Getting Human Nature to Work FOR (Rather Than Against) Your Business
The only emotions that reliably inspire action are those that affect self-image.
How Often Should Your Ad Play | Wizard’s Roundtable
How long should each ad stay on? How many ads do you run at a time? And as we look into the second half of 2020, is there less clutter out there?
Mistakes aren’t wrong. Wrong isn’t a mistake.
Makers of ads push their chairs back and say “yeahhh…now that’s smooooooth.” …while your customer sliiiides right off.
Creating Story Appeal On Demand (Part 2)
Attitude imbalances are the most useful for advertising — especially for branding — because they speak to and most directly reveal personality, character, and values.
Good For Sheep, Bad For Business
Sheep are best known for their strong flocking (herding) and following instinct. They will run from what frightens them and band together in large groups for protection. This is the only protection they have from predators.
Story —> Attention —> Sale (Part 1)
If you try to buy attention without a story, you’ll strike out. This is what happens to most advertising and marketing efforts. People buy “exposure” via advertising and presume that they’ve also purchased attention...
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy — A Primer
Good strategy always contains three elements and bad strategy doesn’t. Let’s look at each of these three defining elements before presenting a streamlined version specific for Advertising Strategy.
The High-Impact 10X Advantage; Share of Voice vs. Share of Mind
What if you broadcast a flaming, un-ignorable ad that hits people between the eyes?
Why Making the Ads Is the Last Thing We Do
This substantive style of advertising (started by Ally & Gargano and continued by Scali, McCabe, Sloves) tripled US sales of Volvos.
Substance Over Style
Every ad has style and substance, cheese and meat. Most ads are cheese because ad writers are rarely given meat. Style cheese includes layout, angle, tone of voice and hyperbole. Substance meat is provable fact and concrete detail.
Images, “Truthiness,” and Forced Participation
Recent psychological studies show that statements accompanied by related images are considered more believable than the same statement without an image.
Showmanship & Transparency
Like most buzzwords “transparency” is most misunderstood by the very people mouthing it most often. The proper way requires transparency AND showmanship.
Building Tribes Takes Whisk(e)y
Building a tribe takes longer than Ricky’s stints in jail. You gotta be patient, and commit to the content for a long time. Way longer than you think it’s funny for.
Wizard’s Roundtable: Episode 2
The four things that need to be in every commercial, no matter what's going on in the world. And whether or not this is the time to renegotiate your media buy.
Parasocial Influence
You have at least one late night host that you probably feel as if you “know,” even if you’ve never met them. And it’s not just you; it’s all of us — we all have this one-sided relationship with at least some celebrities.