Dear Reader,

Just after you fill your tank with gas, you walk into the convenience store to grab something cold to drink.

This is a critical moment. It’s more important than you might think, and you can actually feel it, even if you’ve never consciously considered it before. But you’ve been listening to Todd and Roy, so you’re feeling sharp about marketing and branding.

As you stand in front of the cooler, you’re faced with a massive selection of choices. You think, “Each drink I choose announces to the world, in a very real way, how I want to be perceived.” This realization feels like an epiphany.

Yes, the drink a buyer selects is a megaphone, announcing to the world, “This is who I am! This is what I believe! I feel strongly about this!” You then wonder, “If I can understand this basic buying decision, what else could I uncover about human nature?”

Is this crazy idea possibly true?

You decide to test the hypothesis with a social experiment.

In this experiment, you watch people choose between two similar, but not identical, product categories. As they make their selection, you jot down observations like:

  1. Male or Female
  2. Fit or Out of Shape
  3. Young or Old
  4. Conservatively Dressed or Liberally Dressed
  5. Smoker or Non-smoker
  6. Well-groomed or Messy
  7. Well-spoken or Not

For the sake of this example, let’s imagine you can interview them afterward. In these interviews, you gather details like:

  1. Career
  2. Marital Status
  3. Education Level
  4. Financial Status
  5. Personal Preferences
  6. Moral Outlook
  7. Any additional insights you want to know (by this point, they’ll answer just about anything).

You run this experiment for an hour. They make their drink choices. You take your notes. You conduct interviews. At the end of an hour, you have 10 detailed entries. Being a dedicated data analyst, you repeat this every day for 100 days, collecting over 1,000 interviews. You notice a set of recurring themes between buyers and their drink choices. Fascinated, you expand your research to 100 convenience stores across America, deploying a team of interviewers and analysts. Soon, you’ve gathered over 100,000 interviews, amassing more than a million data points.

You draw some startling conclusions and can’t wait to share your findings with the world. You think, “I’ve cracked the code of buying behavior! I can sell this to companies everywhere and become a billionaire!”

Excitedly, you present your data to every drink executive in the world. They’re amazed by the detail you’ve uncovered. They think, “This could be a game-changer.” So, they call their marketing teams into the room and reveal the data. You and the executives are buzzing with anticipation. “Look! We have data on our client demographics! We know who they are! Isn’t this exciting? What can we do with this information?”

The marketing team looks back at you and the executives, smiling. “Yeah, we already knew that. We created that demographic when we built the brand and designed the campaign. We told the story that made that data true.”

They pause, grinning at your confusion.

“You don’t actually think the product is why that demographic bought the drink, do you?”

And then, the whole marketing and branding team just laugh and laugh and laugh.

And that’s the punchline.

The marketing team already knew what the data told them, because their campaign created the data. It’s not just about what’s in the can — it’s about what the can means to the person holding it. It’s about belonging, signaling, and identity. That’s why brands like Liquid Death or Red Bull are more than just beverages — they’re badges, banners, and battle flags.

If this kind of thinking intrigues you, if you want to understand the psychology behind why people buy, then hit play on today’s episode. We’re diving deep into the art of branding, the power of storytelling, and why the emotions people feel about your brand will always outweigh the product itself.

Because in the end, people don’t just buy products—they buy belonging.

 

 

Watch / listen above or read below.

Announcer : Advertising is a tax you pay for not being remarkable. Welcome to Todd Liles and The Wizard of Ads, a podcast for business owners who want to become remarkable. Tiny Little Todd Liles is going to take you deep into the mind of Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads, to unleash the timeless truths and secret strategies that have helped him build dozens of America’s most successful businesses.

Do you want to build a brand that wins the heart, captures the mind, and creates lasting relationships? Take a deep breath and buckle up. It’s time to fly.

Todd Liles: Welcome to another episode of Todd Liles and The Wizard of Ads. And today we’re going to talk about why people buy. Understanding their emotional triggers. And we’re going to dive into something that every single business owner needs to understand when it comes to emotional triggers and what makes people want to buy.

Now, in previous episodes, we touched on the psychology of buying, but today we’re going to get even more specific. We’re going to talk about what makes people act right now. What emotions push them over the edge to say, I need this today. That’s what we’re going to unpack, Roy. And I know that you have long, long emphasized that people don’t actually buy based off logic. They buy based off emotions, but they use logic to justify their decision later on.

