Dear Reader,

Michelangelo’s first commission was for the Vatican at the age of 23. His last was as the architect of St. Peter’s Dome. He died at the age of 89.

He was a gifted artist. His art extended into sculpture, architecture, and painting — both large and small.

He was first recognized as a talented artist as a young boy. This talent was groomed, and then it was tested.

The test of his life came at the age of 26 — against a giant.

The giant was born in Carrara, Italy, in 1464. It stood over 19 feet tall. For 40 years, the giant was undefeated.

The first to attempt to take the giant down was Agostino di Duccio. Agostino battled the giant for two years before it crushed his spirit.

In 1475, Antonio Rossellino was assigned the task of taming the giant. He quit almost immediately. He believed the giant was an impossible battle. Only a fool would attempt it.

In the year Rossellino quit, a boy was born.

In 1501, Michelangelo stood before the giant. He studied it closely. Michelangelo was convinced he could see what others could not. He picked up his chisel and walked up to the massive marble slab that had been called “the Giant” for decades.

Over the next four years, Michelangelo struck the giant with his chisel. Each strike was intentional. Each strike removed something—but revealed more. Slowly, the ugly block of stone that had defeated masters before him began to yield to the young Michelangelo.

I’ve often wondered if Michelangelo sculpted the giant into its final form with a sense of irony. Did he find it funny? Did he have control over what the final form would be? Or did he simply sculpt it into what it had to be?

In the end, the giant wasn’t killed by David.

The giant became David — transformed by Michelangelo’s vision and hand.

There is both an art and a science to the work of a sculptor. They understand that more is not more. Less is more. To get to the heart of a matter, you must remove everything that is not essential — then you must make it beautiful.

The same is true when building a great brand.

 

 

 

Watch / listen above or read below.

Todd Liles: All right, today in episode number 11, we’re going to talk about what actually makes a brand remarkable. Now, for today’s resources, I want everyone to know that I’m referencing two material sources. One is the Secret Formula of the Wizard of Ads, and the other one is Magical Worlds. Now, I’ve got my chapters marked and the chapter that we’re going to be covering, if you want to read along on your own, is, What is branding?

Roy Williams: Okay, okay. I got to do this. I got to do it.

Todd Liles: Yes. Do it.

Roy Williams: All right. So, whenever you announced what makes a brand remarkable, all right, that begs a question.

Todd Liles: All right.

Roy Williams: How do you know if a brand is remarkable?

Todd Liles: Well, Roy, I’m hoping that you will tell us. [chuckle]

Roy Williams: I will tell you right now. I’ll tell you right now. Here’s how you know a brand is remarkable: if you hear lots of people remarking about it.

Todd Liles: Oh, there we go.

Roy Williams: And so unless people are remarking about your brand, it is by definition not remarkable. And so, what is a brand? Well, honestly, I think Jeff Bezos gave the best definition of what a brand is.

Todd Liles: What was it?

Roy Williams: It’s what your customers say about you when you’re not around.

Todd Liles: That’s true. I heard… It was told to me, and it’s always made a lot of sense. How do you know if you’re a leader?

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: You turn around and see if anyone’s following you.

Roy Williams: Exactly.

Todd Liles: And it’s so true. So thank you, Roy. Hey, before we jump into the topic, one of the things that you’re doing to help me really bring to life our brand is connecting with the story of my origins. Now, we have a whole episode on origin story, so we’re not going to go too deep into that.

But this last Easter weekend, the family and I went back to Ruston. Ruston was where Louisiana Tech is, the first time since I graduated in 2001 that we’ve actually spent significant time there. We passed through to get gas. And I got to spend the weekend with my master. We would call him a sensei, a man that I trained with for years in martial arts as well as stage combat, which is completely and totally different.

And the reason why it’s different is that, as I’ve shared with you, the stage combat side is a dance. You and your partner know exactly what’s going on. It’s the dance of persuasion. The martial arts side is the sport. And then slightly above that, you actually get into the Battle of Warriors, which is a real and legitimate thing. But, Roy, what I want to tell you is that while I’ve stayed physically in shape, and the lessons that Mark Gwynn taught me, timeliness, discipline, community, care, working with a team, being a good partner, none of that has faded at all.

But the muscle memory of the dance, oh, boy, was I rusty. I was extremely rusty, Roy. It was humbling.

Roy Williams: And when we first got to know each other, and I was looking at your brand, I’m going, this is a portable brand. This could be given to anybody in this category, and it would fit. It would fit badly, but it would fit. And I said I need to understand what makes you who you are.

And it was a while. It was a good while before I ever realized that what really, really, really formed you and took you from boyhood into manhood was this whole thing with sword fighting and learning to be a sword master. And I’m going, oh, okay. And so I asked you to explain all that to me, and you said, There’s the dance, and then there’s the competition, and then there’s the combat where someone dies.

