Dear Reader,

I’ve been inside a lot of businesses over the years.

Big ones. Small ones. Companies with giant marketing budgets… and some who’ve barely scraped enough together for uniforms and a few yard signs.

And there’s one thing I’ve noticed over and over again:

It’s not the flashy logos or fancy websites that build trust.

It’s when everything aligns.

The way the receptionist answers the phone. The way the trucks look. The way a tech talks to a homeowner at the kitchen table.

When everything aligns, customers feel safe. They feel like they know you. Like they can trust you with their money, their home, even their problems.

But when it doesn’t?

When your radio ad sounds like one company, but your website sounds like another…

When your tech shows up looking sharp, but your paperwork looks like it was printed in 1993…

That’s when trust evaporates.

Customers don’t usually tell you they’re confused.

They just quietly decide to go somewhere else.

That’s what Roy and I talk about in this episode:

Channel alignment.

It sounds like a fancy term. But it’s really about one thing… speaking with one voice everywhere your customer meets you.

Because mixed signals don’t just confuse people.

They cost you customers. And sales.

I hope this episode helps you spot the gaps in your brand’s voice, and close them for good.

 

 

Watch / listen above or read below.

Todd Liles: Roy, today I want to talk about consistency, but specifically through this thing that is referred to as Channel Alignment. Now, I would be willing to bet that this is a term that’s totally unfamiliar. So in your words, tell us what Channel Alignment is.

Roy Williams: Okay, now keep in mind, I always have my own definitions for words, and so anytime I use a phrase, and somebody said, “Well, I looked it up and that’s not what that means.” I’m going, “Yeah, I know.” But I like to redefine it because very often there’s not a word that means what I want to say.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: And so I’ll just redefine a word that currently exists. So Channel Alignment means a lot of stuff to a lot of people and I don’t care. What it means to me is this. Every contact point that your customer and your company come to, there’s an intersection. So the customer becomes aware of your company, your company becomes aware of the customer, and there’s a moment of contact.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Okay. So any channel of communication; when they get a postcard from your company, that’s a channel of communication. When they get a phone call from your company, that’s a channel of communication. When a technician knocks on a door, that’s a channel of communication. And the technician’s about to say something.

Now, all of these channels represent your company. Of course, any form of media, whether it’s a phone call, or a postcard, or a technician knocking on the door, or a CSR calling, it’s a channel of communication. As are all of your mass media ads, TV, radio, billboards, OTT, cable. Social media is a channel of communication.

You need these to align. You need these to agree. You need these to all have the same brand voice, the same manner of speaking, the same belief systems, the same recurrent phrases that are the signature of your brand.

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: Now, remember this signature of your brand. You notice how I did not mention logo?

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: A logo is a visual style guide. It’s 5% of a brand. I’m talking about the other 95%. Does that make sense?

Todd Liles: Yeah, it absolutely does. One of the things that I really appreciate what we do in combination, is when we bring someone on and we’re working on all the internal things, we have a series of principles that we follow. PRESS PLAY. It works very, very well. It’s very easy to implement. And in those principles we say, “Okay, look, here is the template of the script. But let’s be super clear, this is a script that follows these principles. But what we need to do is we need to make it yours.”

And to put that in another language, if they are a Wizard client in combination with that, like we share many, then we can take that information, provide that to the Wizard client. They can look at it and go, “Oh, perfect. You’ve got wonderful CSR scripts. But now we’re going to drop in these Brandable Chunks. We’re going to make these little minor modifications.” So that when they’re answering that phone, we’re getting that consistent Channel Alignment from ad, to answering of the phone, to the technician showing up to the house.

Roy Williams: I had a thought and I want to insert it right here.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And listen, previous episode, we were talking about the importance of repetition to establish unaided recall, that procedural memory that is automatic, involuntary recall.

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: Automatic and involuntary; procedural memory. Okay. Repetition times relevance is procedural memory, automatic and involuntary. So right now, I just want to point something out. People think, “Well, Todd said PRESS PLAY. I’m just going to find out what’s included in PRESS PLAY.” I’m sure it’s published somewhere.

Todd Liles: It is.

Roy Williams: And I’m sure you can ask anybody that’s a client of Service Excellence and they could tell you, “Yeah, here’s what PRESS PLAY means. Here’s how do you do it.” Okay, why do I need to hire him now?

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s not about being able to read the list and understand it. Everything that I… All the fundamental things that I do are in one of the three Wizard of Ads trilogy. Okay. Read the books, do it yourself. Here’s the problem with trying to do what you do for themselves. It’s about repetition. It’s about creating automatic involuntary recall. It’s about making it automatic.

What you talked about several episodes ago is muscle memory. Well, that’s actually procedural memory, involuntary, automatic. So you do it without thinking about it. You do it without thinking about it. You know what that requires, it requires repetition. It requires coaching. It requires a disciplined coach who understands the importance of certain elements and rehearses those with you. And it takes… That can’t be done quickly. It can’t be done in a seminar.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: It can’t be done in a month or even a year. It takes a long amount of just relentless, relentless. And you were talking about when you went back to Mississippi and the certain things that you still do to this day as part of your daily warm-up routine. The guy, the Sensei, the head guy, that’s the amazing guy, he goes, “Man, this is like, you know this so unbelievably well. What the… You’ve been studying the martial arts.” And it’s like, “Yeah, these parts of it I do every day.”

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And that’s the… But of course you’re really good at. It’s automatic, involuntary. And then the stuff that you don’t do every day, you are rusty.

Todd Liles: Very.

Roy Williams: And so what I’m saying is, the coaching is not a one-time event and it’s never over. It’s like cleaning a swimming pool. If you own a swimming pool, yeah. Especially if you have trees in the yard. Cleaning the pool is never finished. It’s an ongoing thing forever.