Roy Williams: Absolutely. And so the question is, what causes a person to buy right now? We’re going to unpack a lot of things here. Now, the first thing that pops into people’s head is the new name for it is performance marketing. And performance marketing, it’s a new buzzword, but people like to talk about performance marketing. They want marketing that performs and they want it to be like, we pull this lever and out come the results. And just say, what do you have to do? What do you have to say? Who do you have to reach? How do you have to approach them to get the result you want?

Now, let me say this comes from a belief system that advertising is a science. It is not. There are some scientific parts and some biological parts and some real behavioral studies that go into advertising that are scientific, but really it’s an art. And if you don’t understand it’s as much of an art, at least as much of an art as it is a science, you’re going to wind up thinking that you can make people do things they don’t want to do and you can’t. And that you can make people buy when they’re not ready to buy. You can’t.

And so I want to get all those things out of everybody’s head before we start talking about how do you get people to buy? You know, because anytime somebody says, well, here’s how you close the sale. I’m going, yeah, they don’t have a hundred percent close rate because there are certain people that aren’t going to buy today.

Todd Liles: That’s right.

Roy Williams: There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can say. And there’s nothing that can happen that’s going to change their mind. So let’s just get past all of that. And then let’s say, okay, performance marketing. In my mind, there’s two things that are different types of performance marketing, but I call them sales activation inside a business to consumer. Now today, everything we’re doing, we’re talking about B2C, business to consumer.

The rules are different for B2B. We’re not doing B2B right now. This is only B2C. And inside a B2C campaign, which has enormous repetition and 60% of the ads, you’re just building a bond with the customer. Some people would call that branding. Okay. If you like to call it branding, go ahead. But really it’s customer bonding. Now, 40% of a campaign, 40% of the total ads are going to be sales activation. 

Now that is performance marketing, but it’s performance marketing light, and you’re cheating because you already have a relationship with the customer. They already like you. They already trust you. They believe in you. So now you give them a specific reason to say yes. And so this can be based upon a lot of different things, one of which is timeliness. And so you can be advertising, let’s just call it a tune-up. I don’t prefer that word. I like to have different names for it, but air conditioning. Okay. There’s the pre-season tune-up or the safety inspection in the autumn for the furnace. Okay.

Timeliness, and you’re suggesting something or tires for your car before you go on vacation. I mean, it’s like the timeliness of an offer will help get people to say yes, or it’s a special gift that says something really powerful about the giver and the recipient just before Christmas. And so timeliness is one thing that you can stack the deck and get people to buy today with sales activation inside a customer bonding campaign. That’s easy. People understand that.

The second thing is called direct response. Now direct response smells and feels a little bit like sales activation, but direct response doesn’t have the benefit of an offer being made by a trusted provider, a trusted brand, somebody that you know, like, and trust.

Todd Liles: And I’ve heard you say that you are probably one of the world’s best at direct response, but you try to use it sparingly because it comes with some really potential negative consequences.

Roy Williams: Yeah. Here’s the thing. I wrote a Monday Morning Memo and it’s called Seven Quiet Secrets of Sales Activation.

Todd Liles: We’ll make sure we get it in the show notes.

Roy Williams: And so, cool. The thing that I do in that particular Monday morning memo is I created a short ad that is straight up direct response, just to show how very, very good I am at it, and just so that you can contrast what you have to do in a direct response ad. It’s all about details and specifics and logic and really extraordinary claims for which you offer what feels like evidence, or smells like evidence. And so whenever you do this and people go, wow, I’ve never heard of this thing before, but wow, that’s amazing.

And if you can introduce something and make them feel like I would be crazy not to buy this right now. That’s called direct response. And you take it, it’s a one call close. They’ve never heard of this. They’ve never heard of you. They’ve never heard of your company. And you write a thing and there’s a certain art to that. A lot of people teach it. This is taught by… There’s many, many, many people that teach direct response ad writing. I’m not one of them, but I put it in that particular memo just to show you, yeah, you think it’s a real product. You would probably buy this product if you heard this ad and this is how you do it. And so we’ll put that ad in the show. I don’t have it in front of me right now, but we’ll record it and we’ll pop it in there. So people hear it’s like 40 seconds. 

