cents a gallon is what gasoline cost back in those days. And so whenever you’re looking at 32 miles per gallon, you’re going, “Man, it’s like having an electric car.”

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: You don’t have to have… You don’t even buy gas. And so this was an ad that for its time, so you remember, you have to go back to that psychological environment. Today you look at the ad, it’s not an interesting ad. All cars outperform that or that’s a barely average car today in terms of the stats and the data.

But the fact that all cars were huge and heavy and difficult to park and long and wide and gas guzzlers and to have a thing that was exact opposite of everything you’ve been told about a car or ever believed about a car, this was, to the car driving public, what the Apple computer was to the technological public.

Todd Liles: It goes back to surprising and different.

Roy Williams: It comes back to the opposite of standard. And so when you’re the outlier, when you’re the rebel, when you’re different than the group, that differentiates you. And so the goal of marketing is to differentiate for yourself from your competitors. You don’t do it with information, you do it with attitude. The information simply reinforces the attitude. It helps you to express the attitude.

The information isn’t the goal, it’s what this information add ups to. We’re different. We’re proud of it. Get used to it. This is who we are. You can like it, you can lump it, you can take it down the road and dump it. This is who we are. And that’s what Apple did in our last episode. And that’s what I’m really glad you chose this. I’m proud. And that’s what Volkswagen did in this episode.

Todd Liles: Awesome. Roy, very last question for today. What’s the one thing the listener should take from today’s episode?

Roy Williams: Differentiate yourself. Be different. Be proud to be different. Do not blur yourself into the category. Define yourself by your own set of rules. And don’t worry about who approves or disapproves. There will be more than enough people to prove and agree that you’ll need a Brinks truck to pull up and haul away your deposits every day. You can make so much money selling 20 or 25% of the public. And if the other 75% hate your guts, who cares? You’re rich and you’re super famous to the 25% of the town that you own and carry around in your pocket. Differentiate yourself.

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