Todd Liles: That’s right.

Roy Williams: And combat is for real, and it’s very, very short, and it’s very, very quick, and somebody overwhelms somebody else in a big way, and it doesn’t last very long. Everything else that you see is, like on television or movies, either dance, probably dance, but maybe a little bit of sport. But probably not.

And I remember thinking about all this, and I’m going, okay. And then I started looking at everything that you teach, and I’m going, everything this guy believes, everything this guy teaches springs from this thing he studied so intensely during his formative years as a young man. And I’m going, it actually is the metaphor that explains everything you need to know about Todd Liles, it’s this sword-fighting stuff.

And so that’s what my partners and I call the uncovery. You have to uncover, you have to… It’s like digging for diamonds. Do you know how many tons of dirt they have to move to find a single diamond that will cut to be a one-carat diamond?

Todd Liles: I would say if you’re in the mine, probably at least 100 tons to one carat.

Roy Williams: Not quite, but it’s a lot. It’s a vast amounts of dirt. And you start going, okay, they’re uncovering the diamond. Michelangelo, there’s this really amazing, unbelievable angel that he carved out of a marble block. And whenever they said, How did you do that? What’s your process? And he says, well, he says, you look at the marble, and you see the angel. Then, you carve away everything that isn’t angel. And that’s what you have to do when you’re creating a brand.

Todd Liles: Michelangelo did the David as well, right?

Roy Williams: Yeah, he did.

Todd Liles: Is my memory correct that two other very well-renowned artists tried to work with that piece of marble, and they just gave up? And then he came in and finished… He created something new out of it. He saw the David. He saw a way to work this piece of marble that no one else saw.

Roy Williams: Well, it’s true, but there’s another piece to that.

Todd Liles: Oh, please tell.

Roy Williams: Michelangelo was a general contractor in the sense that he had a guy who did hands, and he had a guy who did feet. And it’s kind of like, so whenever you find a specialist who’s extraordinary at something, just extraordinary, as a matter of fact… And I know we’re wandering, but hey, that’s who I am.

Todd Liles: No, this is great.

Roy Williams: You know the deal that the guy… The rich guy who lives in Arabia, the…

Todd Liles: There’s so many of those. [chuckle]

Roy Williams: No, no, no, the guy… He had a guy murdered, and then he bought this famous Leonardo da Vinci. He had the English reporter cut up and…

Todd Liles: I don’t.

Roy Williams: You don’t remember?

Todd Liles: No.

Roy Williams: Okay. Well, it doesn’t matter what his name is. I’m just trying to remember. He’s a famous guy. He’s the richest guy over there. And so, anyway, he bought this painting not that many years ago, that’s supposed to be by Leonardo da Vinci, and it was certified, yeah, this is definitely a da Vinci. And it’s supposedly the Christ holding this crystal ball.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: I don’t believe it’s da Vinci.

Todd Liles: No.

Roy Williams: I really don’t. Honestly, don’t. But da Vinci touched it.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: Now, it was one of his students, I believe, that painted it. And a lot of other people believe that too. But the only thing that was definitely a da Vinci, and this is getting back to Michelangelo and the hands guy and the feet guy, da Vinci had a way of doing hair.

And he said… There’s one expert, the one that I most agree with, who was watching his student paint this. He goes, No, man, that’s not how you do hair, man. So he grabs a brush, he goes, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. And he does a few little touches just on the hair. He says, That’s the only place that you can say, that’s da Vinci right there. But I said, the rest of it is not the way da Vinci treated subjects. It’s not the… It doesn’t resemble any other da Vinci in the world.

So my point is, recognizing the essence of what makes Michelangelo Michelangelo, what makes da Vinci da Vinci. And what is a person’s superpower? What is the thing they do well? Now, we’re back to you. This whole sword-fighting thing.

Roy Williams: I’m going, what’s the essence of this brand? And I said, this brand flows from Todd Liles, and he has his fingerprints on every piece of this brand, on all the processes, on all the people, on how people are treated, everything, and it shows the way of how he thinks, speaks, acts, and sees the world. And so I said, now, once I can wrap my arms around that, and where did it come from, and what caused all of that, now you can speak in the voice of the Todd Liles brand.

Todd Liles: Yep.

Roy Williams: And I’m going, that is what real branding is. You can’t make it up externally by imitating other great brands and other great writers of brands. You actually have to do the work. You have to see the angel in the marble. And if you can’t see the angel in the marble, then you just need to go back to being a graphics artist.

Todd Liles: Yeah. Let me share with you something that was humbling but was also really, really interesting. So when we were there, we were practicing across a wide range of stage combat, which is dancing. And also, there are opportunities to do real martial arts that could be potentially dangerous.