Now the thing is direct response is considered performance marketing. Sales activation is considered performance marketing and they have some similarities, but sales activation has repetition. They’re hearing it, they’re hearing it, they’re hearing it. They’ve been hearing about you for a long time. And so you’re cheating. You have this amazing relationship established with the customer and now you’re just giving them an opportunity to say yes. You give them a specific offer and there usually is a window of time that’s either stated or implied. This special gift for Christmas isn’t going to be available after Christmas. And this idea that you need this service provided right now during this season, later on, it’s too late. It’s like.. So what happens is there needs to be a credible urgency.

Todd Liles: Very good. Credible urgency.

Roy Williams: Credible urgency. And then you have to have some logic and you have to have an emotional connection and a promise of benefit implied benefit in sales activation, a specifically stated and emphasized benefit in direct response. So I like to separate those two because direct response needs no repetition. You hear this ad and either you bought or you didn’t. And they measure that stuff after every time the ad plays. They measured how many sales did we make when that ad played.

Now those are never sustainable, Todd. Never. Those things burn out and you have to come up with a whole new scam. And so I want everybody to understand the difference when you say how do you make things happen right now? Well, it depends on whether you have a brand, and you’re using sales activation, or whether you don’t have a brand, and you’re just telling some big whopping lies.

Todd Liles: That’s excellent, Roy, because you were moving into the… I’ve got three big, big topics and then I got a couple subtopics underneath here codifying what you just said between sales activation and direct response. So I’m just gonna tell you the big topics and then we’ll hit back on number one.

The big topic is what sparks or triggers immediate buying decisions? We’re gonna talk a little bit about fear of missing out, FOMO, which you just hinted on, and then building trust quickly through emotional connections. So I’m gonna go back to immediate buying decisions. And what I would love to do is have you sort of qualify when is it sales activation, when is it direct response? And the three things that I have here is one is urgency, where we have a limited time offer, scarcity messages essentially.

Roy Williams: Now both of them do have urgency, but the subtlety of the urgency in sales activation keeps you from violating your relationship of trust with the customer.

Todd Liles: Oh, very good.

Roy Williams: And so what happens is in sales activation, there is no relationship. You just make up… Think of a guy in a bar who’s looking for a one night stand. You just say anything you think you need to say to make this sale happen because you’re gonna disappear when this is over. And so the idea is direct response– I’m making it sound like I don’t really like it, because I don’t.

And it’s like, nope, what you have to do to take a person all the way from the parting of the Red Sea to the Promised Land in one ad. And to introduce something that they weren’t thinking about and don’t want, they’re not looking for it, and then convince them that they need to do this right now. But wait, there’s more. If you call now, you’ll also get this at no extra charge. And then for the first five callers, you’ll get this and this and this third thing. Are they counting callers? No. They’re just wanting people to rush to the phone so they can get all three things. And so the idea of urgency is expressed overwhelmingly in direct response. And it is a little more subtle and not as cheesy.

Todd Liles: Yeah, because I’m trying to go back in memory, and you can tell me I’m just remembering things completely false, or maybe you go, oh, no, no, you actually were onto something. I feel like there was a story where you had a regional jewelry store, and you actually came up with a piece, and you used a little bit of urgency where something like there was only 10 left, but then you qualified that with a statement, something along the lines of, for those who know quality.

Roy Williams: Okay.

Todd Liles: Am I imagining this? Because I feel like I had read that somewhere or heard you talking about it, and it was a sense of urgency, but it was a real sense of urgency because there really was only 10 of them left. And I might be misremembering.

Roy Williams: No, listen, I do this. Let me put it this way. I don’t remember the specific example that you’re remembering, but I do that very, very, very, very regularly. And it was Bill Bernbach 40 years ago said, I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.

And so when give a person a time limit that’s very arbitrary, “These prices only good until Thursday night at 9:00.” Why, exactly? It doesn’t make any sense. And when the car dealer says, we must sell 400 Toyotas this weekend, we will not be undersold. It’s like, you must why exactly? And so…

Todd Liles: You just made me realize a mistake I made that I’m going to go fix immediately after the show.

Roy Williams: Okay. Well, you’re going to have to tell us what it is.

