NIKE ads are finally good again!
They remembered their core audience and spoke to the passion and emotions involved.
Painting With Words
Your words attract either transactional or relational customers, so telling the story of your business well is crucial.
Radio Ads Cost How Much?!
In many cities, spending a dollar reaches somebody with 60-second ads three times a week for a full 52 weeks.
The Most Important Place in Your Business Is Where the Wires Can’t Reach
This kind of presence can’t be automated. But it’s often the reason people stay loyal.
THE WIZARD (bi)WEEKLY
Twice a month we’ll send our best advice, no strings attached.
Let’s grow your business.
No spam. No nonsense.
The SECRET To Better Advertising – Entertainment ISN’T Always Funny
When you’re cringing, it doesn’t feel like an ad.
Turtle Power – How Absurdity Built an Empire
They maxed out their cards and got a loan from an uncle. How’d they reach $17 billion?
Marketing Is Dead. Long Live Marketing!
When you understand how humans actually buy, you don’t have to force the sale.
How Pixar’s Culture Drives Financial Success
Their movies net half a billion dollars each. Can we learn what makes them special?
Partner Book of the Month
Latest Monday Morning Memo
Find Advice By Tag
adspeak AI bad times billboards bonding brandable chunks branding case studies customer behavior design digital direct response entertainment Facebook Ads inspiration leadership managing marketing costs mass media media buying misconceptions mistakes origin story persuasion PPC print radio recruiting relational buyers research sales salespeople SEO share of mind share of voice social media standing out targeting television transactional buyers whiskey writing
Culture Shows the Way, Strategy Pays the Bills
“If you focus on culture, you don’t need to worry about revenue.” It sounds nice. But it’s not true.
Lure of the Aurora Borealis
Tourists want to gaze at the sky, but it’s too frigid. See how a hotel turned an obstacle into an opportunity.
Connect 4: Turning ‘Different Thinking’ into an Advantage
Howard’s dyslexia spurred innovative ideas, but his Hasbro bosses rejected them.
Marketing’s Focus Group Trap
Why the “smartest” person in the room is ruining your marketing.
Why Your Brand Can’t Afford to Forget What AI Will Never Hold
Are we building for speed, or are we building for staying power?
Unexpected Sales Lessons from a Master Bartender
If you master connection then nobody is buying off the right-hand side of the menu.
Snickers Uses Shared Experience To Make Incredible Advertising
It’s all about entertainment and emotion. They’re owning your brain for 30 seconds.
The Metric Trap Sabotaging Your Marketing
Offline advertising is perhaps 10 times more effective than you think, and digital is about a third.
How Hilton grew despite a bad economy
How did Conrad create the first modern hotel experience facing economic headwinds?
Bold Consistency
Both bird feeders and ad campaigns will typically fail to attract their intended targets for similar reasons.
How to Handle Bad News in Business
Just because your door is open, doesn’t mean you’re approachable.
How To Sell Brown Liquor
How does Nick, a non-marketer, get people making road trips to line up before the store opens?
You never forget your first real coach
They’ll either help you grow or reinforce the belief that coaching is just a fancy word for pressure.
Bet the House, Hit the Road – A Barber’s Belief in UNO
At 60 years old he mortgages his home and it’s not selling.
Public Service Advertising Done Right
It’s really hard to educate the consumer, but they made a dull subject sparkle.
Drifters, Surfers, Drowners, and Sailors
There are four kinds of people you meet when you’re sailing the water of life. Only one finds success.
The Art of Storytelling and Whiskey Tasting with Paul Boomer
The way you share things and the settings that you provide make all the difference.
The Marketing Trap Every Small Business Falls For
A recent report describes the “damage, not deliverance” that results from over-reliance on digital advertising.
Get A Clue – Combining Concepts Can Be A Game-Changer
The inventor drew inspiration from disparate fields to create something extraordinary.
The Simple Formula for Getting Everyone to Use a New Strategy
Every choice, big or small, either reinforces your brand’s identity or confuses it.
Mastering the Art of Sales: Substance or Style?
One client didn’t want me back because my backup wore nicer shoes.
AI Ate Your SEO — Now What?
How can business owners respond to this switch from Google to AI and win?
Stallone’s Rocky Ride From Selling His Dog to Owning Hollywood
When building your dream, staying power is everything.
Always Replace Yourself
If something dies the moment you stop touching it, you have a micro-management hell-hole.
Time Management for Sales Success: Feed the Ducks Wisely
There are days when you’re not going to want to do work. And that’s okay.
Investing effort vs. spending time
How does your business serve? Customers pay you to do. Clients hire you to be. They look alike. But they don’t act alike.
The Costco Story – Turning Restrictions into Retail Gold
It would have been easy for the experience to become crappy, but for some reason, it isn’t.