So the first one that I did was stage combat, which again, is all choreography. So you get like five moves in, you’re doing fine. It’s about the sixth or seventh move when you’re starting to get into the limit of your short-term memory, to where you’re like, okay, in an hour class, this is going to be a lot to remember. So I found that extraordinarily humbling.

Then we went into a HEMA class. HEMA stands for Historical European Martial Arts. It is martial arts. It’s not martial arts people typically think of, because they imagine Eastern, but it is martial arts with a sword, with a real weapon. So we pick them up, this time they’re padded. And the very first thing the instructor says is, Let’s just see where your natural rhythms are. So, do your best to avoid head strikes. We know it might happen.

If you want to pick up headgear, it’s over there. We recommend that you do. Let’s see where your natural rhythms are. Now, here’s what was interesting, Roy, is that there were about eight people in the room. I went first with the instructor, and he’s striking… Now, if he wanted to, he could have totally destroyed me, but he was doing slow strikes at first. I was blocking his strikes. I was coming back.

And then after a few moments of that, we picked up the speed, and we were going back and forth. And at one point, he stops and goes, “You’ve done martial arts training. Where are you at in your studies right now?” And I’m like, “I haven’t really been studying since, but I do the breathing and the stance work every day, at least five days a week.” He’s like, “You’ve not lost any of that.”

So I proceeded to go around the room, and frankly, I was the most skilled at the reactionary arts. There’s no question. I was dominating that room. And as I was reflecting on this this morning, what I found myself going is I go, this is really interesting because the sport, the part that is pure mental reaction that you cannot think about, it’s still there, the combat side, and it’s actually easier.

The part of choreography where it requires two people to agree upon something and do the work was harder because I found myself in a knowledge trap. I still knew what to do, but my muscle memory wasn’t there yet, and I was getting stuck.

Roy Williams: Let’s talk about muscle memory, because what you’re actually talking about is training. And when you’re training a team in a company, you’re trying to create… What you’re calling muscle memory is actually known by cognitive neuroscientists and neurologists as procedural memory. And it’s automatic, involuntary recall.

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: Automatic involuntary recall. And it can trigger muscular action, but it can also trigger the name of a brand to be the company that people think of first and feel the best about. When you think of procedural memory, it is relevant. The scientists call it salience, but what they really mean, if we’re going to make up a word that means salience, is relevance.

Is it relevant? Does this matter to me? Now, if a thing is relevant, how relevant is it? Is it extremely relevant to you? The more relevant it is, the less repetition is required to anchor it and make it permanent. But the less relevant it is, the more repetition is required. So the formula is relevance times repetition.

And so the more you have of one, the less you need of the other, which is why if a person loves, loves, loves, loves, loves playing the piano, they can get really good, incredibly good, with the exact same amount of practice as somebody who… Or a person who has just as much practice, who doesn’t love it, won’t be nearly as good because the relevance to them is lower.

Todd Liles: Right. Roy, that leads me to the first chapter I want to read here. I’m actually going to read a chapter. This is from the Secret Formula of the Wizard of Ads. No one has a voice like you, but I want to read it to the audience.

Roy Williams: All right.

Todd Liles: All right? So by the way, get these books. We will put a place in the show notes where you can actually get a free download, right?

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: I believe it’s… Yeah, if it’s not, go buy a copy.

Roy Williams: Once upon a time, there was. I hope it’s still there.

Todd Liles: I think it’s still there. I’ll find out. If it’s not, go get yourself a copy. They’re affordable. All right. What is branding? Now, Roy, I’m going to skip…

Roy Williams: Yeah, skip, skip what you want to do.

Todd Liles: All right. What is branding? Branding is far from new. Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for his research into conditioning in 1904. Remember that story? Day after day, Pavlov would ring a bell as he rubbed meat paste on the tongue of a dog. The dog soon began to associate the taste of the meat with the sound of the bell until salivation became the dog’s conditioned response.

In psychological terms, this is implanting an associative memory. In other words, branding in its full glory. There are three keys to implanting an associative memory into the mind of your customer.

Number one, the first key is consistency. Pavlov never offered food without ringing the bell, and he never rang the bell without offering the food.

Number two, the second key is frequency, meaning that Pavlov did it day after day.

The third key is anchoring, and this is the tricky one. When an associative memory is being implanted, the new and unknown element, the bell, has to be associated with a memory that’s already anchored in the mind; the taste of the meat.

Frequency and consistency create branding only when your message is tied to an established emotional anchor. Pavlov’s branding campaign was anchored to the dog’s love for the taste of meat.

If the dog did not love meat, the frequent and consistent ringing of the bell would have produced no response other than to irritate the dog.