Todd Liles: Working with one of our partners that is rolling out what we refer to as Kings of Tomorrow to their dealers. They were wanting to give them a reason to buy today. And they’re like, let’s do $250 off. And I wasn’t in marketing mindset. I was in, I just want to serve you. If that’s what you want, let me get you the information you need. So we just did this yesterday and now I’m going, this is completely and totally obvious. I want to… It’s not activated yet. So I’m going to pick up the phone and say, Hey, Chris, that’s not what we’re going to do. Instead, how many do you want to come out of the room with? How many are you willing to give the $250 off to? If it’s five, if it’s a 10, that’s the number we’re going to go for and not why you’re here today and today only.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: Thank you. You helped me out.

Roy Williams: Whenever something is, well, even the question of the $250 to 10 people with, you can do it for 10. Why can’t you do it for 11?

Todd Liles: That’s true too.

Roy Williams: And so the point is credible, credible urgency. A time limit is rarely credible unless you’re having a concert.

Todd Liles: Well, maybe the time limit’s okay because they’re there in person. They’re actually there just for the day. And the thought process behind it was, Hey, we’re here for today. We probably will save $250 in manpower not chasing you down.

Roy Williams: Okay, we can talk more about this because there’s a way to do it. There’s a way to incentivize people more credibly than what you’ve figured out yet. And so we’ll talk about that.

Todd Liles: Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Roy Williams: The point is when you do have… When you have one time in New Orleans, gosh, it’s been 20 years ago, I had just gotten back with Martin Rapaport, who basically is the guy that indirectly controls the world price of diamonds. Okay. The Rapaport report is every jeweler in every nation on the face of the earth can tell you how far they’re buying behind Rap.

And so Rap is the price guide, NADA book for car guide, but it’s for diamonds and it comes out weekly. And Martin and I were going to… We’re in New York, had done a thing at the New York Times Center, a big thing he did for… Well, had to do with the United Nations, blah, blah, blah. We don’t need to go there. But we had spoken together that day and then we were on at Lincoln, where the ice rink is in New York.

Todd Liles: Oh, Lincoln park?

Roy Williams: Lincoln Plaza or no, something else. Rockefeller Plaza.

Todd Liles: Oh, Rockefeller Plaza. Sorry, Lincoln park, that’s Chicago.

Roy Williams: Rockefeller Plaza is where the ice rink is. And we were sitting there and he said, hey, it’s almost time. I said, time for what? And he said, there’s going to be a blue diamond sale in about 30 minutes. And he says I want to be there when it sells. Probably going to set a new world record for the price of a blue diamond. I said, okay. And so we walked a couple of blocks and it was, I think Christie’s auction house.

And so we walked in and I said, wow, I’d never been there before. It’s really interesting. And all these guys, there’s a little ping pong paddle looking things with a number on it. And then pretty soon at the end of the auction, everybody’s waiting all night. They show this diamond and it’s up on the screen and it sold for like 16 million dollars, something like that. And it was a new world’s record. And I was going, wow, this is amazing. And he walked up and we talked to the auctioneer after it was over. And Martin says, hey, it was our… You never named the person who bought it, ever, because now you know who to rob.

And so he said, was it our friend in Hong Kong, or was it our friend in, and I forget the other city, somewhere in Europe that got the blue? And the auctioneer said, it was Hong Kong. And so Martin says, that’s who I thought would win. And so he knew which bidders it would come down to. He knew exactly who would probably be the one that would win. And he was right. That’s how well he knows diamonds.

And so I’m sitting around just learning all this crazy weird stuff and the blue diamonds and everything. So then my client in New Orleans, he had some pendants with really tiny little blue diamonds in them. And he had only found 128 of these in the world. They had been manufactured, and a bunch of jewelers had bought them. And he’s decided he’s going to buy all those up from all these other jewelers. And these are little gold pendants and little small blue diamonds in them, natural blue diamonds. And so I had wrote an ad and it said two weeks ago at Christie’s auction in New York, when the gavel went bang and the auctioneer shouted sold, forget the number of carats, blue diamonds sold for $16,400,000.