Todd Liles: Okay, I’m going to ask you a question. This wasn’t written out, but it’s very relevant. We see this and it’s super dangerous. And it comes from a manager and owner who doesn’t have the proper intestinal fortitude and knowledge to know to go, “No, that’s not what we’re going to do.” And it’s the following. Once someone has procedural memory down, like they got it down. They really, really, really know it. We fundamentally understand a little bit of danger. A little bit of danger is they really, really know it. And then therefore, they know the next step.

So, hey, guess what? It’s predictable, which means in the mind of the technicians, it’s now somewhat boring. We have to mix in fun, and that’s our job and responsibility. But for a technician that hasn’t reached an understanding to go, “Oh, wow, this has really benefited my life.” And believe it or not, Roy, they’re not necessarily thinking long-term. They’re like, “No, no, I just I don’t want to say this one more time. I don’t care that my income’s gone from 40,000 to 120, because I’m at 120,000. I never, I’m not thinking about when I was at 40.”

Roy Williams: Right. Right.

Todd Liles: Here’s the question. Have you ever had a business owner come to you and say, “Roy, all these Brandable Chunks are working so well, I’m ready to change it?” Which is exactly what they essentially say to us. “Oh, this shit’s working so well, we’re ready to change it.” And we’re going, “For the love of Pete, don’t do that.” It will keep working, and it will only get stronger, but listening to a technician that’s in a truck tell you how to move your business is the worst mistake that you can make. And we have people make that very bad mistake. Does this happen to you guys?

Roy Williams: It happens to some of my partners, it never happens to me because I onboard clients differently. And again, I’m going to tell you what I’ve always done and it has always worked. Well, but I learned I learned to do it from pain. I learned to do it from having not done it and suffering the consequences. So whenever I tell people, “Here’s what you need to do.” And I tell my partners, and it takes years for them to finally realize the truth of what I tried to tell them from the beginning. When you bring on a client, you have to tell them about the future.

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: Now, in our business, it’s somewhere between the fifth and the seventh year. Whenever you get them through the chickening out period, and you get them through those first six months where they’re just not seeing anything marvelous, they’re seeing nothing encouraging for about six months, five months at least. And then it begins to take off. We call that breakthrough.

You have to describe that to them before you ever take their money. Money cannot change hands before you prepare them for the chickening out period. And then you have to prepare them for one more thing. As soon as it starts, as soon as you start doing what we’re telling you to do, everybody you’ve ever met, all of your employees, all of your friends, all of your people that care about you are going to tell you what you’re doing wrong, ’cause they think they know about marketing. Everybody who’s ever walked the earth thinks they know about advertising.

And what they believe is actually wrong. It’s absolutely wrong. But they all believe it. They all believe the same things. And so, the second point that I make is, after I say, “If you listen to those people and you come to me, we’re never going to speak again. You’re just fired.” I am not going to answer to an invisible jury. And if you ever tell me, “Here’s what somebody told me, what do you think about that?” I’m going to say, “Well, I think you should let them write your ads. Goodbye.”

Todd Liles: Yep.

Roy Williams: Now, let me tell you the second one. This is the big one. In five years, you are going to become convinced by all the people around you, your banker, your CPAs, all your friends, everybody that cares about you, that all of this was going to happen anyway. All of this was going to happen anyway. And it’s kind of like, “Yeah, they didn’t really help you, they just were along for the ride.”

And I tell people, when you tell them this is going to happen in the future, and you make them remember it, you put it in their head in such a forceful way, and before money changes hands, you’re risking the deal. You’re risking not selling this client. Okay? That’s the cost of doing this. And then you have to say, “When this happens, I want you to remember this moment ’cause I’m gonna ask you one question. Here’s what I believe can happen. Do you believe that’s going to happen anyway?”

And if they say, “Yes.” I’m going, “Great, airport’s that way, fly home. Do it. This is America, fly little bird, do it.” And so I am fierce in that moment, as I’m going, “I know what I’m bringing to the table. You know what you’re bringing to the table.” And whenever you tell them that, “Listen, once this starts really working, all your technicians and all your little buddies, and maybe in your own heart, “Let’s freshen it up”. Let’s go to the bottom of the mountain so we can climb it again.” It’s like, “Ah, that’s not as good of an idea as you think.”

Todd Liles: No.

Roy Williams: As it’s kind of like when you tell them, “This is what you’re going to be tempted to do in the future. This is what you’re going to think in the future. Can we cross that bridge together right now before we get started?” And when you do that, this is why some of my partners will come to a moment of crisis. I don’t. Because of that conversation. And when you see it happening over and over and over and over, address it. Address it before it starts. I believe that, astoundingly.

Todd Liles: Here’s my takeaway from what what you just said. And I actually do think it’s part of Channel Alignment.

Roy Williams: Oh, yeah.

Todd Liles: It’s your Channel Alignment. You are aligning in advance with the one key player that should be responsible for making decisions in the very beginning, a message that’s clear.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: And with your partners, and with us, many times we, A, didn’t think about that. Your partners are a different scenario, and now I am too, because we are surrounded with you and now we are thinking of those things. So then we, B, have to transition to a place to actually just be brave enough to say it. And not even just brave enough to say it, ’cause saying it and then not doing it is actually not powerful at all. You got to be brave enough to do it.

And I think that’s another form of Channel Alignment. If you say to your audience, “We have this guarantee, we have this warranty, we have this promise,” then that needs to go downstream in everyone in the company, then you better damn well do it, ’cause if you don’t, you’re breaking your promise.

Roy Williams: Right. Consistency.

Todd Liles: Consistency.

Roy Williams: Consistency is not predictability. Predictability is bad, but consistency is good. And so freshening it up so that it doesn’t feel like repetition, it doesn’t feel like memorization.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Freshening it up is what you know how to do, but to fundamentally change it is a wild mistake. It’s a horrible mistake. You just want to give it a different haircut.