Roy Williams: And that’s what most advertising does. Now, whenever we’re talking about anchoring, we’re talking about relevance. If the taste of meat were not relevant to the dog, it would not work. And so whenever a person is creating ads, and they’re creating those ads based upon their personal preferences and beliefs, they’re an idiot.

You have to understand, it isn’t about me, it’s about most people. And so the writer of good ads has to get outside themselves. Nobody, especially if you’re on the inside looking out, if you work in that business, you cannot write ads for that business. I cannot write ads for my business. I can’t. It’s because I’m on the inside looking out, and it’s impossible to see yourself when you’re on the inside looking out.

You have to be on the outside looking in. And then if you’re going to speak to the masses, you have to be way outside looking in. You have to see the masses, and you have to understand what most people think most of the time. And then everybody will go. I can think of an exception. Shut up. There’s always an exception.

We’re talking about most of the people, most of the time. There’s no such thing. And this is what most advertisers don’t understand, Todd. They don’t understand that there is no such offer. There’s no such thing. There’s no such gimmick or trick. There’s no such language that appeals to all of the people all of the time.

Todd Liles: That’s right.

Roy Williams: It just doesn’t work. And so you have to just say, How can I win most people most of the time? And then go with that, and then ignore everybody who wants to nitpick and point out exceptions.

Todd Liles: So, Roy, I have a question because this episode is about branding that is remarkable. And you led with that. But this story is remarkable. We hear this story as young children in our first-level science class, and it stays with us. So what I don’t understand is why.

What is it about the story of Pavlov’s dog that… As soon as I started reading that, everyone’s like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. They may not have understood the essence of what you just covered in your writing, but why does this story stand out and just stay with us so well? Is it the dog? Is it the weird name, Pavlov? There’s something about this story that, beyond the evidence, it’s with us almost like Mary Had a Little Lamb is with us. We know this story.

Roy Williams: Okay. So there’s actually three or four different reasons, but one of which is anytime you’re telling a story, or even anytime you’re taking pictures, everybody’s a sucker for a baby and an animal, and especially if the animal is, like, a dog…

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: Or a cat. But you just can’t go wrong with a dog. I mean, it’s like, people love dogs, man’s best friend, blah, blah, blah.

Todd Liles: Absolutely.

Roy Williams: And I’m saying, so… The other thing is, it is the definitive story. It is the simplest and most easily remembered story of an experiment that we could have done in the first grade. Any person could have done this experiment. So you couldn’t do what Isaac Newton did, but you could do what Ivan Pavlov did. And you’re going, wait a minute, that is science. That is science.

And so he did this test. I’ve got a dog. I could get some canned meat, and I could have done that, and I could have been famous. And so it causes you to be able to imagine the sequence of events. Why? Because it just wasn’t that many things. There’s a dog, a bell, and a can of meat.

Todd Liles: One of my favorite episodes of The Big Bang Theory is when Sheldon is trying to get Penny, the attractive, not-as-smart-as-everybody-else blonde, across the room, to stop sitting in his chair and start doing things that he wanted her to do. So he got a box of chocolates because he heard all girls love chocolate.

So when she was sitting in his chair, he’s like, Penny. And she goes, Oh, sorry, hon. And she scoots over, and he reaches over, grabs the chocolate and goes, Chocolate? And she goes, Oh, yes. And so throughout the show, every time she does something he wants her to do, and even when he… It gets to the point where he doesn’t have to ask her; she’s just doing the things, and he’s giving her chocolates.

His friend Leonard is looking at him like, Sheldon, that’s not nice, Sheldon. [chuckle] Because everyone knows he’s running Pavlov’s experiment on Penny. And it’s great.

All right, the next thing that I want to do is read category dominance. The ultimate goal of branding is to establish category dominance, to become the company that customers think of immediately, and the one that they feel the best about whenever your product is named. Now, as I’m about to read this next section, keep in mind this was written… 20 years ago?

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: 20 years ago.

Roy Williams: Actually, that was written in… Which one is that?

Todd Liles: This one is Secret Formulas.

Roy Williams: Secret… That was written in 2000, so it’s been 25 years.

Todd Liles: 25 years. Here’s the reason I say that, so listen up. Toys R Us is currently category dominant in toys, Home Depot in home improvement products, and Circuit City in electronics. Staples, Office Depot, and OfficeMax are slugging it out to see who will be the category dominant in office supplies. Though each of these is a superstore, category dominance is not really about square footage at all. It’s about courage.

You then go on to speak about Kentucky Fried Chicken, Starbucks, and up-and-coming RadioShack, each having achieved category dominance with only a few square feet. Category dominance can be achieved only through focus and commitment. Will you be category dominant? If so, you must take a stand and be known for something. What will you be known for?