And it says, unbelievably rare, unbelievably valuable, natural blue diamonds. We were able to make only 128 of these pendants. That’s all the blue diamonds we could find in the world that we could put in these pendants. They’re all alike. And there’s only 128 of them. And then you name the price and then you say, now, ladies, if you get one of these, somebody came here immediately after hearing this ad and they probably had to run some lights and drove too fast. And they’re lucky to be alive because there’s not enough to go around.

There’s a million and a half people in New Orleans. There’s only 128 of these pendants. And so they sold out just instantly. And the price was something that most people could afford. And now that you realize only 128 of these in the whole world, and they just sold a larger one for $16 million. And these pendants are like, yeah, I could buy that. I could actually buy one of those. And so everybody trusts this jeweler. They like the jeweler. They think this is a wonderful human being.

And he is. We’ve worked together now for 37 years. And so I talked to him yesterday morning, in fact, and we just blew out all of these blue diamond pendants because we told a true story that you could check on. It happened. I mean, you could Google it and find it. And then it was a price that people could afford. And they’re going, huh, I want to give this woman something special. And if she heard the ad, she knows. It didn’t play that many times, but if she heard it, everybody in New Orleans knew, oh, yeah, somebody had to act fast to get these.

So what was the credible part? The real truth was what’s credible. There’s only 128 of them left in the world. And he tracked them all down and bought them from all the other jewelers. And so that he could have all of those in New Orleans to sell. And so here’s the important thing about sales activation. I want you to forget, completely forget the profit he made on those 128 pendants. It’s irrelevant. Do you know why?

Todd Liles: No, I don’t.

Roy Williams: Because hundreds of thousands of people heard the ads. Hundreds of thousands. So if we’re going to measure our success by the actions of 128 people, we’re idiots. What it says about the company, what it says about the store, it’s like, wow, at Ramsey’s Diamond Jewelers, they’re on top of things. Those guys are always the first to do the coolest stuff. They have relationships and connections, and they have access to inventory that nobody else has.

And if you’re reading between the lines, any time you hear a good sales activation ad, it’s telling the public what kind of company you are. And it lets them know, man, this company’s on top of things. They’re on the move. And they hear these ads, and they’re going, wow, these guys are the go-to guys. They’ve got stuff nobody else has. And they’re always, always, always. Remember, 40% of your ads. So the sales activation offer you make tells people about your company in a way that they unconditionally accept and believe because nobody else is doing these cool things.

And so it’s a lot of work. To do good sales activation is an enormous, unbelievable amount of work and preparation. And the story is not just something an ad writer can just pull out of their nose. It’s like, nope. This is like it’s a big production, and it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of heavy lifting. And so sales activation, you understand now how different it is than direct response.

Todd Liles: I do. And as I’m going through here and I’m looking at my major subnotes, with that story that you just shared, you’ve hit on urgency because there’s only 128 legitimate. You can get your hands on 128 of these blue diamonds. You actually hit on authority because it was in the news and also Ramsey’s…

Roy Williams: Third-party credibility.

Todd Liles: Third-party credibility, which also is going to come up in another topic very soon. You had some emotional storytelling in there because someone must really love you if they came here to get this for you. And also one of my notes here was talking about effective strategies. This type of sale works because it’s in the current mind. People understand if they’re in the diamond business, there’s only 128. It’s rare. It’s the truth. I love that.

Roy Williams: And by the way, they were less than $1,000.

Todd Liles: That’s amazing. Yeah, comparing. And I had wrote another note here that wasn’t in my notes just as you were talking. I believe you used the power of contrast. You can get a $16 million blue diamond, or you can get a $1,000 blue diamond right here in New Orleans. You don’t have to go bid at this. I mean there’s so many layers there, and I love it.

So I’m going to go right into a little bit of one of my questions on FOMO. And here’s just a basic question. I think we probably know the answer to this, but I want to get your perspective on it. Why can people almost go into like a frenzy, like almost a sheer panic attack when they hear there’s literally only 128 of these? They can’t get in their car fast enough. What is it in the human psyche that’s causing that triggering action, the legitimate triggering action like we’ve described here?

Roy Williams: Okay. Anytime a person buys something, it is… Well, I won’t say anytime. There are objective purchases. But far, far, far, far more often than most people want to admit or even realize,ost of what we buy, we buy to remind ourselves and announce to others who we are. And so if you feel like you need her to know how much she means and you have a reason, whatever the reason is that you think you need her to know that. We’re not going to speculate on what the reasons might be. There’s infinite reasons why you might be feeling like I really need to let her know how much I care.