Todd Liles: Yep.

Roy Williams: And dress it up in some different clothes, but it’s the same basic thing.

Todd Liles: You talk about predictability a lot, and I want to read the Chapter 13 from The Wizard of Ads; Velcro and the Ad Writer’s Friend. And I pulled this out because I think it does a really good job of explaining this and and uses some history in it.

“The goal of advertising is for your message to hold tightly to the brain. Most advertising does not. Do you want the public to remember your ads?

The secret is Velcro. George de Mestral discovered the secret of memorable advertising in 1941 in the Jura Mountains of France. After a day of hunting, scrambling through the woods and brush, he found his wool pants covered with burrs. No matter how hard he tried to remove them, those little burrs were on his pants to stay.

Fascinated by their tenacity, George inspected them under a magnifying glass and found that each of them had hundreds of tiny hooks engaged in the loops of his wool and fabric. George made a machine to duplicate the hooks and loops using nylon. He called this new product Velcro from the French velours and crochet.”

I’m sure I’m not pronouncing it in the proper French, but you get what I mean.

“The rough side of Velcro is made of tiny flexible hooks, the fuzzy side, small soft loops. Therein lies the secret of memorable advertising. What is the brain but a surface covered with trillions of tiny flexible hooks? What is memorable advertising but a series of words, sounds, or mental images covered with small soft loops?

You must cover your ads with small soft loops, but it’s not as simple as it seems. Have you ever noticed how some of the pieces of Velcro hold much tighter than others? George did, and he found that randomly-oriented loops offer much greater holding power than loops arranged in neat rows. The more unpredictable the loops, the stronger the bond. Neatly-arranged loops have little holding power.

When ad writers present their clients information in a predictable manner, or use predictable words, they are making orderly loops. The advertiser may like the ad because it’s accurate and positive, but such ads have weak Velcro. They are forgettable.

The human mind discounts the predictable. When you see the punchline coming, the joke is never funny. There can be no curiosity where there is no mystery, no delight without surprise. When you understand the Velcro of the mind, you are halfway to fame and fortune. The only thing you need now is a mental trigger.”

But we’ll talk about that in another episode. I wanted to read that because we keep coming back to consistency, Brandable Chunks, not being predictable. It is what all things of power and relevance have, which is this dichotomy that a person, that maybe like myself, of a structured mind, until they actually embrace what the Eastern philosophers have taught for a long time, which is there is a yin and a yang, and they do work together, they are not in contradiction, they are in perfect balance. It is a Eastern way of thinking that the Western world has a difficult time with sometimes.

But I really love that chapter because I think when we talk about Channel Alignment, it is very much like Velcro. It’s not necessarily going to be neat and orderly, and in our world, we tell people, here’s PRESS PLAY, here’s your script, but if you sound like a robot, boring, you got to make it your own. But the only way that you truly make it your own is you have to embrace it and go through the procedural memory, and then on the other side of that, it’s like, bam, it’s magic.

Now, it never sounds like a script before. In fact, some of the people that we’ve worked with the longest, Roy, some of the CSRs, they can do this perfectly channel-aligned presentation that is a blend of what we do together. And you would never in a million years say, “Oh, they’re following a script.” They’re just so natural, unpredictable.

Roy Williams: Well, the script is the structure. The structure and the touchpoints. In other words, you need to make this point, followed by this point, followed by this point, followed by this point. Are there certain phrases associated with each of these points? Probably. Probably. These will be the recurrent phrases. Now, if you go through that, what’s called the Narrative Arc, is the shape of the melody of the music.

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: That’s the narrative arc or the ups and downs in a storyline, in a plot. So this idea of these touchpoints, these mountain peaks that you need to make sure you hit. And then there’s… And then another mountain peak. When that structure is there, and you know you need to make these points in this order, and there are certain phrases you want to use. Hey, the rest is kind of up to you.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And so that’s how you make it your own, but you’re still… Making it your own makes you sound like an authentic human being, and it makes the job more fun for you. But the discipline of understanding what the non-negotiable bits are, the points that have to be made, the order in which they have to be made, and roughly the tempo at which these points need to be made. And then are there specific little words or phrases that we have to use at each of these points? Probably so. Yeah. That isn’t a script. It isn’t, it’s more than a template.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: But it’s less than a script. And once you know without even thinking about it, when you no longer have to think, “Well, there’s five points and these are the five and this is the order in which they come.” Nope. It’s like singing a song. You don’t have to think about it. You just get started and you can sing it effortlessly and it’s just, it’s just you… And you sing it in your own voice, and you sing it off key because you don’t have a good singing voice. But you know what? It’s the same, it’s the same song. And everybody recognizes the song.

Todd Liles: Roy, I know that if you can’t sing good, then you sing loud. And I’ve just sort of made that my motto. All right, now, I want to talk about a few tactical things.

Roy Williams: All right.

Todd Liles: Imagine the listener is now fully embraced. They have just received their brand guide, their Brandable Chunks, they got their style guide. They’ve got all the things, they’re so excited. They know that the next level now is to work with their partner and get this inside of their company. They want to put this with their CSRs, they want to put this with their techs, or sales reps. They want to get this on their website. They want to get this on their emails going out, all these things.

Now, the listener may be thinking to themself, who should be responsible for that? And I know this may vary from company to company, but from your experience, is there a person that is inside of a business where you’re like, “That’s the person that you should assign Channel Alignment to. They’re the person that should be auditing if things are actually being put together well.”?

Roy Williams: All right, so, again, this is where your understanding of your world is profound and rich, and my understanding of your world is deep but superficial in the sense that I don’t deeply understand it. I have a deep respect for it, and I understand the importance of it. So I’m going to answer with the truth.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: Okay? I have no idea who that person is.

Todd Liles: All right.