Ideas are Living Things
When an idea pops into your head, if it’s truly valuable, you can guarantee you aren’t the only one that it appeared to.
Quality vs. Price: Why Paying Too Little Can Cost You Everything
You can’t apologize for your price. There’s a good reason for it.
Bypass Logic & Win Hearts With The Princess Bride Effect
Seeing an ad alerts the inner critic and gets logic going. We can suspend that disbelief.
You Can Quantify Trust
People trust numbers. They trust them even when those numbers might not tell them the whole story.
Howard Johnson’s – The First Restaurant Franchise
How did they go from 2 locations in 1935 up to 107 locations 4 years later?
Social Media: Focus On People With A Command To Watch
What is it that physiologically strikes people that stops their thumb from scrolling?
Sales Success Secrets: How Being the “Dumbest” Person in the Room Wins
People hear “dumbest” as a negative, when it’s actually the most curious.
Customers never bond with facts
When they realize your brand’s story is a part of their story, they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.
Want your ads to get noticed? Deny a common truth.
When something violates our expectations, the hippocampus prioritizes that information.
Lite Beer: How listening launched a whole new category
It’s not going to sell if you don’t help customers identify with your brand.
Your Greatest Power: 5 Keys for Winning in Business and in Life
The capacity to “choose” is your most valuable resource.
Leader, Manager, Coach – What’s the Difference?
What separates the three roles and skills? Is one the best? How do you identify them?
How to create a strategy – Let’s get real.
If it’s something that’s really common, it’s a tactic. It’s not a strategy because a strategy can’t be repurposed.
Unique Selling Propositions
The problem with most marketing consultants is they try to make their client’s product seem unique.
Play angle of approach for fun and profit
Angle of approach lets you transform a rolling piece of scrap into a dream car.
The Psychology of Pricing: Anchoring Techniques
Adding a decoy can increase selection of the most expensive option from 32% up to 84%.
Ding dong! Avon calling! – Why it worked.
Persis showed how the best way to market to women was to have women selling.
Which Marketing Strategy is Most Effective?
Growing a business requires two types of strategies: Overarching Marketing Strategy and Message Strategy.
My Spock Meets Don Quixote
To be a successful entrepreneur you have to be one part Don Quixote and one part Mr. Spock.
How Did You Hear About Us?
Asking is selfish and goes nowhere. And don’t ever make your problem the customer’s problem, ever.
The Rise of Root Beer – Attaching to the Familiar
How did a pharmacist popularize his alternative to polluted water or alcohol? Can we use the same play?
Mastering Sales Onboarding: Tips for Training New Reps
Replacing someone due to poor onboarding can cost 50% of their annual salary.
How to Become Famous on a Small Marketing Budget
There are 3 main levers that can help you become famous and wealthy.
Digital Advertising: The Magic Money-Burning Machine?
How do you ensure that your digital advertising performs like an investment rather than an expense?
Calendly’s Formula – Dive Into The Customer Experience
There was software he found that solved bits and pieces, but none checked all the boxes.
Hyper Empathy: The Double-Edged Sword in Sales
When does it go too far and become unconsciously just about, “I want you to like me?”
Everyone Should Have a Jingle
What makes a great jingle? And what does the science of audio branding teach us about them?
Our Simple, 6-Step Sequence for Cementing Your Success
Your business needs a real plan to build a cohesive brand and attract your best customers.
Is ROAS the Crown Jewel of Marketing Metrics?
You’re lucky if you can confidently track more than 50% of conversions. So what’s the alternative?
Yahtzee’s Rise To #1 – What The Creator Got Right His 2nd Time
A door-to-door salesman creates Bingo and stays broke. How did he make millions on his next game?
QR Codes: How to Use Them the Right Way
QR codes offer a powerful bridge between the physical and digital worlds, but they’re often misused.
Beware The Flying Monkeys
Even a Technicolor scarecrow could follow these 5 lessons for small business owners.
Drumming Up Passion and Commitment
You ask one guy what he’s doing, he says, “Laying bricks.” You ask the next guy, “I’m building a cathedral.”
Pictionary’s Secret to Success – Something Old, Something New
A lot of places go, “Let’s just do PR.” But they did something better.
How Do I Get More Good Leads
Let’s cut to the chase on how to attract the high-quality leads that want what you’re offering.
The triangle of combustion: why websites aren’t advertising
You may have a smokin’ hot website. But your website isn’t advertising. Advertising is intrusive.
Forgettable to UNFORGETTABLE: William Mattar Made a Huge Impact!
Don’t just copy the ad. Take the underlying idea of what made it successful and apply it.
Reframing the Recruitment Riddle
Your lures have to be more attractive than the same-old benefits package of your competitors.