And so this is a need that’s inside of you. I didn’t put that need in you, but I spoke to it. I spoke to that need of this lets her know how hard it was to get one of these. And then what else it does? Todd, it’s the car… I’ll tell you something. I’ve known a lot of guys that sold cars. And the one thing that they used to do back in the day that most people don’t do anymore is out in front of the showroom, they would have this thing.

You drive a car up on it, and then it would tilt. And then it would turn around like that and it would rotate, and the car would be up on that thing, and they would hit it with super bright lights at night. And you’d see this car rotating around at an angle, you know what I mean, like this. And so it was just unbelievable. And sometimes it would be inside the showroom, and it would be lit. And so the showroom’s dark at night, but you’d see that one car in there kind of spinning around. And the one thing that was amazing. And we’re still talking about the blue diamond in a way. When you had a dead car, anytime something’s been there for longer than like 30 days, it’s cold.

All the salespeople have tried to sell it, and they’ve not been able to sell it. It’s been there for 30 days. And so salespeople, it’s invisible to them. They don’t even show it anymore. They don’t have any enthusiasm about it. It’s dead inventory. And so a good sales manager will take that car that nobody can sell because it’s gotten cold, they wash it, put it up on that rotating thing, and hit it with the lights, and it’ll sell within 24 hours. Do you know why?

Todd Liles: Because it sure is shiny and pretty.

Roy Williams: No, no, no, no.

Todd Liles: And it’s the only one that’s up on the block.

Roy Williams: The featured one. It’s like, that’s the most important.

Todd Liles: Yeah, it’s the only one up on the block.

Roy Williams: That’s the one that they’re most proud of.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: That’s the feature car. That’s the car that is special, and they want everybody to see this car. I bought the special car. Did you see that car up on the rotating deal? I bought that. And so did you hear about those things? There’s only 128 of them? He bought me one.

Todd Liles: Nice.

Roy Williams: You heard that ad about the 128 blue diamond pendants? Right, here’s one. Here’s one. Did you hear the part about $16 million? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And so what happens is you get something to communicate that everybody understands what this means. And so fear of missing out is, did I help you meet a felt need? I can’t put the need in your heart, but I can speak to the need.

And Todd, there are so many needs in people’s hearts that when you write an ad, I know we’re probably running short on time, but man, this is the whole point of everything we’re talking about right now. Everybody has the same basic needs. It’s just that some people talk about them and other people don’t. But when you speak to something that already matters to a person, and they’re in that moment when you’re offering a solution to something that is a known problem, they have this need, they have this problem, they have this desire, and you’re speaking to it, it is not hard to do that.

But if you’re thinking that you can find out who has the desire, no, you can’t. You can’t. There’s no way to know who has this desire. There’s no way to know who’s about ready to ask a girl to marry him. You can’t know. Facebook doesn’t know. Google doesn’t know. And if they haven’t told anybody, nobody knows. And so a lot of things are like that. To say that, how do you tell when a person’s… You don’t. You target with your ad copy. Your ad copy is what targets. You’re speaking to a need that a lot of people have at any given time, and anytime you’re talking to the needs of the customer.

Bad advertising is about you, your company, your product or service. Here’s a quarter. Find an old pay phone. Call your mom. Maybe she cares. Because nobody else does. And so the more you talk about you, that’s how bad your ad is. And the more you speak to the felt need in the heart of a lot of people, and even if they don’t have that need today, they recognize that need. That’s a real need. And you’re talking to the customer about the customer. And you’re talking to the customer about what’s important to the customer. And that is relational marketing. It is not transactional marketing. And that’s the point I wanted to make.

Todd Liles: Love it. When you asked me earlier why for today or why to the 10 or why to the 12, what was weird is that I started thinking about the answers to that. But what was even stranger is that I actually know the answer. I knew the answer when he asked if we could do it. And it was his proposition. He’s like, hey, can we do this? Because I’d like to do it while they’re here today. And I didn’t think about the why should it be done here today.