Roy Williams: And it doesn’t matter to me. And I’ll tell you why. Because nobody in that company can create Channel Alignment. They can only implement it.

Todd Liles: There you go.

Roy Williams: And so what I do, and what I teach my partners to do is, it’s usually four to seven months, four at the very, very, very earliest, usually five or six months into a new client relationship when we have finally figured out the media spend, where it’s going to be spent, how much is going to be spent, why we chose that specific media, and then the fundamental essence of the message and creating the Character Diamonds and all the things that flow from that, and all the Brandable Chunks.

Well, now that you’ve done all this, and you’ve got it rolling, and you’ve got the momentum, and you’ve got it dialed in, then you say, “Okay, now that we have refined the brand, and now it’s just a matter of repetition, right? Then it’s time to implement this brand voice, these phrases, chunks of sentences and beliefs into every other point of communication.” Now, here’s where it gets tricky for me and for my partners. We don’t create systems that don’t exist.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And so show me whatever you have for the CSRs or the CHIIRP thing they have on ServiceTitan.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Am I pronouncing that right?

Todd Liles: That’s right. Yeah, it’s a SMS message system.

Roy Williams: Yeah, yeah. And I said in all these other vehicles. And so the number of things… And then it’s like sometimes there’s automated emails that go out to respond to, we’re coming out to do your service or whatever. There’s all this stuff that’s built in.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Usually five, six, seven different things. And each one of these are just dozens of possible variations on these scripts. So we have to start with what already exists.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And then rewrite all of that and give it back. And so we don’t create the system, we’re not responsible for implementing the system, we’re just responsible for getting all these points of contact, all these channels of communication, getting them aligned so that it sounds like the same brand, whether you’re reading an email, reading a text, or listening to a CSR, or a technician who just knocked on the front door. And I’m saying, so once we’ve created it, we just give it back to them. Who implements that and how they implement it and how it’s coded, I don’t care. Doesn’t involve me in the slightest.

Todd Liles: May I then…

Roy Williams: Does that make sense?

Todd Liles: Yeah, makes sense.

Roy Williams: It’s like, you need to tell me. I do not know the answer to your question, Todd.

Todd Liles: No worries. Well, then, I wasn’t trying to put you in that spot, but I thought you might have an idea. I want to share with you what we would do. Once we’re in relationship and all of these things come prepared. Like let’s say Service Excellence has implemented these scripts, which we’ve said, “Hey, we want to customize them.” So all the messaging and all those things are in place and now a Wizard partner comes on.

There’s going to be a constant series of communications, and at some point when the Wizard partner goes, “We got it dialed in. This is what we would recommend. This would be our approach to it.” It’s like, okay, let’s get all of the stakeholders together, which are first going to be like department heads. Let’s get your service manager, your sales manager, your office manager that’s overseeing your CSRs. If you have someone that’s that’s over the website, let’s get all the department heads together, let’s present this information together in probably a multi-hour meeting to where we’re going over all the details, we’re talking about why, getting a chance for all the questions to be unpacked, and then begin to make a plan.

Now, one of the things that we know is very culture-centered; it’s that some cultures are like, turn on a dime. They’ve been operating that way for a long time. All the cultures need to be told, and then give me an appropriate amount of time to feel, and then let’s come back so that my feelings are heard, and now we’re all ready to align. That may be a day, it may be two days. We find here at Service Excellence that when it’s a really big change, our leadership team, typically a week is substantial. That’s enough. So when leadership team is all aligned. Yeah, these are all the things that we’re going to do.

Okay, leadership team, now let’s think about who’s downstream. And the reason why we like the term stakeholders is it’s like raising a tent at the circus. Someone has the hammer, which is usually the leader. I got this big old sledgehammer. Your stakeholders, your CSR, your technician, they’re holding the stake. You got to be like, eye contact. “You see, you see me? You see me? I’m going to swing it one time now, okay?” Bam. “You good? You safe? Me too. I’m going to swing it again.” So you’re constantly communicating with the stakeholder, ’cause if you don’t and you start swinging the hammer, they’re going to get their hand knocked off.

Or in the world of what we do, they’re going to be delivered a system, they’re going to go, “What is this?” So you get all of your frontline people together. Once the leadership team is 100% on board, there’s no misalignment in leadership team. They’re all on board. They know what’s got to happen. Then they bring the stakeholders, the people that are on the frontline together, deliver it, explain it, tell them why. Same philosophy holds as with leadership team, they need an appropriate amount of time. Maybe it’s a week. You bring them back in, we’re going to train on it.

And now we say, “Okay, so look, guys, this is the launch day. We’re actually going to use these new languages, use these new terms. Ideally, we’re going to do this 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.” Every team has to come up with their own standard that works for them. But by this day, we’re fully channel-aligned. ‘Cause I know that when you don’t do this, from hearing partners speak, the failure ends up being, “Yeah, we’ve got our campaign and our ads running, and the whole world knows what we say publicly on the radio spots.” And half the time you ask the technicians, “Have you heard the ads?” They’ve not even been played them. They can go months and months and months and not have a clue. “Do you know the Brandable Chunks?” They ain’t got a clue.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: So it’s total misalignment when there isn’t a serious, at the top level ownership, going, “Hey, this is what we’re going to say. We are turning learning into earning. We are… If you have the financial staying power, you can survive any mistake.” We are these things. You got to get these Brandable Chunks. All right.

So thanks for letting me play a little bit, Roy. I’ve got another chapter here. It’s one of my favorite chapters because I didn’t know where it was going. It was one of those surprising, “Okay, I love it.” It’s called Dead Cows Everywhere. Dead Cows Everywhere.

“Rarely do ad campaigns work as well as they should. I blame the three sacred cows of advertising.

One, Demographic Targeting, two, Gross Rating Points, and three, Media Mix. I think it’s time for these cows to die.