So I have a few questions for you. And here’s the first one, which actually maybe isn’t a little bit about branding, but maybe it is. We mentioned nine brands. Toys R Us, Home Depot, Circuit City, Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Starbucks, RadioShack. Now, Office Depot and OfficeMax became one, until they just very recently, in the last couple of months, became nothing.

Toys R Us is gone, outside of representing a small space in like Macy’s department stores, I believe. Circuit City is gone. What remains today is Home Depot, Staples, KFC, and Starbucks. Five of the nine are gone.

My question to you is, what do you think those five people did mistake-wise? Or was it even a mistake? Was it just evolution? Why did they collapse when Home Depot, Staples, and especially Staples, because there were three of them in the same product category. Starbucks, Kentucky Fried Chicken, they’re still alive and doing fine. So what’s your perspective on that? And I didn’t prepare you for that, so I’m putting you on the spot a little bit.

Roy Williams: No, not really. It’s not that hard. People who go broke, especially when it’s a big brand, when it’s a big, nationally known brand, how do they stumble and fall? Usually, it’s because they forgot the business they are in. And when you forget the business you’re in… And the best example of this is Kodak.

See, Kodak was literally a world brand. There’s a Kodak moment, as they used to talk about. Nobody’s old enough probably listening to this, who remembers when the Kodak moment was a really big thing worldwide. But it was. It just means, no, this screams for a photograph. Well, now here’s what happened. A scientist at Kodak invented digital photography. It was invented by a guy at Kodak.

And they looked at it, and they said, Oh, bury that. We’re in the film business. And that’s why they went broke. They said, No, we’re in the film business. Now, a similar story about Rolex. Rolex invented the ETA quartz movement, which is the quartz chip, basically, the little quartz component in every electric watch in the world, invented by Rolex.

And they said, Oh no, we don’t want to unemploy 90,000 Swiss watchmakers because mechanical watches have gears and springs and all that. Now, quartz watches keep better time. They said, nah, we don’t want that. Bury that. And so they said, We’ll just bury it in Japan.

And so they sold the technology to the Japanese, and then the Japanese unemployed 90,000 Swiss watchmakers. Now, what did Kodak do? They said, No, no, no, we’re going to bury this digital thing. When an idea’s time has come, I promise you’re not the only person having that idea. I promise you’re not. It’s what I call the theory of universal knowledge.

Because the same influences today… We are all given similar information at a similar time, and so the fact that we will all have… Or a lot of people have a similar realization simultaneously shouldn’t surprise you. So Kodak says, no, no, no, no. You can see a picture of the guy holding the original digital camera if you go look for it. Kodak scientist. And they said, We’re in the film business. No, no, no, no. They were never in the film business. They were in the image capture business. And when they forgot they were in the image capture business, they were taken down by other people who said, Hey, gee, you’re no longer the champion of image capturing.

We can overtake you because you forgot who you are. You forgot what it was that made you famous. So when you start thinking you’re in the film business, you are vulnerable and are probably going to be taken down by some little hungry character way back behind you who’s going to come, whoosh, past you like this and leave you with your guts on the floor.

Todd Liles: Yeah. What’s amazing when you think about it like that, which I haven’t until now, is that they should have been the first to social media.

Roy Williams: Absolutely.

Todd Liles: They should have been the first to digital.

Roy Williams: Yep.

Todd Liles: All things that are about capturing, imaging, and sharing your life. They’re in the image-capturing business for the purpose of memories.

Roy Williams: When you forget who you are, you’re vulnerable.

Todd Liles: Yeah, that’s very good. And we see this. Staples didn’t forget. Or maybe they did, I don’t know.

Roy Williams: Staples and those guys were just brought down by online ordering.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And what happens is when a person says, No, we’re not going to participate with these big conglomerate things because we’re not going to pay them a commission, we’re going to have our own website and drive them to our own website, yeah, actually, you’re not. And so there comes a point at which, when the battlefield has changed, then the battle has changed with it. And whenever a new technology comes along, and suddenly it’s just easier… You know why people went to Amazon instead of Barnes & Noble and Borders?

Todd Liles: I know why I did. It was just convenient.

Roy Williams: Well, you weren’t sure that they were going to have the book you wanted when you got there.

Todd Liles: I didn’t do… me, I never bought a single book from Amazon.

Roy Williams: Never did?

Todd Liles: Never did. I didn’t get into Amazon till way, way, way after that. It was when they introduced Prime. I sort of resisted it because I wanted to do the small business thing.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: And then when Prime came out and we were able to get things overnighted to us…

Roy Williams: That’s a good example of… See, you’re a late adopter in some areas, I’m a late adopter in other areas. And if you had been an ad writer and you thought, well, I’m committed to local business, then everybody is, like, nobody else was. Not enough people.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: So when you start appealing to this idea that I’m local, there is a percentage of people that that matters to, but not as many as you wish. So the same thing happened. Whenever I said you have to be distant, you have to get way back away from the situation and try to see what the actual masses are doing.