Liquid Death’s Secret Ingredient – Not Water. Marketing.
He came from the advertising industry and was tired of the handcuffs.
Three steps to advertising clarity
Instead of starting with the meat of a marketing strategy, businesses jump to the “dessert” of media selection.
This is a GOOD Car Commercial
My daughters were like, “That’s a stupid ad.” But they were pinpoint targeting the DNA of the drivers they wanted.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?”
Here’s the problem: If you’re going to ask a question, be prepared to listen to the answer.
Slinky’s Marketing Springboard
Christmas is coming and he has not sold one. So what does he then change to sell 300 million?
“Google is God”
Just because you need Google to succeed doesn’t mean it alone can put you in a leadership position.
How Old Spice Saved Their Brand!
“We’ve got nothing to lose.” It was hard to say yes and run this strange ad, but they were that desperate.
Cult Branding Secrets: Tools for Creating Loyal Customers
The cult made promises then didn’t deliver, but my friends stayed. And that baffled me. Where does loyalty come from?
Donut Stop Believin’: Dunkin’s Recipe For An Empire
How’d they become the 2nd largest restaurant chain in the US? Get the ‘hole’ story.
Recruiting, Rewarding and Retaining
33% of high performers plan to leave their company. But if they’re formally recognized it drops to 14%.
How Poo-Pourri Went Viral
When you tone something like this down, it doesn’t work. The owner must be ready to go all the way into the joke.
“Oh, But My Company is Different.”
Real matters. Only a fool looks at another company’s ad and says, “We should do that.”
The Journey from Corporate Misfit to Creative Ad Writer
“Too colorful” to fit in at work, Jack began spotlighting the remarkable stories hidden in boring brands.
Social Media & Recruitment – A Case Study with No Bull RV
We’re imperfect people selling imperfect RVs. So we don’t have to pretend we’re something we’re not.
Should I Put Pricing on My Website?
Both B2B and B2C buyers aim to be at least 70% confident in their buying decision before they pick up the phone.
Emotion in Advertising Equals Dollars in Business
6 marketing pros on 2 continents explain the financial benefits with proven outcomes rooted in human psychology.
Cadillac’s SEXY Brand Revival Strategy
It takes vulnerability and bravery to address and dismiss like this, which is why it’s not done that often.
No Place Like Home Services Author Interview
Story. Culture. Experience. When we market a company and make promises to customers it’s either a mirror or it’s a fairy tale.
Anacin’s Marketing Lessons – USP or Feelings?
They forever changed how medicine was marketed, but people misunderstand why it worked.
SEO Is A Scam – What You Need to Know in 2025
Our first request is a list of SEO changes made over the past 3 – 6 months. 9 times out of 10, no changes were made.
Targeting is the “Only Way” to Advertise
Is mass media a farce? Maybe. Or is there another way to get the right people to do what we hope them to do?
How Well Do You Know Them?
What the Chamber of Commerce and a wedding bartender know about your customers and 25%-95% profit growth.
The Missing Element in Sales Training: Mastering Resilience
Optimistic salespeople sell 56% more, but how do they stay positive?
The UPS Strategy: Innovation at Every Turn (Except Left Turns)
A poor 19-year-old saw an opportunity in telegraphs. Now UPS has over 500,000 drivers. How?
The EASY Way to Win People’s Hearts!
The silhouettes and story worked wonders. You know something’s a big deal when it’s spoofed on Family Guy.
Marketing Funeral Homes: Balancing Sensitivity with Strategy
How do you sell something people resist thinking about? For example: funeral homes.
Unconditional Gifts: The Key to Influence – Part 2
In sales situations, most of these gifts don’t cost any money and customers respond to them.
Advertising Doesn’t Affect Me “I am immune to it”
90% of advertising is rubbish and most ads don’t work because the writing and the distribution are wrong.
The History of Franchising – Making Millionaires
What’s the story behind it all? And what kind of person becomes a successful franchisee?
PROOF That Direct Mail ACTUALLY Works!
It has been attributed to $2 billion of subscription sales, this letter. It was unbeaten for 28 years.
Ten Timeless Truths For Marketing Service Companies
Budgets are good, especially in marketing. Get clear on strategy, then let the budget be your road map.
Is Retail Service Really Dead? A Lesson in Patience and Understanding
How to model understanding so your team feels better and delivers for your customers.
Are Marketing and Advertising the Same Thing?
The difference between the two isn’t just academic, it affects how you’ll budget and lead.
From Scientist to Snapshot: How Kodak Made Photography Easy
It was the 5th most valuable business in the world for a reason. What did they do right?
This LEVI’s Campaign did SEXY, their way!
The marketplace that was not excited and the price point was too high. They ran this ad and it blew the doors off.