Demographic Targeting tells us that success can be found by reaching the right people. Consequently, advertisers focus on targeting and discount the importance of saying the right things.

In truth, decisions are seldom made in a vacuum. Each of us is influenced by a host of friends, relatives, co-workers, and strangers. The true secret of advertising success is to say the right thing to as many people as you can afford to reach over and over again. Word of mouth advertising is the result of having impressed someone, anyone, deeply.

Gross Rating Points tell us that persuading 100% of the city 10% of the way will work just as well as convincing 10% of the city 100% of the way. Those who buy Gross Rating Points nearly always reach too many people with too little repetition.

Media Mix tells us that the same people who see your newspaper ads will also hear your radio ads and notice your billboards. Media Mix further assumes that the customer will recognize all of these as having come from the same advertiser. Yet, rarely is one of these fragmented campaigns connected in the mind of the consumer.

Has the time come to replace the three sacred cows of advertising? Yes, I believe it has. And as you read ahead, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”

I love this one, Roy. In your own words, unpack what this means.

Roy Williams: Okay. All it really comes down to is, do you understand what makes people do what they do, or are you speculating? Most people are speculating, and what they conclude is horrifically wrong. Always. Always.

I’m going to give you an example, okay? Whenever I met Jim and John for the first time, I think… I don’t think Wizard of Ads had even come out yet. I think a little homemade book I wrote called Does Your Ad Dog Bite, Or Is It Just a Show Dog? I never sold a copy, didn’t intend to sell a copy. It doesn’t have a ISBN number. It doesn’t have a little barcode thing, a little thing on the back that you can scan.

No. I just, I printed 7,500 copies and gave them away. And I think John Young got a copy of that and read it. Little homemade book I made. And a publisher saw that, and the guy had just won Publisher of the Year for non-fiction. And he contacted me. He goes, “This is a really badly-made, homemade little book but you’re a very good writer.” And he goes, “And I would like to get to know you, and I think I want to republish this book with a new title.” Cool. That was Ray Bard.

My point is, Jim and John came along about that time. And they were going to start a thing. And I remember the first meeting in Sarasota, and it was Jim Abrams’ house, one of his houses. And then John Young and I were there, and my wife Pennie came with me, and we spent a couple days, like three days and two nights, I can’t remember. And they were going to put together 500 plumbers in a room. And they told me how much they were going to spend to make that happen.

They knew they could make it happen ’cause they had done it before with their first roll-up. And then the question became, what causes a person to call one plumbing company instead of a different plumbing company? And the question is, well, is it speed of response time? Is it master plumber certification? Is it locally-owned? Is it number of years in business? Is it better Business Bureau rating? Is it some combination of the above?

Roy Williams: “Here’s what I think. Here’s what I think. I think this. And I asked a lot of people, and they all told me this.” So, let me tell you something about learning what will make a person do what they actually do. Number one, if you ask a person, if you describe a circumstance, and you ask a person what they would do in that circumstance, they will always tell you the truth about what they are certain they would do in that circumstance. And here’s what’s more important. Todd, it is never true.

Todd Liles: They think it’s true.

Roy Williams: They think it’s true.

Todd Liles: But it’s not true.

Roy Williams: Intellectually, in that circumstance, here’s what I would do. But it has been proven infinite numbers of times that what they actually do in that circumstance is not at all what they think they would do. And so you go, okay. So if you can’t trust a person telling you what they think they would do, what have we learned? You cannot measure what has not actually happened.

Todd Liles: Yep.

Roy Williams: You cannot measure what has not yet happened. If you allow a person to make a decision based upon speculation of what they think they would do, you have learned nothing. As a matter of fact, you’ve learned less than nothing. You have gotten poisonous information that’s going to cause you to make a horrifically bad decision.

So, how do you, in fact, learn the truth? You have to ask, only ask people who have taken the action and have, in fact, done it recently enough that they can recall exactly what they did and can tell you the decision they made. Don’t ask them why they made that decision. You just want… And then here’s what we did.

And by the way, I quit doing this, because no matter how much you charge, you’re going to lose money. You’re going to lose a lot of money in this business. How long did it take us to get a statistically accurate sample? Bigger than what the Gallup Poll uses to measure the whole United States of America. Okay? We had almost 2,000 people in final tabulation.

The Gallup poll is 1,050. Whenever they want to get hyper-granular, it’s 1,500 persons. ‘Cause the larger the universe, the smaller the percentage of the universe you have to ask to get a statistically accurate answer. The smaller the universe, like 100 people in a room, you have to ask an extremely high percentage. There’s 100 people in a room, you have to ask the entire 100.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: If you ask 50 people and assume the other 50 feel the same way, you’re going to be horribly wrong. But in a nation of 260 million people, you only have to ask 1,050, provided that they meet the criteria to be a representative sample. Well, what we did. How long do you think it took to find people in the United States, and this is 200 people in a phone room. 200 people calling every day for two months. 200 people working all day, every day for two months. That’s what it took.

Todd Liles: That’s wild.

Roy Williams: ‘Cause here’s why it was a phone survey.

Todd Liles: 200 people calling every day for two months to get 1,500.

Roy Williams: Yeah… No, we got almost 2,000.

Todd Liles: Yeah, almost 2,000.

Roy Williams: We went beyond the Gallup Poll to test if that was a reliable number.

Todd Liles: Gotcha.

Roy Williams: So when we got to 1,050, we said, “Okay, we’re seeing exactly what we think the answer is.”

Todd Liles: And you went a little further.

Roy Williams: Let’s go to 1,500 and see how much those numbers change. They were changing almost nothing, like maybe one or two tenths of 1% is the only… That says, all right, let’s go ahead and finish out, the next couple of weeks, finish out the month and see where we wind up. And it was close to 2,000. And it’s like, when you get to 1,050, you might as well quit. Provided that they’re qualified. Provided that they’re qualified, qualified, qualified. So how do you know who’s qualified?