Most people were less committed to the local business idea, because Barnes & Noble and Borders are not local businesses anyway. It’s a national business with a local location. But the point is, too many times they’d gone to the bookstore, and they didn’t have the book in stock. They said, We’ll order it for you and you can drive back here in three days or whatever. It’s like, yeah…

Todd Liles: Right, I don’t want to do that.

Roy Williams: What happens is whenever you cannot leave your house and go, click, click, and it’ll be here tomorrow or the next day, okay, these guys always have it in stock. And so the efficiency of these people always has what I’m looking for, I’ll have to just go click, one-click ordering.

Amazon patented one-click ordering. And for 17 years, nobody in the world could have one-click ordering except Amazon. And then the only person who ever paid them enough millions of dollars to license it from them was Apple. So Apple and Amazon, for many, many years, were the only two companies on the face of the earth with one-click ordering because miraculously, Amazon.com was able to patent that process, and patents expire in 17 years. When 17 years were over, a whole lot of other people had one-click ordering.

Todd Liles: Roy, I can remember Jim and John both saying many times from the stage when they were talking to plumbers, electricians, air conditioning contractors, they would ask them what business they were in. Everybody would say what you would think. I’m in the business of doing plumbing. And then it might get a little bit more sophisticated. I’m in the business of making people happy through my plumbing services.

And then they’d always go, no, no, no, no, no, no, you’re actually in the sales and marketing business. So that was their big message, like, nope, you’re in sales and marketing. Never forget it. You’re not in the home service business; you’re in sales and marketing. I don’t know if I ever actually fully adopted that. I recognized part of the point, but it didn’t feel right in my heart. I want to see what you think…

Roy Williams: No, no, see, I understand why they were saying it. They were trying to make their own services and their own training more vital, more important. But the truth is, if you ask yourself, okay, what is the function of sales and marketing? The function of sales and marketing is to have the people and the advertising that will convince people that you can make them happy.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And so you are, no matter what you sell, you’re in the business of making someone happy. And all of your processes of sales training or selling or even the performance of your technicians in the home… If you can in fact deliver that happiness that you implied you could deliver, if you could actually communicate to them through things you say and don’t say, just through your behavior, if you can convince them that these are the people that I really believe I’m going to be happy with, and then deliver what you promised, which is deliver that happiness, deliver that satisfaction, deliver that warm glow of how this was a seamless, effortless, frictionless experience, then, yeah.

So all of a sudden, all the training on processes and culture and customer interactions and the marketing, which is simply the promising of this delightful experience, causes people to imagine it and believe that it will happen. Yeah, you’re selling happiness, and the vehicles are sales and marketing.

Todd Liles: I want to read something here. And the primary reason that I want to read it is that I feel like the opening paragraph is just a beautiful explanation of so many things. I have found myself saying this to people when something is complicated, and I know I need to simplify it, but I don’t need to get into the, that’s not technically correct argument. So this is under the neurology of branding, this beautiful opening paragraph.

People who refer to the Earth as round are technically wrong but directionally accurate. Technically, our planet is an oblate spheroid, but to explain that subtle difference just wouldn’t be worth the trouble, so we usually say the Earth is round and leave it at that. Likewise, what you are about to read is technically wrong but directionally accurate.

For each of our senses, the brain offers short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory is electrical, and long-term memory is chemical.

Beautiful chapter. Read that in its entirety. But I love that for the main purpose of going, let’s quit arguing about some nuances here, and let’s get to the meat and potatoes of it. We’re going to call this short-term, we’re going to call this long-term, and we’re going to get this thing seared in.

So, I’m just going to bring it to my two questions, and then we’re going to watch the ad. Roy, what’s happening in our brain when a brand goes from saying, “Hey, that was something I saw,” to “Oh yeah, I remember that.” Like you just mentioned, “Yeah, yeah, I remember that,” as opposed to, “Here, let me show you this thing,” and they go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that.” Versus, “Oh, I know exactly what that is.”

Roy Williams: That’s the difference between… Both of those are declarative memory. So working memory is consciousness, it’s awareness, it’s the thought you’re thinking now. It’s every split second. That moment in working memory is replaced by a new moment in working memory. Think of it as the RAM in the computer of the brain. Now, when you unplug the computer, that means you’re asleep. So, working memory disappears when you’re asleep.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: Consciousness, awareness, that disappears. Now, what’s left is the next morning, they say that the amount of data gushing toward your brain is like a fire hose aimed at a teacup. Sensory data. And precious little of it is in that teacup when you go to sleep, and a lot of that evaporates out during the night. Now, what’s left, that tiny little bit of what happened yesterday that’s left in that teacup, is called declarative memory.