What I actually did was I looked at the math on what I knew it cost us. And we’re running very, very close with this event on break even, because the purpose of this event is not to make money. The purpose of this event is to bond people and make them be long clients for a long time. It’s sort of a break even for us. So when he asked that question, I was thinking to myself, that’s pretty close to no already. I’ll figure that out. But let me do something here.

Looked at the math, and the difference in this math versus other math is that we’re going to have it at their place. And I run the math on it and I’m like, well, yeah, you know what? Actually, we can because we’re having it at your place. There’s a lot of expenses that aren’t picked up. Now I didn’t say that, but now reflecting back on the original thing, I’m going, I said, yeah, that’s easy to do. We can absolutely do that.

So if I first understand the reason why I can, what I now realize is that the next event isn’t always going to be at his place. So for this next event, because it’s going to be here, we have a legitimate reason why we can give them a discount because I don’t know how to word it quite yet. I’ll figure that out. But it legitimately is costing us less to produce it.

Roy Williams: Okay. So let’s talk about the event for a second.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: You’re willing to give up 250 bucks to get a person to make the decision to be here. Is this physically going to be in Austin?

Todd Liles: No, no, no. This is going to be at the manufacturer. This is Haven Lighting. It’s a client of ours.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: They’ve seen what we’re doing sort of like with wind supply, and they love it.

Roy Williams: Okay.

Todd Liles: They’re like, hey, we want to provide that for our people. And we said, well, let’s do one for them. Let’s do it. And they are putting forth all the energy and effort. They’re actually having people come in for one day training. And they promoted this at the last one. We had people sign up and they want to have a big event at their location in June. So we’re going to have it there instead of here in Austin. And it is saving me that maybe even a little bit more.

So I’m like, yeah, sure, I can do that, because it’s not costing me as much as it normally would. And we’ll still be okay, financially speaking for the event.

Roy Williams: So when you said you’re going to do them here in Austin?

Todd Liles: In the future.

Roy Williams: In the future. In the future, when you do them here in Austin, will people come who live in the area or will they fly in from out of town?

Todd Liles: They’ll fly in. And they’re flying into them already, too, so they’re still trapped.

Roy Williams: So listen, here’s the deal. If you’re willing to give up 250 bucks, you simply said, and if you’ll buy a plane ticket, I’ll buy your hotel room.

Todd Liles: There you go.

Roy Williams: And so now all of a sudden, it is generosity speaking. See, a discount means, huh? So you got a lot of profit in this thing, huh? That you can do whatever? But a more friendly thing, and a more credible thing is., “And I’m going to let you pick. You can either stay at this hotel, this hotel, and these are all name brand hotels. Pick any of those five hotels, I’m going to pick up your room cost for you. I’m going to pay for your hotel room.”

Todd Liles: Thank you, Roy.

Roy Williams: And then a person goes, wow, I’ll buy the plane ticket and he’ll pay for my hotel room. That’s a good deal. And it sounds way more powerful than $250, doesn’t it?

Todd Liles: 100%. You know what’s funny about all this is that I hang around you, I read your books, and I’m just like every other business owner on the planet. Which, by the way, is the reason why I’m not my own strategist. Even though I’m a Wizard partner, I’m not my own strategist. I have people to be my strategist because sometimes when you’re in the forest and the trees, there’s no part of my being that’s like I’m trying to manipulate these people.

It’s no, like I’m just trying to give them something good because I can. But that doesn’t mean that I am ready to make the wisest decision about how to communicate it. Which is why having these relationships is valuable. Because it’s just sort of weird how we could be an expert in many things, but not our own world.

Roy Williams: The other thing that you can do that, it elevates your cost, but not by $250. If you said, okay. So if you’re flying in from out of town, I’ll pick up your hotel room. These are the five hotels you can choose from. You’d pick any of those. I’m going to pay for your hotel room. Now, if you live here and you’re going, huh? Well, I don’t have to have a stay… I don’t have to have a hotel because I’m in driving distance. What are you going to do for me? I’m going to let you bring a guest at no charge.

Todd Liles: Yeah, I like that.

Roy Williams: I’m going to let you bring a guest at no charge. And so a person goes, oh, so I’m gonna… So if this person goes, oh, I’ll just split my ticket price with him and we’ll get one for half, whatever the price is. We don’t care what they say. We’re just gonna say we’re gonna let you bring a guest at no charge. If you’re needing a hotel room, we’ll let you bring a guest at no charge. Now everybody wins. Nobody feels like they’re being left out.