Todd Liles: Don’t know the answer.

Roy Williams: Okay, number one. What’s the first question that we asked? “Have you called a plumber in the last six months?”

Todd Liles: Because you said they got to have a recent experience with it.

Roy Williams: And if they say yes, we’re going to ask a question and we don’t write down the answer to the next question, you know what the next question is?

Todd Liles: No.

Roy Williams: Who did you call?

Todd Liles: Who did you call?

Roy Williams: Now, remember, the only thing we’re testing in this moment is, do they have vivid memory of the actual event? Because by a silent count of five. One, two, three, four, five, if they cannot name the plumber they called…

Todd Liles: Call’s over.

Roy Williams: Call’s over. We’re done. We don’t care what they think. But if we say, “Have you called a plumber in the past six months?” Do you know how many people you have to call to find somebody that has called a plumber in the last six months?

Todd Liles: I would think 2,000.

Roy Williams: It’s a lot of people. It’s a lot of people.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And then when you ask, “Who did you call?” The number that can remember the name of the plumbing company they called. Okay. And name it within five seconds. Okay. Now, these people are qualified. “Have you used a plumber in the last six months?” “Yes.” “Who did you call?” “Mullen Plumbing.” “Why did you call them instead of someone else?” Now, wait a minute. No pick list. If you give them, “Was it this or was it this?” If you give them a list of things to choose from, they’ll just pick the thing that sounds the most intelligent.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: They’re not remembering what they did. You’ve now asked them a theoretical question.

Todd Liles: You’ve planted a memory.

Roy Williams: Yeah, you asked them a theoretical question, you’re asking, these are the only correct answers. No, no, no. You can never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, ever give somebody a pick list, whether verbal or printed, if you want to learn the truth.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Okay? And most people don’t have the discipline to do it the right way. And so they get poisonous information that isn’t worth crap. I mean this, and I’m fierce about this ’cause I know the science of this. So what happens is, first question, “Have you called a plumber in six months? What’s the name of the plumber? Why did you call that plumber instead of someone else?”

And you just wait. And you write down what they say. And then you ask them the big one. “Where did you get the number?” No pick list. You don’t say, “Did you get it from a billboard? Or did you get it from the side of a truck? Or did you get it from a radio ad? Did you get it from a TV ad? Did you get it from a newspaper? Did you get it from a mailer? Did you get it from an email? Or did you get it from Google?”

Todd Liles: You keep it open.

Roy Williams: And so whenever… Yeah, if you don’t keep it open, you’re not learning crap. So here’s what’s interesting. When you ask, and this speaks to your business far more than it does mine. Far more than it does mine. “Where did you get the number?” What was overwhelmingly the most common answer?

Todd Liles: At the time that you did it? I would assume the Yellow Pages.

Roy Williams: Yep, that’s what I would have assumed, that’s what the entire world would have assumed.

Todd Liles: So that’s assumption. So then the answer was probably actually because of the business we’re in. Some radio, word of mouth.

Roy Williams: From a friend.

Todd Liles: From a friend. Word of mouth.

Roy Williams: They called it… No, it wasn’t word of mouth exactly. I’ll tell you why.

Todd Liles: Oh, because they asked.

Roy Williams: They knew a friend, they knew a friend that had a hot water heater installed or had a Jacuzzi installed or had a hot tub installed, or had a faucet put next to the garden in the far corner of the backyard, or they had called a plumber in recent history, or they had a new shower set put in the ceramic tile shower. And you say, “Where’d you get his number?”

Most people who are getting ready to call a plumber will have a memory of a friend who was telling them about their experience with a plumber recently or having called a plumber. “Hey, when you used that plumber to do your blah, blah, blah,” and they’re telling a story that their friend… They’re repeating back to their friend the story the friend told them. “Hey, remember when you told me that thing you did?” “Yeah.” “Who did you use?” They give you a name. “Would you use them again?” They’re either going to say yes or no.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And then, “What’s their number?” And usually the friend, who now is invested helping you with this, they’re your friend, they like you, happy to help you, they will find the number for you. And so what we found out, the overwhelming answer is an answer that nobody ever freaking would have expected to be the most common answer.

Now, you can familiarize people, okay, to feel like they have a friend who is a plumber if they feel like they have met you, Todd. If the person, instead of calling a friend, they feel like they know a plumber, that they’ve met this plumber, it’s what’s called a Parasocial Relationship. A parasocial relationship. Google it.

A parasocial relationship is when you have been exposed to a person, like somebody that has a YouTube channel, or somebody you hear on the radio all the time, or somebody you see on TV, whether it’s a newscaster, whether it’s an advertiser that has a certain amount of personality and charm, you really feel like you know them, you’re familiar with them, you know kind of how they roll and what their vibe is and kind of what they stand for. That’s the name you think of first and feel the best about.

So instead of calling a friend to get the name of a plumber they used, you call the person that you think of as a friend, even though they have never heard of you. The plumber has never heard of you, but you feel like you know the plumber. That’s called a parasocial relationship. And I’m going, what good advertising does is create a parasocial relationship.

Todd Liles: It’s relationships.

Roy Williams: And what I’m saying is, nothing has really changed, you call a friend.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Now, how do you become a person’s friend before they need a plumber?

Todd Liles: You’re friendly. You be friendly.

Roy Williams: You say things that only a friend would say. You say things that only an honest person would say. You tell stories that are actually interesting and revealing and entertaining to the person. They go, “Yeah,” it’s like, wow, really? This company started, this little boy, this eight-year-old boy and his widowed mother were squeezing lemons into test tubes and putting them in the freezer to sell popsicles in the Bronx. And that became the origin of Haagen-Dazs.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And I’m going, “Wow, that’s a cool origin story.” And it’s actually true. The little boy’s name was Reuben. And my point is, when you understand what causes people to bond with people, people do not bond with corporations, they bond with personalities. And it’s either the spokesperson speaking for that corporation or the brand itself has a personality.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: The brand itself is clear about what they stand for and what they believe in. And so a company like REI. I’m not an outdoors person, but I’ve been to REI a handful of times. You know what I’m talking about?