There are two types of declarative memory. It is called procedural, which is the same thing you were talking about. I remember the moment. I remember where I was, I remember who I was with. I remember the moment. That’s called declarative procedural memory. Or not… I messed that up. It is called episodic declarative memory. So, you remember the episode. Episodic declarative memory. Now, the other one… I had it in my head a second ago. There’s episodic, declarative, and then there is… I’ll have to look at it, the other one. Episodic, and then… It starts with an S. Semantic.

Todd Liles: Semantic.

Roy Williams: Yeah. So there’s semantic declarative memory, which you remember the information. Semantic declarative memory, you remember the information, but you don’t remember where you were or who you were with or who was speaking. You just remember the information. You have no memory of the circumstances of that learning. But when you remember the episode, you remember where you were and who you were with and who was speaking. You’re there again when you think about it; that’s called episodic declarative memory. So here’s the question, Todd. Think about this for a second. What separates semantic declarative from episodic declarative?

Todd Liles: What separates it? Well, with episodic, it seems to me like you lived an experience.

Roy Williams: Yes, it is an emotional relevance. You have connections and associations; you’re connected to that moment, which means there was some emotional impact on you. Now, what’s called the biochemical adhesive that emotion brings, I always say, if you can make people laugh, cry, or become frustrated, laugh, cry, or get angry, then you’re triggering a micro burst of adrenaline.

And adrenaline is the biochemical adhesive that turns declarative into episodic. And it turns episodic, with repetition, with rehearsal, it turns it into procedural memory, which is long-term, chemical, involuntary, automatic recall.

Todd Liles: So what I’ll do, instead of asking a question, I’m going to make a statement. Because all of these things come together loud and clear, because we’re saying, hey, what makes a brand remarkable? But we can also bring that down to what makes an ad remarkable. And to answer it, I’m actually going to go in another direction. I’m going to say, what isn’t remarkable? And it’s any of these sorts of short-term, limited, call-to-action, urgency-type, react now ads. And you make a very clear point in the book, the reason why that doesn’t work is that when you tell someone, this is limited time, this is urgent, you are essentially putting in their brain, hey, after today, please forget this. And forget the brand that goes along with it as well.

Roy Williams: Right. In other words, this event, this sale, this offer expires Saturday.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: What you’re doing, you’re telling the brain, no need to remember any of this beyond Saturday. And it’s kind of like… Your brain is a very smart organism. And when you say, This has no relevance whatsoever after Saturday, it has none. And then the brain will ask another question of itself. Well, does it even have any relevance at this moment?

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: No. Well, I don’t even need to remember until Saturday, then, do I? It’s like, boom. And the idea, Todd, people believe that some… A lot of people they’ve been taught that somewhere in your mind, everything you’ve ever experienced could be recalled, maybe under hypnosis or whatever, but it’s in there somewhere. Everything you’ve ever seen or heard or tasted or touched or felt is stored in your brain. No, it isn’t. Absolutely not.

As I said earlier, the amount of sensory data gushing at your brain is like a firehose aimed at a teacup. And the idea that you store even a tiny speck, if you don’t have relevance, it never makes it into working memory. There has to be relevance before you even have consciousness of it. And then if there is no relevance, there’s really not even any consciousness, it’s just a flicker, and it’s kicked out, it’s gone forever. There is no recall of it…

Todd Liles: Love it.

Roy Williams: Under hypnosis or anything else. It just never made it to the party.

Todd Liles: Well, we’re going to watch a very classic ad. Is it the original Got Milk? Ad. And I know that when people see this, you’re going to go, boom, I remember this very, very well. And we’ll unpack why this ad was so successful, because this is the one that kicked it off.

 

Radio Voice: And that was the Vienna Wood Dance in D, one of my all-time favorites. And now let’s make that random call with today’s $10,000 question. It’s a tough one. Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel? All right, let’s go to the phones and see who’s out there.

History Buff: Hello? [garbled]

Radio Voice: Hello. For $10,000, who shot…

History Buff: [struggling garbled words] Aaron Burr.

Radio Voice: Excuse me.

History Buff: [struggling garbled words] Aaron Burr. Hold on let me get a glass of milk. No!

Radio Voice: I’m afraid your time is almost up.

History Buff: [struggling garbled words] Aaron Burr!

Radio Voice: I’m sorry. Maybe next time.

History Buff: [struggling garbled words] Aaron Burr…

Announcer: Got milk?