Todd Liles: 100%.

Roy Williams: So if you have an additional guest and you’re gonna feed them or serve them drinks or whatever. Yeah, you got a second person to feed or whatever. But it’s the same 250 bucks, right?

Todd Liles: Got it. Roy, I think I got an ad for us today that you will love because it’s right on topic. It’s all relational, I think, but always learn something from you when I show you something. So, Alex, if you don’t mind, will you play the ad?

 

Coca Cola Ad Lyrics: Hey, think of all that we could do if we started with a me and you. And I’ll keep coming back around. Hey. Some things will never be explained. Summer’s calling out a thousand names. And I’ll keep coming back around. I’ll keep coming back around. Wait, wait a while and then you see. I’ll wait and you’ll see. I’ll keep coming back around. I’ll keep coming back around.

Todd Liles: So for those that were listening, we just watched the Share a Coke campaign. And the Share A Coke campaign was something that Coca-Cola did a little over 10 years ago. And it was where they would print the most common names on a Coke bottle, and they put out a message to essentially give someone with their name a Coca-Cola.

Roy, I don’t know if you know this, but Coke was in a 10 year slump. They rolled this out in Australia as a regional ad and it worked so well and it took on such fire that Australia surpassed all their sales records for like the last 10 years. They rolled it out nationally, and they ended up not only tying their previous sales best, but they surpassed about $4.8 billion in the first 12 months. Just Share a Coke, give someone a name. Why is that campaign so effective?

Roy Williams: Okay, that television ad, okay, is about belonging. What you see is you see people connecting that are obviously friends and they’re expressing friendship. They’re expressing a bond. This is like, I care about you enough that I found one of these with your name on it. I found one of these with your name on it. I want you to have it because you mean something to me. These are just friends.

Now, all of these… You notice first it’s just a couple of people, then a couple more people, then pretty soon there’s a big crowd that’s gathering together. Everybody’s united. Everybody belongs. They’re having a wonderful time. They all kind of know each other. And so you remember Cheers?

Todd Liles: Oh, yes.

Roy Williams: Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson?

Todd Liles: Mm-hmm.

Roy Williams: Where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came. Remember the theme song?

Todd Liles: Oh, yes.

Roy Williams: That’s what this is. It’s kind of like everyone belongs. And you’re feeling bad about this little sad guy in the store and he’s missing everything. He doesn’t belong. He’s just a guy ringing up the Cokes for all the cool kids. And then this one girl comes back in, and they walk out, and it’s just the two of them. And then all of a sudden the whole crowd’s waiting on him. He has belonged all along. He has belonged.

And I’m going… Now most people don’t ever think about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs anymore. Basically Maslow said nobody worries about the upper need until the lower need is met. Ten percent of the population in first world countries, like America, are worried about having enough food to eat and not having to sleep under a bridge. And then the next 10% has those needs met, but they don’t feel safe. Someone in the house or the neighborhood or they just… They don’t have… They don’t feel safe.

Now that’s 20% of our population. Now what’s interesting is the next 65%, which is most of us, the next 65%, their biggest unmet need is the need to belong. The need to belong. And so when you’re speaking about relational bonding, you’re speaking to the need, you’re satisfying that need to belong. You’re satisfying that need. Coca-Cola tapped into it. They’re basically saying this is a gift you can give somebody to make them feel like they belong. And if you get one from somebody, it’s because they want you to know that you belong and that people care about you. And so you see this one guy, lonely, left out, and then when they all surprised this guy, they go, oh, this is the most beautiful thing. I want to cry.

And I’m going, okay, what was it speaking to in everybody? The importance of friends, the importance of having people who care about you and wanting to belong, having a place and having a tribe and having people that you chose and they chose you. And these are the people that are always there for you. You belong. And that’s a deep, deep, deep felt need by every human being on the face of the earth. And I’m going, of course that ad worked.

Todd Liles: That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Roy. The big takeaway and the thing that is at the surface, and it’s what I want to not have to just have in my head, I want to get in my heart, is the fact that people don’t buy with their head. They do buy with their heart. And that’s at the heart of today’s episode.

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