Todd Liles: I’m not familiar with REI.

Roy Williams: REI is up near the Arboretum in this town. It’s a super high-end clothing store. There’s a, like just a little waterproof rain jacket, Arc’teryx, I think is the name of it. Have you ever seen that?

Todd Liles: Mm-mm.

Roy Williams: All right, so I may be mispronouncing it, but Arc’teryx, it’s like 700 bucks for a little rain jacket. And so it’s a super high-end.

Todd Liles: It better be.

Roy Williams: No, I’m telling you. But see, when you go to the… What the real, if you’re going to climb Mount Everest, you’re not going to DICK’S Sporting Goods, right?

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: You’re going to REI, or one of those really super high-end stores has the real stuff. Okay. And it’s just indestructible and it’s unbelievable, it’s amazing. Now, the point is, those kinds of brands, what they believe in and what they stand for, like Louis Vuitton. We know what Louis Vuitton stands for. We know how they see the world, right?

And it’s like either you align with that or you don’t. But the point is, it’s clear what they stand for. REI. It’s super high-end outdoor stuff. And it’s like, “This is for the pros. This is not for the wannabes, the lightweights, the nose-pickers and the whiners. This is for the people that are actually doing it.”

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: You know what I mean? And it’s like, hey, do you just want to wear some cool-looking shoes, or are you in fact a professional athlete? There’s a difference. And so, these brands can have a personality without being a person. Okay? And so can you create that? Yes. But it takes a spokesperson to embody that brand, to deliver the brand message. Make sense?

Todd Liles: It does.

Roy Williams: And so all of this whole thing as I’m going, what people think matters usually doesn’t. How they think people make decisions is almost always wrong. And you have to spend meaningful time. And they don’t teach it in college. They teach zero of this in college. Zero. And so when you actually have to do your own research and figure out how this stuff happens, then you can speak with confidence and you don’t have the patience to argue with people about it.

Todd Liles: Well, I’m going to add something. PRESS PLAY, the last step in it is Your Future. And just before Your Future, we talk about Adding Value because we want to leave a memorable experience. This is going to go in the textbook. The fact that the overwhelming number one source for number finding was essentially by asking a friend. That just reinforces why adding value to secure your future is so critical. So I’m going to add that. Thank you for that, Roy.

All right, Roy. I have a campaign that doesn’t exactly align with Channel Alignment as our main topic, but it’s one that I love, I find very interesting. It’s one that has great longevity. Great longevity. You’ll know it as soon as you see it.

 

Mayhem: I’m a teenage girl. My BFF Becky texts and says she’s kissed Johnny. Well, that’s a problem ’cause I like Johnny. Now I’m emotionally compromised and whoopsies. I’m all, “OMG, Becky’s not even hot.” And if you’ve got cut-rate insurance, you could be paying for this yourself. So get Allstate. You can save money and be better protected from mayhem like me.

Announcer: Dollar for dollar, nobody protects you from mayhem like Allstate.

Todd Liles: All right, Roy, so this is what I want to ask you about, with the Mayhem ads. I think this was the first one. And it has since morphed into ads that mostly show around the time of football. They have found ways to tie it into football games. The shtick is always the same. He is always the embodiment of this thing called Mayhem. And he’s always doing something dangerous and stupid and damaging to personal property. Yet we never know how he’s going to do it. So we’re still interested, right? They found a repeatable shtick, but they’re always creating variety in how it’s going.

Roy Williams: You know structurally what the components are, but you don’t know what the components are yet.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Yeah. You don’t know how it’s going to manifest.

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: So you know it’s just like… So there’s what I call the hovering question mark. In other words, there’s a deep element of mystery, even though the structure never changes, it is not predictable. And so the structure makes it consistent, but the details are determined whether or not it’s predictable.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And so what I saw immediately, and I’d never seen that ad.

Todd Liles: Never?

Roy Williams: Never.

Todd Liles: Oh, wow.

Roy Williams: No. You got to realize, I don’t ingest advertising.

Todd Liles: That’s probably been going for a good 15 years now.

Roy Williams: Okay, yeah, I haven’t watched it.

Todd Liles: With different variations constantly.

Roy Williams: I work hard at avoiding advertising. I work harder than any human on earth at avoiding it.

Todd Liles: Well, I’m only trying to bring you the good stuff.

Roy Williams: So, and you do, you do. Now, what I saw was what’s called Paired Opposites. That guy would not be driving a pink vehicle, and he would not identify himself in his opening sentence as a teenage girl. “I am a teenage girl.” And it’s like, “No, you’re not.” And so what happens is… So contradiction. Okay? I’m going to summarize it with this. When you say something that absolutely doesn’t belong, interest is elevated.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Now, two things don’t belong. That guy, obviously beat up and the band-aid and the whole bit, and he’s this rugged, weird-looking character. And he says, “I’m a teenage girl.” “No, you’re not.” And you’re driving this pink vehicle, something is desperately wrong with this picture. Attention skyrockets.

Why? Because one thing does not agree with the other. What he said is obviously not true. So I’m not sure where this is headed. So now you’re hooked. You’re hooked whenever he says, “I’m a teenage girl.” All right. Then you’re going, “I have to see what happens next. I want to see what happens next. I want to see what happens next.” And so in the space of 30 seconds, he takes you all the way from the parting of the Red Sea to the promised land, which took 40 years in the original version. Takes him 30 seconds. Boom. Story is over. Point is made. Now, here’s the magic. Contradiction elevates attention. Okay? But when the thing that doesn’t belong suddenly fits. How?