Todd Liles: ’93, 1993. And I had forgotten the original Got Milk? Commercial. I had not forgotten the Got Milk? Campaign, but as soon as I heard that tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, I was like, oh, I know what this is. Now, in this particular ad, there are a couple of things that are going on. And I’m feeling like you’re making me smarter, but this is the show where I get to ask you questions. So tell me the things that you see in that ad that made that ad work so well.

Roy Williams: Okay. Let me begin by pointing out that ad was unique because it was the first one, but it’s not what most people remember about the Got Milk? Campaign. So, explaining what made that ad succeed is not to explain what made the campaign successful. Two different questions.

Todd Liles: Got you.

Roy Williams: All right. So in that thing right there, what’s called establishing the shot, they show you Aaron, the memoirs of Hamilton, they show all of these things, the actual bullet from the duel where Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in Weehawken on the Palisades right across the Hudson from Manhattan. Been to the spot.

The point is that they’re educating you that this is probably the foremost expert in the world, and there’s another little thing that’s going on that maybe most people didn’t notice, where they’re playing the violin music and he’s putting the stuff on the bread, and it’s like, it looks like he’s playing the violin. I promise, they did that on purpose. And so it’s a subconscious thing, but he is part of this moment, and his life revolves around Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

Roy Williams: And this is obviously the guy who knows the answer, and so the idea that, let’s call and see if anyone answers, and they actually call the one guy who knows more than anybody in the world. And the reason he couldn’t answer is that he was out of milk. Okay, that’s a funny gag. It only works once. You know why? If they created another scenario…

Todd Liles: You don’t care.

Roy Williams: They created another scenario where the person was an expert in a different subject, and suddenly they, in a critical moment, forget what creates the crisis, but they couldn’t speak because they were out of milk. Now, it only works once. That’s one of the things about humor. Once you’ve burned it, it’s burned. You have to have a new thing that’s funny. And so that’s why humor is so very hard to write. You can’t keep coming back to the same gag, you know?

Now, what made the actual campaign succeed was the milk mustache. Do you remember when everybody had the milk mustache?

Todd Liles: Yes, totally relatable.

Roy Williams: Now, that’s relatable. And it is visually funny because any reasonably attractive person, or little kid, or anybody with a milk mustache, the only person who doesn’t know they have a milk mustache is the person with the milk mustache, right? And so this idea that goes, I’ve done that, I’ve seen people do that, it’s a real thing. And then, because milk does not have to be explained. We don’t have to be reminded that we like milk. And so the question, Got Milk? And then, the milk mustache. I’ll tell you who else did a similar thing. And I’m probably the only person in the world who remembers this because this was really a long time ago. This would have been ’77, ’78, ’79.

Once a day on radio stations from coast to coast, just after… First commercial break after 12:00 noon, there was a little five-second ad, “Wouldn’t a hot bowl of Campbell’s soup taste really good right now?” [chuckle] “Wouldn’t a hot bowl of Campbell’s soup taste really good right now?” Now, why did they do that?

Todd Liles: Lunchtime.

Roy Williams: Because, yeah, in those days, there were still enormous numbers of people at home, and there were still… America was not yet a two-income household. There were plenty of people at home working hard, doing the things you have to do to run a household. And so, see, Campbell’s knew something. Everybody in America has several cans of Campbell’s soup in the cupboard. Everybody does. And there were no other competing soup brands back in those days.

And they said, now the key, what we need to do is to get people to take out the Campbell’s soup and eat it because they’re not going to buy any more until they eat what they’ve got. So instead of saying, you need to go buy some soup, the ad was right after 12:00 noon. They just wanted people to eat the soup they already had. And so that idea… And does it also trigger people just to remember, “Oh, I do love soup, and I think we’re running low, I should probably stop and get some soup,” even works on people who may be in the moment of possibly buying more. It works on them, but it was really the primary target of that. The primary thing they were trying to do was, with the knowledge that everybody already has soup, get them to eat it.

Todd Liles: I love it.

Roy Williams: And so, Got Milk? Exact same idea.

Todd Liles: Perfect. Roy, what is the big takeaway from this episode for the listener?

Roy Williams: Relevance. You have to have relevance. People have to care about what you’re saying. And you can’t make them care. Just because they ought to care doesn’t mean that you can convince them to care. Talk to them about something they already care about. And then, you have to do that with consistency. You have to do it with a lot of repetition. Relevance without repetition has to be a staggering, overwhelming, life-controlling relevance.

And so this idea of reaching people in the moment that they’re ready to buy, good luck with that, dumbass. It is so unbelievably hard to have enough relevance and credibility and to be able to find the person in the moment of decision. It’s like, yeah, good luck.

Todd Liles: I love it. Well, thank you, Roy, for another great episode. By the way, listener and watcher, we have very robust, detailed show notes on the website, full transcripts, key takeaways, free resources, so make sure you go there.

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