Todd Liles: Is is that a Crazy Ivan?

Roy Williams: Yeah… Well, no, Crazy… Well, no.

Todd Liles: No, okay.

Roy Williams: A Crazy Ivan is something that doesn’t belong, but it’s not part of the fractal image. It’s not part of Chaos Theory. It’s not part of self-similarity.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: So all of that means something to people that understand what Chaos Theory is, self-similarity, fractal images. Fractal is simply a map of a chaotic system. And so the footsteps of chaos. Okay? I wish you hadn’t started me down that path.

Todd Liles: I apologize.

Roy Williams: I, listen, there’s so much I need to say, but we don’t have time. The idea is, what doesn’t belong suddenly fits. Let’s just call that resolution. When it resolves. So there’s a mystery. A mystery. Boom. Mystery is introduced. Something doesn’t belong. This doesn’t belong with this. This doesn’t work. So this thing that doesn’t belong, how much does it not belong? It gigantically doesn’t belong. He says he’s a teenage girl. He is not teenage and he’s not a girl. But he’s driving the pink vehicle. This is interesting. See what I mean?

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: Most people don’t have the balls to do that. They don’t have the balls to create that kind of a contradiction, which is why most ads are boring.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Now, at some point it has to resolve, or it’s just randomness that never came together and it doesn’t make sense. The funniest joke you’ve ever heard in your life is determined by this criteria. Something that absolutely did not belong, the punchline perfectly fits. To what degree did it not belong, and how perfectly does it fit?

And so when you realize, “Oh, I didn’t see that coming, but I should have. That answer fits so perfectly, but I didn’t see it coming.” And so to what degree did you not see it coming? That’s the degree to which it didn’t belong. It wasn’t predicted. Now, if it belongs and fits, it’s not funny ’cause you saw it coming. If it doesn’t belong and doesn’t fit, it’s not funny because it doesn’t make sense.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: How much did it not belong? How perfectly did it fit? And that was the classic structure of the perfect joke. And it has to have resolution. Resolution is the moment that it all makes sense. Bam. It’s very satisfying.

Todd Liles: One of the reasons why that one stands out to me is ’cause, again, it does have relevancy, right? My father-in-law, who was a football coach forever, we would often have to TiVo things ’cause he still loves football. To this day, he still loves football. He’s retired. We’ve got this tradition where I go over there on Saturdays, but typically I arrive about an hour after the game kicks off. They’ve got the TiVo already going, or whatever the equivalency of that is, they’re recording it digitally.

So the reason we do that is we like to fast forward through the commercials. Make this game a little quicker, right? So we’ll eat dinner, we’ll do all these things, then we start playing the game. And we’re watching the game, we hit the fast forward. But if Tully sees that commercial, he rewinds. Every one he watches. And it’s always, sometimes he’s a raccoon, sometimes he’s a tree limb, sometimes he is the wind. But he’s always Mayhem. And that’s why you need Allstate to protect you from mayhem like him. And it cracks him up every time, and I just laugh along with him.

Roy Williams: So we talked in an earlier episode about there’s not that many different stories, but the way the story is told and the pieces of the story. But the structure of the story is always the same, but the pieces can change dramatically. And so they have created a structure that makes their ads consistent. But you never know, is he going to be a tree limb, or is he going to be a teenage girl, or is he going to be a flood? What’s he going to be? He’s like, “I am.” And it’s like, “No, you’re not.” But let’s see how this plays out. And then at the end, it has to resolve. If it doesn’t resolve and make sense at the end, then it just sucks.

Todd Liles: I love it. I know that whoever created that ad knew that they were on to something by the second and the third one was like, “Oh, my God, we can get 20 years out of this.”

Roy Williams: Oh, just so you’ll know, whoever created that, they knew when they wrote it.

Todd Liles: Oh, they knew, huh?

Roy Williams: Oh, listen, you don’t have to… When you know how to create stuff like that.

Todd Liles: They knew what they were doing.

Roy Williams: Same thing. This is really true. Jerry Seinfeld and all of the great, great, great, great, great writers of comedy, guys who actually can create their own stuff, they will tell you. A bunch of brilliant writers sitting around a room together working on comedy. Nobody laughs. Somebody will tell somebody and everybody’s going, “Oh, yeah.”

Todd Liles: That’s funny.

Roy Williams: “That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” And they understand what makes something hysterically funny. And so they’re not cracking each other up. When you’re at that level, you know.

Todd Liles: You just know.

Roy Williams: You just know, this is going to be unbelievably funny ’cause you understand what it takes. And that degree of surprise. Without surprise, there can be no delight. And you cannot create surprise unless first you create a paradox that seems like it cannot be resolved. A grown man that’s all beat up, and he’s late 30s, early 40s, and he says, “I’m a teenage girl.” Okay, we’re hooked.

Todd Liles: Where’s this going?

Roy Williams: And I’m saying, so structurally, I watch what they’re doing, and he knew it was going to work. Nobody was surprised that it worked. Everybody that was involved in that goes, “This is going to work like crazy.” You know what it takes… You know why some companies have those ads like that and other companies don’t? Courage.

Todd Liles: Courage. Yeah.

Roy Williams: Most people want their freaking ads to look and sound and smell and taste like ads. And that is stupid. That company had the courage to go, “Yeah, we don’t want ads. We want messages that make people like and trust us and believe in us that don’t sound like ads.”

Todd Liles: I love it. Roy, what’s the one big takeaway from this episode?

Roy Williams: Have courage.

Todd Liles: Have courage. Wonderful. I love it. Well, guys, you can find all of our show notes, all the ads, all on toddliles.com/wizard. And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably sitting here thinking to yourself, “This is fantastic, I just don’t know how to do any of this.” Look, there’s a contact form. Fill it out, reach out. I’ll gladly talk to you.

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